The Casual (but Regal) Swipe: Creating Game Mechanics in Reigns

[Music] thank you yes so I'm Francois so welcome thank you for attending this just this gamer so I'm EVD jet-lagged and EVD Kathleen United so if I say something weird or very French just tell me and I will try to correct that okay so ring the rings were made by by myself and the team very talented team so Mike America me did we are those very specific art of friends and we had an exceptional music music team with a disaster piece material go and an Eric phone number engine which is a great work on the aesthetics notably and I did the writing and the game division so I'm going to talk about trying to rank the swipe you on adventure it can be described as a mix of tinder and Game of

Thrones and relatively a great way to describe the game you clear dynasty or King taking binary decision so yes or no i swiping and you have a double objective which is to rule as long as possible and to discover the secret of your offshore dynasty and that's that's the long game with that you play over centuries journey it's been quite successful so what am I going to talk about today I don't know that yet so it will will be a bit dynamic help when I know for sure it's what this talk will not be about so this talk is not about a list of success of things you have to do to make a successful indie games as it's not a pipe either so I think a success is the result of very dynamic dynamic paths and we made good choices but but we had also a lot of luck and

probably some bias so I really want you to be careful about instead today and we need you the audience to to take some distance with what I'm going to say so use your critical thinking try to extract the interesting matter and while I'm going to say today the the useful information is a is something that's specific to your own use and unpracticed but I don't know so that's an important points I wanted to make and we start by an example so be careful this is very treacherous for me laziness is my goal in life so just like being this drawing from the NOTAM I dream of myself naked on a bed with scratching a caption because game development is is a very painful enterprise you know that all of you where you work

like L with a very very uncertain success not really sign nor sustainable to make games let's be honest about that what I mean by that is not that I am lazy of course but my goal is to sort of search that's that's but but optimisation of online means and my my designer to add a sort of good words with God of being lazy I'm not saying I'm lazy we all professional we spent a lot of hours on our logic dogs and and and the true true pixel either animation that needs to be perfect and I'm just like you I do that but but I try as much as possible to make the most of the time I spend on games again making and instead of I always try to use that in a

useful way I think being the most efficient efficient sloth possible is a very interesting drive in game making because it is it's always where you will find new mechanics it will optimize your your design choices and the optimization is not just something thats related to game engine and code optimization is also about practice and and about the way you make the game yourself as a designer so we start this talk about Ranger Ron ranked inception the scribbling of frames from the first sketch we made or with amico the artist so we talked about this idea of making a bank game around the same mechanic as injure and the many amounts of the game were already present from the start so that's the first visual event you play King managing a kingdom so you have advisor they are

coming and talking to you about the kingdom but you never see you never see the cathedral you always adjust the advisor and it creates a gap that we will see is interesting there only two answers yes or no but each one has a profound impact on the kingdom that you see on the data and the bottom of the screen and that it's and we had we had this from the start reader it's like two weeks after starting the game this was EVD even inspired by a little from the vine for the visuals and and from bias arose Royals which was a very important inspiration you will see a lot of make small mechanics that we used in ray like one year turn and stuff like that so to give a bit of perspective to this first sketch I just compare it to the final game like one week after the release there are it's mostly the thing

basically the same layout and as I told you always aim to be lazy so I can't just scratch everything and but there are two interesting changes that I want to talk about first you see the data are on the top of the screen and not the bottom like at the stop so that's the sort of dumb test you have to do very early in development so the game was supposed to be played mostly on mobile when when you play your play on model journey as the thumb if you want to swipe the thumb is on the bottom of the screen so you didn't you never see the impact of the of the swipe if you put your data at the bottom of the screen so that's dumb test you have to do that rarely not just not to to push that sort of bad idea too far the other point on this is that we scratch the numbers as you probably noticed that was a difficult design decision that occur

very late in the development for a very simple reason when you play tests that sort of thing the player will always prefer the first question because it's easier for them to optimize whereas a decision is a CEO the impact that but we decided against this because we noticed that very quickly the players stopped reading the text and they were just optimizing their own service system - and that's not what we wanted we wanted to definitely to have the focus on the text free and as we wish here just later just after that on a writing rank so on when we first make this to the game we a quickly noticed that players wanted to go beyond the management side of the game which was the very basic version or weird they naturally started to create links between call that I didn't in any

