Hi all! So, for the past few months I’ve been working on a 3D platformer. It’s actually been coming along really well despite a few challenges and hiccups. The platforming is fun, the player metrics feels just right and I know I’ve hit the head on the nail because I personally cannot stop platforming everywhere. This game is also a puzzle platformer where the player would also have a small array of abilities or the use of one abilities in a variety of ways to platform and solve puzzles as well as defeat enemies. The problem is that I cannot seem to find a mechanic that is as fun to use as the platforming. I’ve tried many methods like combining two genres to make something new, or putting a spin on a mechanic from another game and iterating, but nothing seems to work.
I guess I’m asking for advice on how do you guys come up with that fun, addictive game mechanic? I’m sure it’s hard to give any not knowing what my game is about or how it plays, but I’m asking generally how do you come up with mechanics? Is there a better way I should go about this?
If I was making a platformer game and I wanted to create some new mechanics with puzzles I would think about having the platforms or some of them at least to be assembled by the player to achieve something in the game and allowing many types of combos with platforms made of many pieces each with or without some unique feature and/or switches… or powerups and so on. The combined platforms could or could not morph into another type depending on how they got assembled. Wrong combos could make the game either harder to complete or even just impossible then in that case there should be a way to have the player get out of a dead end, that could be easy or not for the player… unless you wanted the game to end with a game over in such a case.
Just thinking about that… Anything you didn’t already think about there?
Naturally, platforming manipulation was one of the first abilities I began to work on, especially since I was able to easily tie in that mechanic with the game’s story. The first iteration was making platforms appear if inside the radius but that got old really quickly, seeing as all you had to do was hold down a button to make them appear and release to make them disappear.
The second iteration was carrying a cube that warps into a platform when inside a radius, and you’ll use that cube for a lot of platforming. The issue with this was that the player would have to stop and hold down a button inside a radius to see what the cube will warp into (could be a platform, could be a wall, could be nearly anything). If the player was doing an air combo or being launched into the air by something else and was expected to use the cube, there was no way to effectively communicate to the player in time that this cube will warp into what they needed without trial and error, unless they were still, which ruined the momentum of the platforming.
Third iteration was something like The Dweller’s Mask from A Hat In Time, which wasn’t fun (and my least favorite hat in the game btw)
The fourth had promise for puzzles, but not fun, where the player can grab a platform and place it a certain points in the world, and depending on where it’s placed, it’ll change to a fixed size that may or may not fit the player’s platforming needs. Again, a trial and error mechanic…
@cooper37 Play you some of the good puzzle platformer games. Deadlight, Braid, Unravel, little nightmares, omno, and I seen someone here was working on a title warriorb which looked awesome. omno has a bunch of special platforms that are unique.
I played Little Nightmares which I loved the aesthetic of it, and I’ve also been keeping an eye out for Omno for some time now. I’d figure movable platforms in a 3D platformer is a must, that’s why I’ve been thinking of doing not only this but figuring out how to give the player control over it in a fun, simple, and quick way, almost like how Mario uses his hat as a platform as well as many other things in Odyssey.
Actually, the first mechanic I wanted to use was to move certain objects from another level that will effect the current level. For instance, lets say the player is on the ground and needs to reach Platform A and needs another platform to get there. The player sees that there’s an opportunity to move Platform B. So, the player will switch to the level where Platform B is, move platform B in it’s spot, switch to the original level, then use Platform B to reach Platform A. After some testing, I got some of it to work using Persistent levels, but ran into the issue of the Player existing between both levels as well, as he’s receiving lighting from both levels. Is there anything that’ll help with cross level communication?