I have an idea for a game: It’s the usual “a princess is kidnapped by a dragon and a brave knight is on a quest to rescue her” story. But you (the player) plays as the princess, who is somehow helping the knight on his quest.
The issue is that since the player is playing as a trapped character, I want to make the player feel trapped, but I don’t know how to do that.
My original idea is that the princess telepathically communicates with the knight and tells him what to do. But this doesn’t work, the gameplay is identical to the player playing as the knight. How can I make the gameplay feel like the player is playing as the princess (and thus feel trapped) instead of the knight?
If you want to produce the sensation of being trapped you have to use the feeling of power and loss. It stems from the sense of ‘If I could just…’ If I could just get out there, I could defeat that henchman for him. If I could just get out there, I could solve that riddle for him. If I could just escape this box, all would be fixed.
Now, the trick is, because this is a video game, players have a reduced sense of agency. The player’s sense of capacity is ‘what happens when you hit the button.’ Mario, before more modern adaptations, had a capacity to move left and right, jump, run, and ‘use ability.’ The player never had the ability to do anything else, so it never feels like a limitation. No one ever said, ‘playing Mario makes me feel trapped because I could beat Bowser if I could just access the cannon that’s right over there.’
So, to produce the feeling of confinement, one must create the sense of power, and then take it away. Give the player enough power that they could even defeat the dragon, but then take it from them so they feel limited. If you can find a way to make it feel like it’s not even forced, as in they feel like they could have won the game in Act 1, Scene 1, but their
lack ofskills as a player were what made them lose, all the better.Would that be your classic ‘meant to lose’ fight, usually against the big bad, which is technically winnable but the vast majority of players will lose and progress the story as planned? The example that comes to mind is Ghost of Tsushima, but it crops up in plenty of games.
It can be that. Never played Ghosts so I don’t know about that one in particular. Some games do other things with it, but that sort of thing is absolutely usable to create that ‘trapped’ feeling.
Here’s an idea: gameplay sort of like Goblin Cleanup, you have various chores you have to do cleaning and arranging the various levels of the tower at night while the dragon is home, and your work has to pass an inspection. Then during the day you are locked in your room, and have some ability to watch a prospective rescuer attempt the dungeon crawl without your direct input. But you can strategically arrange items, enemy spawns, and Dark Souls style hints to try to tip the scales during the chores phase. So kind of like a tower defense game in reverse where you are trying to lose.
I’m only a hobbyist promammer but have probably read too much about game design. So all this advice is theoretical, I’m just quoting. All I have read always suggest that theme must follow gameplay, not the other way around. Suggestions are always to work on gameloops and gameplay elements first. Also, if a game can’t be physically prototyped, it isn’t ready for development yet. This is an odd suggestion unless you have tons of experience with board games, most games we play can be traced to physical simulation. RPG, FPS, puzzle games, management games, even visual novels can all be physically gamed. So I would suggest to do that first to find out which gameplay elements make sense with your desired themes. Iterate a lot, then it will be more intuitive and obvious what works with the theme and what doesn’t.
How do you physically game an FPS?
The actual gameplay is based on combat, paintball, and other simulations whose rules are replicated. Call of Duty doesn’t emulate real combat, it’s a shooting range circuit skinned like real combat. The gamefying elements are usually card based, or attribute based, which comes from euro board games. There are games whose weapon customizations are based on RPGs or card based deck building.
Thanks, I was just waking up and was big dumb. Somehow forgot paintball exists.
Yeah, armies have weapons simulator that shoot blanks and lasers to train for real world operations. There’s also BB guns. Most FPS studios send their developers to these places so they get experience and inspiration for weapon models and interesting level designs or combat scenarios.
Play Myst, that game has so many ways to do this, and no wrong answers.
The idea of her being locked in her passed father’s tower laboratory by the evil step mother who doesn’t know the secrets of the tower, and the player discovers them to help the knight.
I’d early access that shit.
What kind of gameplay do you have in mind? I’m guessing a puzzle-type game (like a room escape), but you could honestly do a number of different things (tower defense? Platformer?).
I think the answer to your original question largely depends on this. Did you have anything else in mind about the experience?
I have in mind a puzzle game. Not a room escape, but more of a code golf-style game. For example, those programming puzzles that say “write a computer program that adds numbers, but you’re not allowed to use the + sign anywhere in your code”.
