Apparently ants build bridges and structures using their own living bodies as a way to optimize their foraging path. Good thing humans invented steel and math. I just discovered this ant ability this morning, but look at how much we totally ripped off mother nature! Or maybe she bought the Chapter 1 preview, we may never know!
This is a 7-day-prototype I made a while ago (my first using AS3). I didn’t have time to finish it, but thought I’d post it anyway so it doesn’t rot to death in a pile of old hard drives. There are only 2 robots, so don’t play forever looking for the last 4!
Game Design: I think this is the only game ever created while listening to Bette Midler’s version of “From a Distance” on loop for a week. It’s also one of my only games involving genocide. What is man? What is machine? What does it mean to be human? Perhaps from a distance we’re not so different from giant kill bots? Can a computer make you cry? Yes, if it has lasers.
To play: Use the mouse. Blast stuff with lasers, collect hearts, buy more stuff for better blastage. But watch out! Humans blast back after a while. click to play
I started out playtesting world of goo as soon as we had something that was minimally playable, just to see if certain ways of displaying information made sense to people. It turned out that much of what World of Goo is now we owe to playtesting.
Just sitting quietly and watching people play the game was invaluable. People tell you more with body language than they ever would with words. I saw how people’s intuition around the game mechanic worked and adjusted the game to be more in line with what I saw people trying to do. As an engineer (and I know i’m not alone in this) I’m used to solving problems more by reasoning and my own intuition than by observation, so this was a new experience for me.
I tried to distill my approach down to a few guidelines that might help other developers improve their games:
1. Use only virgins - Two playtesting sessions with two different people (one session each) will give you a lot more information than two playtesting sessions with the same person.
2. Do it in person - The vast majority of useful stuff came by observing the players. Hardly anything came out of direct verbal feedback, so if you’re not there in person, the playtest is basically worthless. Sit where you can see the player, their hands, and the screen and just watch. There’s a lot to see.
3. Shut the hell up - I start a playtest session by saying “OK, this is the game. Play for as long or as little as you want. I’m not here.” Let’s be honest, you’re not going to be there when people play your game for the first time, so back off. Not saying anything is harder than it sounds. As the developer, you want people to enjoy the game, you want them to get it, you might feel frustrated when they don’t. You might feel the urge to say “no, just do this” or “try that” or “ignore this part”, but by suffering through these urges you get to see which obstacles are good challenges and which are products of bad design (you also reach a higher level of enlightenment, but that’s another subject entirely). The point is that you, the play tester, are a scientist and if you’re interacting with the player you risk contaminating your data.
4. Ask questions - The only time I regularly break rule #3 is when I see a player trying to do something I don’t understand. Without guiding them, find out what they’re trying to do, because at that moment they are following their intuition and an understanding of intuition is the game design gold you mine out of playtesting.
5. Take notes - What you don’t write down, you’ll forget. This should be a list of one liners. When you see something ugly in the game and think to yourself “Ick, I hope they didn’t notice that”, write it down. When the player seems confused, write it down (what might they be confused about?). If they’re trying to do something you hadn’t thought of, write it down. Any thought you have as you’re observing, write it down, nothing is too trivial, you’ll filter these notes later.
6. Follow through - For a single playtest session (for World of Goo it usually lasts between 30 and 90 minutes) I get up to two pages of notes. After a session kyle and I brainstorm possible changes and additions based on the notes we have. The end result is a todo list which I usually plow through pretty quickly (or at least file in our bug DB so that we don’t lose things).
Ok, almost two weeks after the fact, time to update the blog - “Breaking NEWS!! We entered World of Goo in IGF!!!!1“. There were 173 games submitted, more than any other year, and holy crap are there some good ones. (Not to mention Edmund submitted like ten games, Petri used his magician skills to whip up a surprise, and Data and his army of cortex commanders aren’t messing around this year) It’s scary and encouraging how indie talent and capabilities seem to be accelerating non-linearly. And here I was secretly hoping everyone would forget about IGF this year and World of Goo would be the only game submitted, resulting in a courageous victory-by-default!!
