3 Lessons from a Real-time, Turn-based Game | Game Design Basics

Hi, this is Mark Brown with Game Maker's Toolkit,
a series on video game design.

Games have a history of toying with time.
Like replaying the same three days in Majora's

Mask, working alongside a past version of
yourself in The Talos Principle, or stopping

time by standing still in the innovative shooter,
Superhot.

But I've been playing a quirky new sci-fi
game called Nova-111 which does something

with time that I don't think I've ever seen
done before. And not only that, the game provides

three important lessons for game designers.

So, Nova-111 is typically a turn-based game,
where you and your enemies hop from grid square

to grid square in deliberate turns.

But some elements of the game work in real-time.
Bash this gelatinous blob, for example, and

a timer will start ticking down. If you don't
defeat the gooey sphere before the timer hits

zero, it will split into two.

Here's why this is interesting. In fact, let
me show you the exact moment that made me

realise that this game had potential, and
also make a weird sort of "ah!" noise.

These beak-faced enemies only move when you
do. These stalactites work in real-time, and

will fall when disrupted. So when these two elements
are combined, I can drop the stalactite on

the enemy's head. An enemy, which is powerless to move out of the way.

That's exciting because it's not just two
systems coming together. It's two different

genres. And that's the first lesson: even
the most disparate of genres can work together.

Even something as oxymoronic as a turn-based
real-time game.

That is, if the genres complement each other
in interesting ways. So in Nova-111, you can

use elements from one genre to attack enemies
that work in the other. You can lead a turn-based

enemy into the path of a bullet that's moving
in real time, or into the blast radius of

an explosive enemy that will detonate outside
of the turn order.

But it comes at a cost: the real-time enemies
often make you act recklessly. Turn-based

games, of course, let you carefully plan your
next move, and the two or three after that

as well. Real time games are all about reacting.
These two genres tug on very different parts

of your brain, which is why I can love turn-based
strategy games, but simply can't deal with

real-time strategy games that are more complicated
than something like Plants vs Zombies.

So when you get get caught up by the Latch,
which restricts your movement and saps your

health every few seconds. Or when you walk
into a bomb or a fire that will detonate or

spread in real time, you have to throw all
that careful planning out the window and act

on instinct. Which often puts you in the middle
of a group of enemies that you now have to

fight from a unfavourable position.

And these enemy dispensers, which spit out
new foes in real time, force you to keep moving

when you might want to stop and take a breather.
This allows Nova-111 to swing from the deliberate

pacing of a game like 868-Hack, to the more manic
speed of a game like Crypt of the Necrodancer.

You too get to manipulate time in this game.
You can stop time for a few seconds and then

move around between turns, which is handy
for combat as you can push frozen enemies

around. And essential for some puzzles, as
you slip by patrolling robots.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Nova-111
is that, like Lara Croft's bra size, this

genre mash-up was the result of a programming
accident that the designers decided to keep.

Funktronic Labs's Eddie Lee told me that the
game was being made as a traditional turn-based

dungeon crawler. But then a bug crept into
the code, and an enemy started moving around

between turns. Instead of fixing the error,
the team embraced it and built an entire game

around it.

Being open to the serendipitous discoveries
of game development is lesson two: Lee says

that during creation, "you'll encounter wonderful
things that will completely change the course

of your game. It's really scary because you
can't plan for it, but also beautiful in its

own way".

Not everything will work, of course. The team
tried enemies that worked completely in real-time,

and scrapped those due to balance. And the
spacecraft also had a fuel tank which drained

in real time, but was removed because it never
gave players time to sit back and think on

their next move.

But not every decision in the game is successful. These
Blinkers, for example, leave tiny real-time

bombs when they teleport, but there's no reason
why you'd ever fly into one. They feel like

a left-over from when that draining fuel tank
was forcing you to move fast.

Plus, those oh-so enticing attacks where you
wipe out turn-based enemies with another foe's

real-time attack are disappointingly limited,
and rarely encouraged. And as we discussed

in the video on The Swindle, players must
be rewarded or forced to do something risky

and fun, or they'll do something easy and
boring.

So those environmental kills might be more
powerful, but the game's so easy that they're

not advantageous . And there are no enemies
that can only be killed with real-time attacks,

which would force you to engage with the game's
clever strategies.

And there are just too many sections in the game
that make no use of the real-time elements.

Puzzles about polarity switching buttons and
robots that block lasers which are good,

but have little to do with Nova-111's central
idea.

And without smart execution, a good idea is
just a good idea. This game sounds great in

press releases and elevator pitches, but it
doesn't stick the landing. Nova-111 is certainly

enjoyable, but it fails to capitalise on what
made it so interesting.

Call it a gimmick or call it a main mechanic
- it doesn't matter, if something is at the

beating heart of your game it needs to shine
through in every aspect. It needs to adapt

and mutate, and make players completely reinvent
the way they think. And that's lesson three.

Thanks so much for watching. You can find
all the places to buy Nova-111, if you want

to see it for yourself, in the description
below. Also, please give the episode a thumbs

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