There once was a Hobbit…

I’m trapped in my hotel room in Las Vegas right now. My wife and kids are here for a dance conference. This laptop and hotel desk isn’t well suited to heavy game dev, so this week I switched tasks from programming the Resource spells to what I can do well from a hotel: Work on the core game loops of the game.

Eric Barone spent about 4 years making Stardew Valley. Most of us will agree: he did a good job.

One of the challenges he faced was becoming a better pixel artist by the end of year four than he was day one. That meant having to go back and re-art things he had already finished.

Over the years I have been working on Archmage Rises, I’d like to think I have grown as a developer and designer. I’ve been able to work on several titles, each very different from this one. I’ve worked with full time AAA designers, trained new designers, and put together a university course on game design. But most importantly, I’ve been able to converse with you the fans about deep design issues. Some of them have been monster long posts, but I appreciate and grow from the detailed feedback.

Taking all I’ve done and learned I’m going to finally codify the core game loop of Archmage Rises. What is it about? What makes it fun? Why am I playing it?

Many who worked with me on this will say, “It’s about time!”

Think of it Like a Strategy Board Game

While it looks and plays like an RPG, it’s actually a strategy management game under the hood.

It was a breakthrough to think of it as managing a series of Resources in “interesting ways”. You can think of any game this way, including the original Doom. It helped clarify some things I have struggled with for years, drop some things I shouldn’t have done, and simplify some things I over complicated.

I’ve spent 3 days straight going through every aspect to pull it into a (hopefully) cohesive whole. It’s going to take me 4 articles to explain it all: this week the overview, then one week on each core section. I’m excited to share it with you!

“What am I managing?”

Archmage Rises is about living the full life of a mage, understood through a Triad of Triads.

Self

Being a Human.

Health
Fatigue
Wellbeing

Craft

Being a Mage. (Craft as in excellence in a profession, not as in crafting an iron pot)

Spells
Experience Points (XP)
Tower

Realm

Being part of a Fantasy World

Relationships
Possessions
Legacy

Two Special Resources

Two critical resources sit outside of the triads: Time and Gold. Time is the fundamental resource of every game action. Gold is an exchange mechanism; for instance, you turn time into gold, then gold into a Tower room.

With this framework, I can now look at every action (Verb) in the game through the lens of “What Resources does it cost? What Resources does it provide?” And even more in depth, “What is scarce? What is a competing choice?” Because this is where the fun really lies: I want to do A and B, but I can only do one (for now), so I have to pick. Without competing priorities, no “Interesting Choices”.

It started to reveal there were a number of design dead ends:

Resources that rarely went up - not useful
Resources that only went up (no sinks)
Resources that couldn’t really be spent
Resources that only did one thing, or nothing at all!

This then allowed me to do something I came across years ago from a designer friend: Create Chen Diagrams (Jeff Chen of Activision, not Chen ER diagrams). I can map the inputs and outputs of an action and see what is over used, under used. What is OK and what needs attention.

Here is a terrible looking Work in Progress that shouldn’t be shown publicly, so just keep it to yourself m’kay?

I’m still working through all the verbs. There are a lot of them!

Until we Meet Again…

This suffices for an overview. Next time I’ll go deeper into the design on Self.

If you are a history buff like me, Audible has two of Ian Mortimer’s “Time Traveller’s Guide to…” books for free until Oct 21! I enjoyed Elizabethan England and am now listening to Regency England. Enjoy!