We submitted “Chapter 1: The Goo Filled Hills” of (about) 5 chapters. Each chapter contains 12-15 levels tied together by a sub story arc. Even though it’s just an early demo, I always feel paranoid and self conscious when releasing stuff like this. Because it’s “not done yet”, and “omfg what if they judge it” But whatev, this has all been fun so far, and it forced us to make a bunch of those tiny lingering game decisions that we never would have gotten around to if we didn’t have a deadline. Like “What color is a level title’s font?” became “lively white on black in front of some mysteriously parting bushes”. It’s that last 10%…
It’s nice to be back and making stuff in the indie scene again. And to put a little cherry on top, I totally beat (yeah I said beat) Cave Story and am now working on the Welcome to Hell ending, so watch out Derek Yu! I swear enemies in that game make the same damage sound as the bosses in Zelda: Link’s Awakening for gb… Game’s got a lot of heart.
Here is a video from a little game we’re working on called World of Goo! All the shots (except one, you’ll know it when you see it) are captured from gameplay, and we’re using all original music straight from the game, so this should give a good idea where we’re heading. Hope you like!
[Update: Play the original “Tower of Goo” here. Keep in mind, Tower of Goo (and the unlimited version) are just small prototype “toys” that I made in a just a few days as a part of a larger rapid prototyping project, so they can be a little buggy, and not as totally sweet as World of Goo :) - Kyle]
One of the reasons I wanted to make World of Goo is because the gameplay is entirely physics based. I’m a sucker for physics / user generated / procedural / emergent / whatever systems - basically, stuff that writes itself so the developer doesn’t have to do a bloody thing and still get replayability and variation for free. But..
I’m also a sucker for adventure games. I grew up on games like Space Quest and King’s Quest and the LucasArts games. They are totally NOT physics / user generated / procedural / emergent / whatever, in fact, they are all the way on the other side of the spectrum, where game devs actually had to script every single possible interaction. The plus side was that since there was little re-use, nearly every scene and major action could be extraordinary, and the imagery iconic. And somehow (maybe because I was like 9 years old, but still even recently replaying Grim Fandango) I felt, I could go anywhere, lick anything, etc. Clever design and visual cues made me feel totally free in an otherwise entirely scripted and basically linear path. Anyway, that’s probably a whole article on interaction design, but the point is, I wish every game could be as visually iconic, artistically varied, and beautiful.
some levels from World of Goo
So my goal for World of Goo is to (hopefully) combine the best of both, where all gameplay is 100% physically simulated, and where each level is thematically extraordinary, visually iconic, and always (at least mildly) related to a story arc. There is very little asset re-use between levels, which is expensive in the sense that I have to create unique art by hand for every level, but as I’m seeing the game come together, I’m kinda happy how “beautiful” (or at least original) it is becoming. I just hope mom and dad (uh.. Sierra and LucasArts) are proud.
Anyway, I just got a piece of video capture equipment, so I’m gonna try and get some video of World of Goo online hopefully this week. Screenshots up above in the meantime.
Update: Good timing, I just found via gamesetwatch a post on the return of the adventure genre. I still don’t think the new casual versions have the heart the oldskool Sierra and LucasArts games had. Anyway, it reminded me of Johnny Rocketfingers 2 (not a casual game btw) - a dirty step in the right direction.
My just-for-fun side project Human Brain Cloud, (online game that gives you a word, you type in the first thing that comes to mind, and it builds a big network of connected words etc) has been up for almost two weeks now, and I’ve noticed some interesting trends. Quick perspective: nearly 800,000 associations have been submitted, connecting a little over 100,000 unique words (or phrases). So given that, here are some interesting stats/trends/etc:
The Top 10 Most Submitted Words List. Here are the top 10 most submitted words EVER as of right now:
Go, sex, go! Woo! If this experiment had an scientific credibility, I’d say humans were more horny than narcissistic or greedy.