way linked together like like building a cathedral and the site apply the plague outbreak so they were creating their own stories within the game so we decided to to to support that and encourage and build believe the game online so that's the writing it has three points we start by evocative writing which is very useful to what we don't use that much in games and that's a shame I think if you see this picture it's it's still likely to be boring I mean it's called breakfast table with blackberry die but if you look a bit more closely and you think of this painting as as a theme in a game it's actually very entertaining and very thrilling I mean as what what's this glass broken on the left is it the result of a site or that contain poison why are things left off like that

there's a clean cane in the middle you see and I something maybe it's a weapon and the thing on the right is it is it a clock maybe it is a time travel time travel device and the key what does the key open so that's interesting things that that happen by a vocation and I used that a lot in in reims if you take this risk our examples you got the unknown body you get the arms missing you got the the garrison and the dungeon so all this creates some sort of structure to the whole game that that but we really Eva worked but we used a lot because we evoke eight the kingdom but behind the gutter game and that was very important to really build on this so that coming here and rhythm assume we click quickly discovered that there was a very strong chemical gap between the

decision you attack that impact your kingdom you some people to death you deal with earthquakes you deal with a lot of Eva stuff actually and the way you have to deal with it by swiping which is like the most casual way of dealing with a situation is not and that creates a gap that's very comical and only that only creating very serious guard was actually very funny for the player and player were like well how do I do that and the only the fact that the only options were swiping makes it very funny and we basically just build on this I think more and more weird card more and more and we want five honorable consequences that generally yet bring you to your death very quickly at some sort of illustration of a very casual power but just deal with a binary decision is bad and and can quickly become sour so also

unimportant things for the writing of this was the the rhythm the rhythm in the game is very important and it took me some time to learn to do that rhythm see if the the date of the game is very quick and you have to go from tak tak tak and boom you die it's like an I had to keep in everything I wrote for the games this sort of a very strong rhythm about that Jenny finish with this with deaths that are like like a clash that just breaks you in your in your in your pace you go so making that sort of thing what was difficult for me to find the right tone for the game I had to train myself to write brain Scott there's no easy way to do that so we I wrote a 707 Scott and in the game and it's really only after the first two hundred counts but I add the tone I had them the way to

be to play with my mechanics if you want and how to define the sentences so they make sense I studied French literature and and we like to make long sentences so it was very painful for me to to do that so probably stick driven narrative so that's also very painful and story about that so we as I told you players started to create their own narratives within the game so we decided to encourage right and that was difficult because we we also needed to keep the flow of the game the flow of the game is it's very important in right you really have to be able to play hundreds of cards in those sections of twenty minutes for example which is generally the time you spell on the game and that was basically creating a narrative that basically infinite because you can loop the loop and look

like on tinder you can loop and loop as long as you want so to do that I created a system called that I call probabilistic driven narrative because it's pedantic and I liked it so I couldn't do branching fast narrative especially as I am to be lazy it's just crazy you have four drawers here imagine or I would deal with with hundreds of cards is not possible and it creates a lot of garbage so I instead I created this probabilistic near driven narrative so it's a relatively simple idea based on basic probability and that Vitara actually very useful tools that we that I'll try to explain here so basically I check the state of the kingdom which is made of different variables but I collects okay and against that state right selects all the

cards that fit in that state and I put them in this bag like a bag of cards the front but adapt to the number of cards that are in the bag and I'd select one by random even the fact that the card of different volume in the in the bag makes that just enables two to generate different sort of narrative that will adapt to the state of the kingdom so it's a very simple system but creates notice I could be purely in random like in row four at the bottom here it I I selected in that interchange of state cabinets are relatively of relatively the thing wait so so the card that selected is purely a randomly selected I can also color that front on selection by adding cards that are of a

bigger volume and when generally I do that when when is its run different thematic like for example the war of like the spice trade so the cards that are related to the spice trade will be fewer but bigger so they have a better chance to be selected by verb by the system within a system that stays random so so I still have variety in what's happening and also I can use the Kingdom state in a restrictive way so around very small or narrow narratives even linear narrative like one card after the other and what that's what you have in a row free and I will which show example of that and basically that's the system that structure everything that's happening in range and as players never know if a card is the direct consequence

