On Monday, March 30th, I knew I had forgotten something. We’d spent the last two days at GlitchCon, and things had been just one pixel away from awesome. Technically, things had gone fine. Socially, well, Minneapolis devs warmed our hearts and chilled our bones (seriously, check out Moribund in that second link). Our game was chugging along, doing what it was made to do: luring people in with trademark McGregor audio, then rocking their socks with crazy weapons and giant bosses.

So what was missing? I’d like to start today with a thought I haven’t heard anywhere else. To be sure, I’m not claiming that this thought is original, but it is hard-won.

The idea is this: game makers should step away from their work for at least one week before showing it, and not for the reasons you might expect. Working up-to-the-deadline can steal away a designer’s ability to talk about their own game.

Have you ever gotten so deep into a project – so nestled into the nuts and bolts – that you lost sight of the bigger picture? Has tunnel vision ever stopped you from even explaining what the big picture is supposed to be?^[1] That was my life last weekend. Had anyone asked, I would have been able to explain exactly how we had fixed a player-spawn bug or explain why the Jellyfish Queen boss has 2400 hit points. Somehow, though, with my tight focus on balancing and bug-squashing, I could not explain why we’re so excited for Fingeance. I lost sight of what makes the game special. With that in mind, I’d like to take a moment today to set things right. What follows is the first in a series of articles answering one simple question: “Why should I care about Fingeance?”

1 – These aren’t idle rhetorical questions, by the way, I’m intensely curious about whether other people work this way.

Fingeance, the 15-Minute MMO

From the very start, Escape Industries has been intent to set itself apart. Like everyone else in game-making, we’re obsessives who can’t not make games, but we’ve placed extra pressure on ourselves to make something that isn’t just a game, but the game in its genre. As new developers, we’ll never stand toe-to-toe with established giants. The market demands instead that we build something risky, exciting, and fresh – something that gamers never knew they always wanted.

So out with it! What have we spotted that other in this crowded field have missed? Here’s the skinny:

To many, the best parts of gaming crash together in the conflux of MMO boss raids. Social cohesion. Character refinement. Masterstroke planning. Split-second skill. All are fulfilled as the boss crumples and the loot pops out. Talk to anyone in high-level World of Warcraft raiding: people spend years chasing this feeling.

We want to deliver the same feeling in fifteen minutes.

This is, of course, a tall order. If we get it right, though, we’ll have the most addicting game since Candy Crush. To deliver on that promise, we’ll need to hijack and subvert some of the basic principles of MMO play. Here are a few examples:

• Stakes – The feeling that, win-or-lose, something monumental will happen. In MMO terms, winning means long-term progression and awesome gear. Losing means a long walk back and a dissection of what went wrong.
• Cohesion – The feeling that you are an essential and irreplaceable part of a team. MMOs do this incredibly well by teaching each player to play a role, and allowing every role to offer unique contributions to the whole.
• Attachment – The feeling that what happens in-game matters because the character is a part of you. In an MMO, this is a natural result of the time you spend on your character.

Each of these concepts is big enough to deserve its own article. For now, though, we’ll use these ideas to illustrate how Fingeance will deliver a cathartic raid boss experience in 15 minutes or less.

The core concept we need to drive for is time replacement. In an MMO, players have days or weeks of game time to form a bond with their character and with their fellow players. We don’t have that luxury. Fingeance will need to pull all the tricks to establish relationships – with your character, with your allies, and with the tantalizing promise of victory – at lightning speed.

Thieving from Rogues

We’ll start by stealing elements from roguelike games. No other genre offers passionate attachment and dizzying stakes as rapidly as roguelikes. Two of our favorite games, Faster Than Light and Risk of Rain, exemplify the roguelike’s almost underhanded ability to captivate gamers and inspire playthrough after playthrough. To understand what makes these giants tick, let’s look at the elements we’ll be borrowing:

• Permadeath – When you die, your character is gone forever. Fingeance introduces this concept when you play on higher difficulties. Additionally, you’ll only lose if the whole team dies at once. Otherwise, you’ll come back.
• Unlocks – Making progress or earning achievements will let you unlock new characters and gear.
• Randomization – each time you play Fingeance, the levels and loot will be all new.

In mimicking the stakes of a top-tier boss raid, we require two elements: ante and rewards. Permadeath demands that players ante their time and effort, risking a tragic loss in the event of failure. Unlocks, on the other hand, offer a potent and permanent reward for success. Unlocking new characters, starting equipment loadout, and discoverable in-game items also allows the game to evolve as players progress.

Randomization, meanwhile, heightens the impact of the other elements. Effort-minimization strategies such as input-memorization (e.g. platformers, ex. Super Meat Boy) and cached knowledge (e.g. Chess) wither in the face of randomized circumstance.

To see the devilish power of roguelikes, consider trying out Hoplite [Android (free)] [iOS]. A playthrough is only about two minutes long, but I catch myself flinching every time my character takes a hit. Why do I have such empathy for this tiny unnamed character? Why do I care so much whether I live or die if my ante is only two minutes of time? I’d wager a large part of it springs from randomization. Because I can’t fall back on pre-planned strategies, I must remain fully mentally present, carefully guiding my soldier on his descent into hell.

If you have an android phone, try out the free version, if you are missing a phone plan to download it, check these cheap phone plan deals in Australia. Though the mute protagonist never expresses emotion, I predict you can’t help but feel a bond of urgency and purpose.

A United Will

Speaking of a bond, next week we’ll look into how Fingeance will simulate a MMO Guild’s feeling of interdependence. We’ll look at how various characters and items work together to turn four players into a raiding machine, far greater than the sum of their parts.^[2]

2 – I feel as though this is a pun we’ll be using a lot in coming days.

Extra: Notes from GlitchCon 2015

Ahhh. Welcome from the other side of GlitchCon. It was a true delight to meet several of you, to hear what made you excited about our game. We also heard what made you apprehensive about Fingeance, what confused you, and what you can do without.

I love the Minnesota gaming community. First, they’re incredibly nice. It goes with the territory. Minnesota has that reputation, and delivers. However, a lot of communities skate by on being nice. Minnesota gaming has more than that. Here, people are incredibly honest, and perhaps a pinch competitive. In two days, we learned more about what we were doing wrong than in two months of prep leading up to it. Better, people showed us – in an incredibly detailed way – how to fix it, to turn those blunders into little moments of awesome. In particular, I need to thank Matthew Gravelle of Graveck and Stephen Guy, professor at the University of Minnsota, for giving me three hours between them of insight on graphics, code, and design theory.

I love that, in this community, it seems as though those that succeed aren’t those who miser away every second of time on their own projects, but are those who are most generous.

Thanks, Glitch.