Phrase Completion. I thought this would be a game just for associating words, but it looks like there is some phrase completion happening too. Some are funny. Some are heartbreaking:
“I have…”
“…no idea” (3 people)
“…a penis” (2 people)
“…crabs” (1 person)
“…failed” (1 person)
“I am a…”
“…person” (3 people)
“…badger” (2 people)
“…miscreant” (1 person)
“…hero” (1 person)
Numbers. An entire sub-cloud of NUMBERS has popped up. Try this: Start from the number 1 and see how high you can count. I got up to around 30 before the sequence broke down. I guess smallish numbers (<30) are generally seen as counting numbers, where larger numbers are seen more as quantities or have other meaning attached. ie. 1337 -> sp33k, 1984 -> Orwell, etc
Marketing Messages in the Public Consciousness, leggo my brain eggo! It is scary how certain words appear to trigger loyal marketing message recitation / product related association or whatever:
lego -> my eggo
tiger -> tony
have it -> your way
snap -> crackle pop
subway -> eat fresh
this is -> SPARTA!
(there were a bunch more I’m not remembering - anyone see any good ones?)
But we sure as hell aren’t gonna be happy about it!
“Marketing Campaign…”
“…money” (4 people)
“…evil” (3 people)
“…annoying (2 people)
Women Totally PWNd Men. This is the first game I’ve made that I think actually appeals to both women and men. If we look at this game as a battle of the sexes, women have totally dominated in terms of both quantity and especially quality of submitted words. And ok - I don’t actually KNOW who’s a boy and who’s a girl, but browsing some of the names on the leaderboards, it is possible to make some good guesses. ie. Congrats to wandergrrl for being the first person to break 1000 words submitted in a single session (and having some of the highest quality connections too)
Racism. Type in just about any racial slur you can think of, and you’re sure to find it. Even the plural spellings. I’ve gotten only one complaint - from someone who found a naughty word connected to his religion of choice - and I’m glad he alerted me to it, because it made me solidify my completely hands-off approach in letting the cloud grow and prune itself.
People do submit garbage - no question. Luckily, each word has “legitimacy points” attached to it. When a word is flagged by users, it’s legitimacy goes down. As people submit and make connections to and from a word, it’s legitimacy goes up. Racism, sexual insensitivity, etc do tend to go away on their own. I guess I’ll be highbrow here and concede that “just like in the real life Human Brain Cloud of life”, little pockets do keep bubbling up. It reprezents society!
Anyway, on that note, I’ll admit that the number one thing that surprised me right off the bat with this experiment is that people are, in general, overwhelmingly funny, friendly, articulate, and willing to play along. I don’t have a lot of restrictions in place in the game. It would have been very easy to turn Human Brain Cloud into a giant dumping grounds for spam and profanity (and of course there is some), but out of sometimes up to 10 words being submitted per second by players, almost ALL of them are high quality words and connections, firmly in the spirit of the game. So thanks, this experiment has been absolutely worth it, and my cold black heart has thawed just a little. :)
This is the first in a series of mini projects that I will be posting here. Human Brain Cloud is basically a massively multiplayer word association game where it gives you a word, and you type in the first thing that comes to mind. In this way, the brain cloud grows to become a giant network of interconnected words and phrases. The network started with just one word - “volcano“. All other words (several thousand at this point!!) have been submitted by visitors to the site. Play with it here
Making games used to be EASY back when they were small and there was nothing at stake, but now that I am making my first real live full game, it’s suddenly more difficult and taking longer than I expected. The difference is I care more and I actually think it has potential to be an extraordinary game. This “love” and extra effort, it turns out, is toxic.
Here’s the problem: I’ve noticed it’s really hard to create a subjectively judged project like a game or music or whatever of high quality if I actually care about it. If I don’t care at all, it’s really easy. What a cruel joke. The inverse relationship looks about like this scientific chart.
And it’s not just me. I think, in general, this phenomenon can be described by the following Kyle’s Theorem of Destruction #2a: As love and effort increase, the probability of self destruction approaches 1. Why does this happen? It’s not the lovin that causes suckage. Not directly anyway. The suckage, I think, comes from slipping into a subjective relationship with the project where it can be completely ripe with suck but it’s impossible to notice because hours and months of work and extraneous double checking and focus group testing have brought the project to a certain point where you really hope it’s what you wanted back with the original vision, but you aren’t really sure and can’t even tell the difference because you have stared at it for so long you don’t even know what the hell it looks like anymore.
We want to avoid this.
