Bride movement
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In the game “You may kiss the bride” you want the player to feel a constant stress. To achieve this, we have a enemy – the bride – constantly chasing you as you play. If she catches the player, s/he will either take massive damage or die instantly. Any mistake the player makes during playing will lead to the bride getting closer and closer, gradually increasing the stress for the player. There was a problem appearing with this. If you had played through the game and knew your way, you could easily outrun and get far away from the bride, and therefore almost completely relieve the stress from the game. To keep the stress levels high we figured we should keep the bride on or close to the screen for as much game time as possible. Our solution to this was to speed the bride whenever she loses distance to the player. This allows the player to run away from the bride when she’s about to catch you, but she will never be so far away the threat of her disappears. This graph shows how the speed of the bride increases as she’s getting further away from the player.
I wrote about this because even if it’s a minor detail to our game, it’s one that is very purely aimed towards reaching our aesthetic goal. Often times when designing games, you get more into what fits the game you’ve created rather than aiming for what you initial goal was set out to be. While this is very natural, I also think it’s important to not lose sight of your ambition with your game. This is something that’s especially important for the lead designer of the group, since s/he is slightly more responsible than other members to make sure the group doesn’t go off track too much. But it’s a shared responsibility among us since we’re all game designers. Take this as advice for your group to focus on what’s important for YOUR game. Make your game into the best possible experience for the player! Good luck and have fun!
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