of the privilege oice or a more random selection by the engine everything becomes meaningful so every link between the cards actually makes sense for the player because we know they don't really know if what they're deciding is as an impact on the next card selection ok so this is the I told you it was painful so this is the I am writing or arranged basic here I'm writing the Cardinal spreadsheet sorry about that last bit and I pass that in unity each line in this spreadsheet is a card and it works like that so you got the question and the advisor which is the the bearer the guy who bears when used if you want after that I got the log term which is when number of terms the card will be locked until able to be played again in the in

the probabilistic system and the weight and the weight of the guards which is the volume of the card in the document after that I got the conditions which are the basically I check I checked if the guard fit in different Kingdom States by the system of conditions and after that I got the the answers yes so in that VM sir yes so both on the values of the kingdom the different four values which you see at the top and on the marginal Kingdom state and every everything always affects the Kingdom state that evolves basically at every card that you select and I have the same for the new answer okay so that that was writing rings that that was very the scripture on the tools I developed at the start and I and don't make any difference between the code which is basically what you have behind the

engine and the writing because all that process was made basically together and a real switch from the code to writing quickly so that the three free think I just saw in writing ranked in enabled us to make the prototype with rounded card which is the language so we show two we showed to develop so now the main part was to actually write the whole game I call that breaking ring is because everything it was more about creatively breaking things that it was about seriously writing called and I have this sort of perverse huge to break an act my own my own systems account and because because I think it's important to surprise the player and the fact that in rains you you can die in that you you you carry on with the next King in the dynasty and so on and so forth sort of

limited the frustration legend can create although it is quite frustrating sometimes so um the party so the party it's one of the thing I'm the most proud of in ranked is that we did impossible the in kickable you can die of having too much stuff in right including money and it generally happens like this so you you you maximize your money and deferral party and then and then you die choking and it happens every single time so I'm serious I received eight mail about that you know because you're you suppose you expected that the player as a normal person actually to be able to just gather stuff without boundaries and I think I think on the contrary the motion of power is something that needs to be balanced and that doesn't make sense if it's not balanced and so - yeah I'm very proud of this even if it was would be cheesy today every time direct

because of the party but but this is the sort of thing that that make the message of the game went through and also that was fun okay so the dungeon soon managed to squeeze the rudimentary procedure on drunk roller in ranks which is very inspired by land of laws so there's the same system as everything except you don't have advisable to you you are the over the dungeon and you go left or right and things I've done and so I won't spoil you and that's interesting because we use the same proper eastings system as everything else but instead of having it the system on the roll set of cards I just now reached to a subsystem a subset of cards which are the cause of the dungeon so basically I do like this so I open on the consequences of the card that starts with the dungeon I open

dungeon one okay and after that it will collect the system will collect all the cards that Charlotte's name and play the probabilistic system only among them okay and that's how I randomize my M my dungeon and after that I can look in the dungeon by just recording the same the same subset of cards I use this system a lot notably in in the the red dwarf which is like a game in the game and done the virtual on the right so but you know both are very light layer of code on top of the general system but I I tend to keep everything in the spreadsheet so all the things that you read here are on the spreadsheet and not

in something else and the devil so the devil we notice something very troubling about kinder it's like it's Val of a design but quite literally so I mean that like like console use your your bit stuck in some sort of look that's both numbering compelling and under unless so you use easy apple you want reach for it and you can't so you you come back that you try again and you count and so on and so forth if you replace that that with profile on the on tinder is with the same mechanic so this is all the IDR a very concretely answered the very idea of the data entered the game basicly the David trapped you in this endless loop of Kings and you have to trick him into escape and solve the game so this structure well the the devil the devil

backstory was very important to structure of the whole gang given n go to a player and also gather all the stories around main products like this it was also something we use to trick our youtubers and freak them out of it so because the when you reach 666 you played 64 years so you know the value you know other game works you sort of familiar with it you played 10 to 15 minutes so you play through and read cards of that so I mean that's the perfect moment to to just break everything and and and that works very well with your trailers mostly so I want to conclude now I'll try to sum up the main idea that that's behind most of the things I described today which is basically that for me game nay game dev and I try to do it in ranked game dev is

