Green Shinobi
Banned
In designing the perfect action game, there are several principles to keep in mind.
1) Enemies = damage sponges.
This is far and away the most important principle to keep in mind when designing an action game. Some game designers waste time endowing enemies with attributes like "defense" or "evasion." You can avoid these pitfalls by having your enemies make no attempt to avoid or block any hits, but by giving them approximately five times as many hit points. As an added bonus, the player will have become a master of the square, square, triangle or triangle, triangle, triangle button combos by the end of your game, having used them so many times. Remember that the Halo 2 Brute is the most perfect example of a videogame enemy ever created; in all things, this is what we should strive to emulate.
2) Remember the Medusa-head.
Not the special attack from our game, God of War, but the Castlevania foe. The guiding principle here is simple. When presenting the player with any sort of obstacle, it is always best to throw some wild card into the mix to annoy the player to no end. This makes overcoming said obstacle all the more satisfying! For example, at some point the player might be required to push a stone block the wrong way down a conveyor belt. The best thing to do here would obviously be to send in waves of respawning enemies at pre-set points. Why simply solve a puzzle when you can solve a puzzle with enemies?
One might also require the player to use magic to freeze an enemy in place atop a switch that opens a faraway door. The key here would be to throw in a full second's delay on the freezing spell together with making said switch impossibly small. To top it all off, the enemy should become unfrozen at the exact moment that the player is about to pass through the previously open door. If you aren't annoying the player, you aren't doing your job.
3) When in doubt, throw in another wave of respawns.
Similar to point #1, this point will save you from heaps of trouble later on. Rather than setting up intricate formations of enemies, or designing well-paced, well-thought-out encounters, one can simply set up several waves of enemies that respawn immediately after the previous wave has been defeated. This also saves you on puzzles. You don't need to make creative, mind-bending puzzles when you can just make mediocre ones, but with an infinite supply of foes to contend with while attempting to solve said puzzle. If you really want to get creative, add several areas to your game where the enemy respawns are actually infinite. However, do nothing to indicate to the player that the respawns here are infinite; it will be far better for the player to waste half of his health figuring it out for himself.
4) See the Crash Bandicoot series for the greatest modern level design
Branching paths and big open 3D areas do nothing but confuse and frustrate the player (but not in a good, Medusa's head kind of way). It is always better to make your levels completely linear to avoid confusion. The player should rarely, if ever, have to search for anything, and the way forward should always be just that: forward. Combine with respawning enemies to create levels that will make EAD weep.
5) Camera control? Fuck that.
There is absolutely no reason to allow the player to control the camera when you can do it for him. Our principles of enemy design are such that the environment should never come into play during a battle, ever. With this annoyance out of the way, the only real use for camera control would be during platforming sections, and to be honest, this has always been an overrated facet of game design. (Also, see principle #2).
1) Enemies = damage sponges.
This is far and away the most important principle to keep in mind when designing an action game. Some game designers waste time endowing enemies with attributes like "defense" or "evasion." You can avoid these pitfalls by having your enemies make no attempt to avoid or block any hits, but by giving them approximately five times as many hit points. As an added bonus, the player will have become a master of the square, square, triangle or triangle, triangle, triangle button combos by the end of your game, having used them so many times. Remember that the Halo 2 Brute is the most perfect example of a videogame enemy ever created; in all things, this is what we should strive to emulate.
2) Remember the Medusa-head.
Not the special attack from our game, God of War, but the Castlevania foe. The guiding principle here is simple. When presenting the player with any sort of obstacle, it is always best to throw some wild card into the mix to annoy the player to no end. This makes overcoming said obstacle all the more satisfying! For example, at some point the player might be required to push a stone block the wrong way down a conveyor belt. The best thing to do here would obviously be to send in waves of respawning enemies at pre-set points. Why simply solve a puzzle when you can solve a puzzle with enemies?
One might also require the player to use magic to freeze an enemy in place atop a switch that opens a faraway door. The key here would be to throw in a full second's delay on the freezing spell together with making said switch impossibly small. To top it all off, the enemy should become unfrozen at the exact moment that the player is about to pass through the previously open door. If you aren't annoying the player, you aren't doing your job.
3) When in doubt, throw in another wave of respawns.
Similar to point #1, this point will save you from heaps of trouble later on. Rather than setting up intricate formations of enemies, or designing well-paced, well-thought-out encounters, one can simply set up several waves of enemies that respawn immediately after the previous wave has been defeated. This also saves you on puzzles. You don't need to make creative, mind-bending puzzles when you can just make mediocre ones, but with an infinite supply of foes to contend with while attempting to solve said puzzle. If you really want to get creative, add several areas to your game where the enemy respawns are actually infinite. However, do nothing to indicate to the player that the respawns here are infinite; it will be far better for the player to waste half of his health figuring it out for himself.
4) See the Crash Bandicoot series for the greatest modern level design
Branching paths and big open 3D areas do nothing but confuse and frustrate the player (but not in a good, Medusa's head kind of way). It is always better to make your levels completely linear to avoid confusion. The player should rarely, if ever, have to search for anything, and the way forward should always be just that: forward. Combine with respawning enemies to create levels that will make EAD weep.
5) Camera control? Fuck that.
There is absolutely no reason to allow the player to control the camera when you can do it for him. Our principles of enemy design are such that the environment should never come into play during a battle, ever. With this annoyance out of the way, the only real use for camera control would be during platforming sections, and to be honest, this has always been an overrated facet of game design. (Also, see principle #2).