Ok but this is nothing new. We always hear about those art guys - when they “can’t see their painting anymore”, they look at it in a mirror to see it again with a fresh perspective. Or whatever. When I write music and I get so sucked into it I “can’t hear it anymore”, I transpose the entire composition up or down by a half step or so to hear it again with a fresh perspective. So that’s nice, but WHAT CAN WE DO FOR GAMES AND GAMEPLAY? What small easy thing can I change to totally change but not change the game so I can play it again for the first time with a fresh perspective? I think I might know of one solution, and it’s the only one I’ve found so I sure hope it works: DISTRACTION.
Oh, Hillary Clinton’s announcement video has been slammed for being calculated (not that that’s new) and over-focus-grouped in a campaign effort to present a “more likable” image .. which basically turned what was once strong and polarizing into something watery and insincere. I think I remember something similar happening sometimes to some of the projects at one of the large game companies where I possibly worked for a while.
Anyway, DISTRACTION:
When working on something, I really value a strong objective viewpoint so I can be extremely self critical and know precisely what works and what doesn’t without any stupid love blindness getting in the way. So I’m hoping that if I completely distract myself from the main project (whatever it happens to be), and move into more of just a fuck buddy relationship with it, and meanwhile get obsessed with a different project periodically for a week or even just a weekend fling, that I will avoid falling into the subjective love rut and continue to see the main project “for the first time” .. or at least as objectively as possible anyway to maximize freshness.
I’ll probably post a few of the little distraction projects, prototypes, toys, and whatever on here. We’ll see how that works.
Anyone else deal with this kinda stuff or am I a crazy little bunny? Thanks for reading, I love you.
I’m working on a small side project to learn Flash. Here’s an initial thing with some goopy bubbles that doesn’t actually do much yet. Click it to add bubbles.
I also started “working out”. After watching an entire season of America’s Next Top Model in one weekend, I decided I was not optimizing sexiness, and therefore started a brand new Totally Sexy workout routine to quickly become the sexiest game designer there ever was*.
Ok so this is a “game dev blog” in the sense that it will chronicle the making-of our very first game World of Goo and probably rant on other game design issues. But the actual purpose is a little darker - this is a tool to stay honest in two ways:
a tool to provide public accountability to make sure we don’t slip into days of fooling ourselves (myself) with thoughts like “we’re almost done for real this time, we just have a few more features left!!!1″, where we (me) actually get no work done at all for embarrassingly long spans of time.
a place to post mildly relevant side projects, toys, prototypes, and whatever. I keep finding that getting wrapped up in other stuff actually helps make the main project (ie. the big game project, writing a thesis, etc) more awesome and carefree. Maybe it’s related to the whole absence makes the heart do something thing.
Game Design: I think this is the only game ever created while listening to 
1. Use only virgins - Two playtesting sessions with two different people (one session each) will give you a lot more information than two playtesting sessions with the same person.
3. Shut the hell up - I start a playtest session by saying “OK, this is the game. Play for as long or as little as you want. I’m not here.” Let’s be honest, you’re not going to be there when people play your game for the first time, so back off. Not saying anything is harder than it sounds. As the developer, you want people to enjoy the game, you want them to get it, you might feel frustrated when they don’t. You might feel the urge to say “no, just do this” or “try that” or “ignore this part”, but by suffering through these urges you get to see which obstacles are good challenges and which are products of bad design (you also reach a higher level of enlightenment, but that’s another subject entirely). The point is that you, the play tester, are a scientist and if you’re interacting with the player you risk contaminating your data.
5. Take notes - What you don’t write down, you’ll forget. This should be a list of one liners. When you see something ugly in the game and think to yourself “Ick, I hope they didn’t notice that”, write it down. When the player seems confused, write it down (what might they be confused about?). If they’re trying to do something you hadn’t thought of, write it down. Any thought you have as you’re observing, write it down, nothing is too trivial, you’ll filter these notes later.
Ok, almost two weeks after the fact, time to update the blog - “Breaking NEWS!! We entered World of Goo in IGF!!!!1“. There were 
High Res
One of the reasons I wanted to make World of Goo is because the gameplay is entirely physics based. I’m a sucker for physics / user generated / procedural / emergent / whatever systems - basically, stuff that writes itself so the developer doesn’t have to do a bloody thing and still get replayability and variation for free. But..
My just-for-fun side project 