more an exploration than the completion of the system I think it's more interesting through to try to explore concepts than just try to make a perfect game if you want when what I what I mean by perfect system I think we saw two all game designer wants to create the perfect game but perfectly balanced like a perfect machine with where every car girl just is connected to every other cog and that and that it's perfect because it's complete and clean and and defined injured different in your specific space like the big machine in model times from a charlatan I think this is the bit past this vision of things I think it's more interesting to start to think about exploration of concepts on the expression of game

mechanics it's a different attitude so exploration when I speak what do I mean by that array mean the two phase of exploration which is the preparation and expedition itself during preparation you are you will we will try to be as precise and and as as perfect as possible actually you have to gather all the skills you will need to make sure the game as you want it you have to define a budget and the planning and and gather the tools that we need to do the expedition itself you have to stabilize the core game mechanics and the main code while keeping them scaleable and expandable okay so it goes really beyond the very idea of a basic prototype you you have to think in your prototype and it's not just the prototypes the prototype and every tool that you will need to actually bring your game to the

tweet final state after that you get the exploration phase on the right so it it actually it when you you go explain so you manage your resources dynamically you don't stay on your toes okay you have to move you have to be to be dynamic and adapt everything along the way like like we did for example with the digital world that was not initially in the game and we sort of adapted also the game to fit that sort of backstory you may have an end goal like reaching the South Pole yeah but maybe maybe you don't because and it's not very important I think the most important think happened during the journey because it's where the science happens is where we will will actually discover new stuff and it's where I think it becomes interesting to create variations around game mechanics and what we try to do in

ranked until very late in the dev I have no idea when the game would be finished 770 cards actually very I mean very are big arbitral so it's not not really something something I defined at the start it's when a through play test under through from my own understanding I thought that the game was complete if you want so as a result of this exploration rangs is not a perfect system and it's not a perfect game I mean it's pretty imbalanced and some things don't actually make a lot of sense but that is to try an humble Trier that exploring your concepts and just make the most of it and I hope to think that what we also a reason for the success of ranked why am i spending so much time on this because I think this idea of exploration is actually not just

an interesting way to make games as a designer that's a bit selfish I think it's always about the player and in the end it's always about the players when you consider game design as an exploration you unpack your players with you and you make them part of your exploration like in spelunky some things happen in the game that are not anticipated by the by the diver designers themselves you let them find different route in your games you let them break your game and you you and they will make them connection that you didn't anticipate they will use very imagination and very critical thinking and I think we need that on the contrary when you when you attempt to make a game that supposed to be a perfect system it ok here is just generally only considers as an au-pair author of so overall game game itself like an operator defined by a demographic and a

set of behaviors like Charlie Chaplin in modern times really the only way you have to interact or to go be in to become creative with that sort of system is actually to break it and and work away so I personally think that the sweet way of designing stuff is a very strong poison of our modern society it is not just games it's a lot of stuff that goes far far beyond what games my mentor and a guy was was a philosopher and a magician South Asia giveth Seder it is the object whole objective man mechanics sort of way of thinking by that means some sort of pragmatism it's which is actually trapped in a set of values that that make it toxic okay I don't want to finish this talk on this I want to

finish this talk on the Metamorpho bed which is for me a perfect example of this sort of stuff far better than the range because with very simple mechanics like a couple of ideas like discovering the relators and the word and very simple male interactions which are basically touch and undrugged and a lot of very interesting tools to play with that he created the word that both evocative crazy mad meaningful so that's that's very interesting if you don't know that just check it out Thanks [Applause] [Applause] I hope you have a couple of minutes for questions where I'm microphone somewhere yeah yeah yeah you should you want to a

question yeah I I'm Chris try ask do you use tinder what I am sort of at is I I signed a nondisclosure agreement with my wife any other question yeah yeah that's the question I will repeat aside so the question is what other games right you think breaks itself well I think so

yeah I would say in a control way differently a spelunky I think it's very important work because it's not it's not broken but it's also a Lou allowed some sort of broken behaviors from the players and that's very interesting stuff I think yeah all right thank you [Music]