005 How Games Find Themselves

How It Starts

Games very rarely come out of a designer's brain fully formed. It usually starts with an idea that sounds cool in their head. Then they start fiddling with the idea in engine or as a paper prototype and they realize ways in which the design really shines or ways in which it doesn't play how they expected. This can lead to some small changes in the design or very large changes that make a game that looks nothing like its original concept. Two great examples of this are how Halo: Combat Evolved was originally a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game before it became a First Person Shooter (FPS) and how Overwatch was originally a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game before it became an FPS. Even though a designer might really want to make a specific game they sometimes need to listen to what the game is telling them and pivot as needed (but don't pivot too much or too late in development!).

 Halo as an RTS. (Image from 1mi​ke_oxlong1 on Reddit)

 Halo on release as an FPS. (Image from Halopedia)

W1's Initial Spark

W1 has also gone through a progression of changes as it's been further developed and we thought we'd talk about some of those changes. W1 started out from a single mechanical idea while watching gameplay from the game Heavy Bullets. The mechanical premise of Heavy Bullets is that you only have six bullets and you have to pick up those bullets after you fire them so you can fire them again. What happens to really good players who always pick up their bullets immediately after firing? It's possible those good players never fire one or two of their bullets. What if those really good players were incentivized to play all of their bullets by making the older bullets more powerful? This is what sparked the idea for W1 where your bullets get more powerful the longer you don't fire them.

W1 Finding Itself

That simple idea still had a lot of questions that needed to be answered before it was a full game though. The answers to those questions have shifted and changed throughout development, but the idea is still the same at its core.  For example, what kind of game would this mechanic become? The simplest and first answer to that question was that it would be a first person shooter where the player was a simple turret with this mechanic and they were defending an area and enemies were coming towards them. The turret idea was too simple though and eventually turned into a full first person shooter where the player could explore and move around. Continued development surfaced some play patterns and designs that made it more fun as a twin stick shooter. After some feedback from playtests and further design pushes W1 is currently more of a shoot 'em up lite style game with a top down perspective. W1 isn't as hardcore as a Touhou game and is aiming more towards games like Enter the Gungeon or Ret​​urnal. 

We're pretty confident W1 will stay in this general genre area, but other aspects to the game will definitely still change. What games do you like from this genre? Have you ever played a game from this genre?