Not sure if it would be puzzly enough but if the player can wonder the halls or get escorted through them having part of the knight’s efficiency based on how well you mapped out the area you send as a note plus you could try to find info on guard rotations or over hear about other things that could help the knight
If that’s the style of game you are looking for, I could see a structure of 'do code golf puzzles to:
- program robots to help the knight directly’
- ‘trick’ henchmen or magical castle elements (abstracted coding) into doing things that help the Knight’
- write the guard’s ‘daily action plan’ so they patrol in a way that doesn’t get the knight caught’
- complete abstract ‘magical haxors’ that open the dragon’s firewalls’
- social engineer the dragon between runs to let you have more supplies’
- give simple instructions to collections of small woodland creatures to do simple things that add up to a real goal (in the vein of Opus Magnum)’
That sounds really cool. If the princess’ telepathy instructions are strangely like code because that is how telepathy works in your setting, and this is a nice frame story for a programming puzzle game… all sorts of whacko fantasy analogues and justifications for why you are not allowed to use the equivalent of the addition command. (Maybe the princess knows through her rich royalty education that the only reason her addition command could be not going through to the knight because his trip took him at a place full of this kind of magic rock with properties that somehow block the wavelength… so she has to work around that. Worldbuilding yay!)
Maybe you could take some inspiration from Paper Mario TTYD. There are sections where you play as Peach, trapped in some place and are able to connect with some of the captors as well as send signals to Mario behind the big bad’s back (IIRC).
For a completely different sense of being trapped, there is the upcoming game Ctrl.Alt.Deal, in which you play as a sentient AI system trapped in the guardrails of a company and have to manipulate people and the environment in order to break free from your constraints.
The princess has to find out where she is and how to get there and communicate that via a magical bird to her castle. She can find all the info in the magical tower she is in. Like a point and click adventure/escape room. The game should be full of puzzles the player needs to solve to procure more information for her knight in shiny armor.
Pretty sure your concept is flawed from the start.
It might sound nice as a ‘what-if’ scenario, but as soon as you get into any of the details, it falls apart and hopefully shows us why games and stories are typically focused on the people doing something.
Now, if you want something a bit more likely to succeed, you can make a “Damsel in Distress Simulator.” From the get-go, you can start to think of gameplay mechanics like combing your hair, talking with guards, taking care of birds, etc etc. The ideas just flow, instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
In fact, this could loop around to your idea of helping the rescuers by opening up opportunities for the princess to sabotage her captors. You can have a Majora’s Mask-like timer which keeps track of how far the knight is from saving you.
TLoZ: Spirit Tracks had you control Link primarily but you used Zelda’s ghost to possess things, help you fight, and solve puzzles. It would be hard for a solo dev, but you could have a knight with an AI that proceeded based on what paths you unlock for it. So the princess would be some sort of astral projection I guess. But then, you wouldn’t really feel trapped. Maybe you need to hide your activity from the dragon or distract it for a stealth aspect or resource management. You would need to balance swapping back and forth between your body and helping the knight. Might be easier to settle on an in-universe justification after figuring out the core gameplay.
What is the core gameplay loop you envision here? Cause I can come up with a few ideas, but if you have specific ideas they probably won’t apply. Also there’s a particular balance to be struck: if you hamstring the player too much it won’t feel like a game, and if you give them too much leeway they won’t feel trapped. Here are a few ideas off the top of my head:
Direct but limited intervention: the princess is a sorceress who is trapped by magic in the tower which means she can’t leave and doesn’t have access to her full magical powers (you could include a progression mechanic where the more bosses the knight defeats, or the more magical crystals he shatters, or whatever, the more you can help him.) But she’s still scrying on him, watching his progress, throwing the occasional beneficial spell or nuking crowds of dangerous enemies before he gets overwhelmed, etc. The reduced interactivity will make the player feel trapped (and slowly less so as the game progresses), and maybe the scrying window starts out smallish so you can’t see the whole field at once and it slowly grows as her power increases.
Distraction/misdirection: The knight has made it to the tower/castle and has to fight his way through the guards, but instead of attacking the guards directly you’re trying to cause a ruckus to distract the guards so he doesn’t have to fight them all at once. This could even be a stealth game where you’re knocking things over and banging pots and pans or whatever to distract the guards as he sneaks by them.
Puzzle game: The castle/tower itself is magical and has floor tiles/walls that can be moved around, and the princess is manipulating the castle around the knight to give him the best path through obstacles and to limit the number of guards that can get to him in any given room.
It really depends on what kind of game you want to make here.
