Chipp Devlog: Finding a Unique Identity
As is the case with any group of game designers, we are sure to run into problems in and around the design of our games. In the case of our game, I believe the biggest problem we face is selling the identity of our game. What I mean by this, is how we differentiate our game enough from our inspiration (The Legend of Zelda), while still appealing to the same demographic. This problem has mainly arised due to the mashup nature of our game, being a mix of action RPGs and Golf.
The most important part of creating a game, is ensuring anyone will play it to begin with. There are hundreds of games competing for the player’s attention at any one time, and so a successful game needs to be one that can grab attention from just a few words. It’s one thing to convince the player to buy a game instead of playing one they already have, but it’s another thing to compete against a much larger, more anticipated product. This is often why games with a simple appeal tend to do well while games that might be great, but can’t explain what they are easily tend to fall into a niche audience. In that regard, I think Fairway really sets itself apart from its competition. To describe our game in an elevator pitch, we are essentially “Zelda meets Golf” and that easy to grasp appeal of a popular sport, mixed with the popular series immediately helps to paint an idea in the player’s head of what to expect with our game.
The problem arises, however, when the game's identity is called into question. Our game iterates on many ideas taken from successful concepts. The player controls a golf ball and solves puzzles, defeats enemies, expands their arsenal of tools, to explore a expansive overworld interlaced with themed dungeons. Because of this, it is very easy to oversimplify our game into a Zelda knockoff with a Golf gimmick. This creates a huge problem as it pits our games against a ginormous series, one often brought up as a cornerstone of gaming itself, and so that creates a lot of pressure on our team of six to one-up nintendo and their over 30 year old series. How do we convince a player that our game is just as good, if not, better than any other Zelda game.
On the flip side, if our game is described as “Golf with an RPG twist,” the emphasis is drawn away from the unique character controller and, by extension, the true lure of our game through its unique perspective. This pitch instead emphasises that our game is a Golf game with light RPG elements, and may confuse players when they actually play the game to see that the priority lies on the RPG side of things. Our playtests outright confirmed this with many players often telling us that they expected more Golf from the game and that they thought Golf itself was the core focus. In the eyes of the playtesters, simply having the player whack a golfball around and occasionally get to the end of a room under par simply wasn’t good enough.
I think the solution we reached, while not perfect, will go a long way to cementing our idea as something wholly unique from it’s source material. Firstly, we decided collectively on a firm focus and core pillars that our game would follow. The hook was never that our game
Chipp's Core Game Pillars
was Golf focused, rather, we used the sport largely as an excuse to provide the player a unique perspective on how they interact with the world. In fact, barring the par rooms and narrative, our character is largely just a ball, meaning they must roll around bash into things as the main means of interaction. This also means we can pull from one of the limitless applications of the player’s spherical shape for level mechanics. Not only can there be traditional golf courses, we can also have the player act as a pinball, basketball or even cannon ball as well. We started to instead describe our game as “a top-down dungeon crawling RPG with a Golf twist.” This puts the focus on the unique way the player interacts with the world, while outlining the world as “RPG first, Golf second.”
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Unfortunately, there is no way around comparisons made between our game and any existing IPs. This is an inevitable problem that all games, even the most successful ones face. Fortnite will always be compared directly to Apex Legends, just as Mario will always be compared to Sonic. The focus will be instead taking the existing basic Zelda formula, and putting in as many unique mechanics and settings to do things Zelda cannot. We want to distance our game as much as possible and so our inherently more absurd hook allows us to create more out of place scenarios and situations that a player is more likely to accept at face value in our game compared to Zelda. Zelda also has the disadvantage of having very concretely established lore, meaning all future games must tie in or explain things in a way that makes sense that limits the freedom of creativity of the developers. It would be unheard of for Zelda to suddenly have a modern day city as a main environment, but not so much in our game. This is a distinct disadvantage that we completely bypass by being a new IP and studio.
The can shoot with left click and swap to their ability with right click
Furthermore, Zelda items are most often used as keys to progress or unlock things. The utility of a Zelda item’s primary use is always as a means to clear an obstacle and progress and the core challenge becomes mastering the application of the player’s arsenal. For our game, however, a big draw of unlockable items is that they all influence movement itself ontop of being a key. For example, for our MVP, we want to give the player the ability to become a lightning ball and conduct electricity. This gives the player an alternative teleport ontop of their normal putt form of movement that they can use to cross gaps and ride powerlines. Another example was the idea of bombs, a staple item in the Zelda series. In our game, however, bombs would be placed in front of the player and they would need to bump into them and ricochet them at obstacles like pool in order to use them.
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The pitch diagram for Chipp's "Lightning Putter"
In conclusion, our game really needed to emphasize the hook with more concise wording, but I believe we will manage to find success if we are able to effectively make use of how the unique perspective can influence how the game is played. How will the player enter doors, how will they talk to NPCs, how will they fight, how will they use items, how will they purchase things from a shop? Everything needs to be carefully considered when dealing with a player character without any limbs. I think we took a big step in the right direction by having all the unlockable abilities and items interact directly with the way the player traverses. Our team as designers need to ensure that our game continues to use our unique character controller to the fullest to truly differentiate ourselves from Zelda and overcome inevitable comparisons.