Game design breakdown 2 - Inspiration

To the Gates of Truth » Devlog
3 years ago by The Gates of Truth (@TheGatesofTruth)
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To the Gates of Truth – Game design break down 2

Hi! So here is the second post concerning my design thinking and how I tried to approach game design in “To the Gates of Truth”. I will break down different aspects, such as narrative, mechanics, iterations, or the way I organize.

Today:

2 – Adapting or being inspired by a game?

Whenever I play a game that I love, there is a little voice in my head that tells me: wow, I wish I could make something like this, create and share such an awesome experience!

When creating and designing, there is no wrong in being inspired and taking references, we must start somewhere and build from it. But to have a reference, you must understand and apprehend it by playing, observing, and thinking. I guess we could separate two approaches (that are not exclusive) to observe games: from a player perspective and from a designer one.

 

Of course, it is not like we have physical lens to observe but it is more like how we can decompose our playful experience.

From a player perspective, I tried to get some “whole” observation of what pleased me: the controls, the mechanics, the story, the narration? Or was it a particular moment or climax? In video games, a lot of features are hidden to the player knowledge, so with this perspective you rely on feeling and “guts”.

 

From a designer perspective, I guess the observation and decomposition is a little bit more systemic, mechanical… just like some reverse engineering.

For those who don’t know, reverse engineering is trying, from a product, to deconstruct every aspect of it and understand how it was built this way.

I guess I tried to make both perspectives, as anyone does. But focusing on a particular perspective depends on the objective: if you want to “adapt” something specific, then you need to be precise when observing as a designer. If you only want to be inspired, a little bit of both is important.

But, of course, the question remains: how to be inspired without copying and making something original? That would be for another time.

Summary: I would like to see two approaches when analyzing a game in order to inspire yourself. From a player perspective (feelings, guts) or a designer one (reverse engineering). We tend to observe with both perspectives but knowing in which proportion is important.

So, what about you? Have you already tried to design a game inspired by another? Or a particular hack or mod?

Thank you for taking the time to read and see you in part 3 :D 

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The Gates of Truth3 years ago (1 edit)

I think it's relevant to put here what are the main inspirations for "To The Gates of Truth", how I see them as inspirations and tried to incorporate it in my design. 

Mechanics

I believe there are at least two main inspirations there : 

- Into the Breach, a video game by Subset games. It features a grid, procedurally generated, in which you have to defend cities by mitigating the casualties. The "fights" are much more seen as puzzles, and it's a great take on elegant game design. You can look here a discussion by the devs :

- One step from Eden, also a video game by Thomas Moon Kang which is a great mix between Slay the Spire and Megaman Battle Network Series. This last one features a grid of 3x3 for megaman and 3x3 for the enemies. It also features a deck buidling system, which is greatly infused by a roguelike drafting structure (meaning, each time you play is different, you gain card at each fights but it is procedurally generated. This ads a great replayability and makes you try out a bunch of synergies. 

- The LUMEN system, by Gila RPGs. This is a system for tactical light TTRPG, which features three ranges : Close, Near and Far. I really liked the idea and kinda build on that, with its dice mechanics. I guess, it's not that "tactical light" but it was an important base at first. 

- I've also played some tabletop games and video games that was a great starting point to see what were the mechanics and experience I did NOT want. Some of them are worth checking out, and I still have a list to test some games. But I do like :

  • Keyforge (tabletop card game) by Richard Garfield, and its take on drafting/procedurally generated decks of cards. He is the designer of Magic the Gathering, so a lot of things are interesting in it, with synergies or balancing. 
  • Nowhere prophet (video card game), did not play that long but that was interesting as positionning elements is critical. 
  • The tactical genre in video games, like Final fantasy Tactics, Fire emblem or Disgea. I haven't played a lot of those games but they do are interesting. Children of Zodiarcs blends tactical rpg and cardgame but haven't played it yet. The same goes to Ironclad Tactics, with a system that ressembles a lot to To the Gates of Truth. Another take on positionning and grid is Iris and the giant, which lead me to the second part of the inspirations. 

Lore and narration

Even though it is a TTRPG and the narration is set by the players themselves, the game has a particular structure that is aimed for a particular type of experience and narrative. The inspirations are :

- Hades (videogame) by Supergiant games. This games approches the genre of roguelike by implementing in each run a set of dicussions with the gods (npcs). That leads with a particular narration where elements of the stories are interconnected with the gameplay structure, and I tried to approach this kind of experience by having 8 different biomes with 8 different Entities. 

- Pyre, (videogame) by Supergiant games, features an interesting plot and Lore about characters that thrives for freedom. The more they advance, the more they get "illuminated" and that brings them close to being "free". I won't spoil that much neither Pyre neither the end of "To the Gates of Truth", but it really was an awesome experience. 

- Crying Suns (videogame) by AltShift is an FTL-like game which has an interesting take on dialogues, roguelike runs and narration. Haven't finished it but it definetly had a deep lore which was great. 

Also, I don't remember for which TTRPG I have read, but I like the roleplay experience where you create your character at the same time of the game experience. Even more, it is a PART of the experience itself!


Well, I could go on forever, but those are the main games and experience that were an inspiration (well, that's a lot of videogames!). 

Thanks for taking the time to read! :D

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