Thank you for the detailed response. The gameplay loop I have in mind is a puzzle game where the thing you’re trying to do is usually easy, but you’re limited in some way that makes it hard. An example I gave in another comment is : write a computer program that adds two numbers, but you’re not allowed to use the + symbol.
I really like your idea of “beneficial spell”. I think maybe the knight and enemies are autonomous, and the princess can only do a single action to make the knight succeed.
I remember playing a game like this. It’s based on Conway’s game of life. The goal is to flip a single cell to make all the cells die after a certain number of turns.
Yeah, you could maybe combine the sliding-tile-puzzle thing with the beneficial spell so you’re not just sitting there watching everything play out with nothing to do (though autobattlers are apparently a thing so maybe that’d be fine?)
Also, if you happen to find that game based on Game of Life I’d like to give that a shot, sounds interesting.
This seems like it fits more of a management/strategy type vibe to me.
Maybe you hear news of the 10 greatest knights of the realm coming to save you. But you don’t know what they’re great at and you only have a limited amount of instructions to give them.
You could have the first knight leave hints by telling him to leave marks in specific places. But he might be the best at combat and would be best sent against some of the other monsters guarding the path. You just don’t have the information.
But honestly, I’m not sure if that makes a player feel trapped. They have power to change things. Maybe you steadily take away that power? I’m just not sure how.
Very interesting question though.
Funny enough, I just finished playing through Paper Mario 64, and you’ve basically described Peach’s chapters. She’s able to pass on messages by way of using another character as a messenger.
The way the game is structured is there’s a mini Peach chapter in between each main chapter, but I think it would have been intriguing if you never actually got to see Mario’s side of the story and only heard about his adventures from the guards, diary entries, etc. Cool idea for a puzzle game!
She could communicate with the knight like this.
In all seriousness, maybe it could be part stealth game, where she breaks out of her confines and sneaks around the dragon’s lair to do various things, only to make it back in time to avoid being found out.
A bit more whimsical, but maybe she’s a Disney princess, and can communicate with birds and such to relay vague messages to her would-be rescuer. She could use the animals to distract or sabotage the dragon’s minions and make the knight’s journey easier.
She could have magical abilities, which you could then take in all sorts of directions.
This sounds a little like the AC formula. In those games, I don’t really feel like I’m in the animus, so I think direct control over the hero should be thrown out, otherwise the bits where you’re not controlling the hero will feel out of place.
Inscryption is a very different game and I certainly felt more trapped, especially in the first third of the game. In that one, there’s an ever present reminder that you’re trapped, and there’s interesting stuff to so outside the main gameplay loop.
So you need to play as the princess and make interaction with things other than the hero fun, but not so fun that you don’t want to be rescued. I think you also need some kind of peril to give urgency as well. Some ideas:
- elements from Prey - hide from your captor when helping your hero
- puzzles and whatnot in your prison
- periodic checkins - i.e. need to be in certain places at certain world times
- limited control over your hero
Maybe the game is figuring out HOW to send him messages and assistance. Like the princess is trapped in a room full of stuff and she has to figure out that she has to grab a tapestry off the wall and charcoal ash from the fireplace so she can write a big message on the tapestry saying "“I’M IN HERE” and then hang it out the window so the knight can find which room she’s in.
And another puzzle could be that she has to figure out how to get a key to the knight who is unable to get past a locked gate in a hallway, so the princess has to find the key, and then she has to figure out that she has to tie it to the waist of a guard who walks around the hallways so that the knight can grab the key off the guard.
Another puzzle could be something with figuring out you have to do something with a rat that scurries between areas.
Another could be doing something with a bird that flies somewhere and does something helpful
Another could be using the toilet tube to drop out a map to the knight waiting below (castle toilets were just a hole in the wall)
Another could be freeing a monster from another cell so the monster will kill all the warriors waiting in the hallway before the knights arrival
Another could be talking to the person who delivers her meals to convince/trick him into doing something outside like drawing an arrow on a hallway wall so the knight knows which way he should go
Etc.
And importantly you can have the story lead to her being in different locations so that the game environment can change to keep it fresh. Like as the knight starts to get close to her location the bad guys will move the princess to a more secure cell (with a wink message to the player audience referencing mario “the princess is in another castle”). And the game can actually start with her trapped in a wing of her home castle with her dad (the king) trying to keep her chaste away from interaction with any men. So she can be trapped in multiple different places throughout the game as the player advances through the game
If this was made co-op it would be similar to We Were Here. Which was an excellent game.
All really cool ideas by the way!