Designing Fun Ways To Die In Island Time VR
On our two year Island Time VR release-a-versary, we are revisiting a previous conversation about the game’s development. Thanks for a great two years... stranded on an island ...talking to a crab.
How do you make failure fun? One of the key components to making Island Time VR an interesting arcade experience was crafting the difficulty ramp, cautiously nudging players to try new things as well as making dying over and over ...fun! So, we posed a few questions to our game’s designer, John Bearden, about how a designer does just that.Â
John’s worked in the industry for about 10 years, tackling level design, AI and gameplay scripting plus more for games like TUG, Star Wars Kinect and Ghostbusters The Game. His latest project at Flight School is St. Jude Hall of Heroes and he’s hard at work on our next top secret project.
Q&A:
To get started, give us a brief overview of the basic game mechanics involved in Island Time. What are players doing?Â
Island Time is all about survival; but, before being thrown into peril, players are presented with a brief story setup through the only real tutorial moment of the whole game, on their boat. During this part of the game, players are not on a timer to survive. They are able to look around them, grab and spin the wheel, and then ultimately push the throttle thus creating their survival predicament. You could almost say that the player sets up their own fate by just starting the game! This gives players an introduction to all of the controls they will encounter throughout the rest of the game: moving in a small space and grabbing items.
Once they are on the island, players are in pure discovery. They must pick up items, craft tools, find food, and watch out for any dangers. This portion of the game is all about the player finding out what they can do and what has consequences. Consequences in Island Time are severe, and this part of design is on purpose. We want the player to fail quickly so they can come back and learn from their mistakes.
At the beginning, the game mechanics are very close to real world actions (such as starting a fire and catching fish), so these mechanics benefit from players trying something familiar and seeing it work in the VR world. More complex mechanics, like crafting, still work off of the basis of VR one-to-one interactions; but, keep complexity to very few layers so players can easily discover all the necessary information they will need to succeed.
The skill curve for the game is all based around the player’s actions and learning how to manage resources. Through repeated play throughs, players adjust their tactics from what they learned the last time; and, if they play with friends, they can get help from people watching their plight or pick up some tips from seeing other players try to survive.
What did you all discover from some of the early play testing (as seen above at PAX South 2018)? Â
During early play testing, we struck on something interesting, players who were waiting their turn really enjoyed watching other people play. This is where we started to pivot the game into more of a couch co-op, “game show” style of game! It was fun for people to watch and cheer or jeer players before their turn came up and then when it was their turn, they got to show off just how much they learned. Or, more likely, how they could make new mistakes!
Taking that knowledge into account, we changed a lot of the later game moments into what we called our “Tourist Events.” These moments encourage the player to try to last longer and see more of what the island has to offer. These early play tests also brought us to an arcade style of play: trying to survive the longest. Both of these changes built upon the party game atmosphere that Island Time plays best at.
How do you suggest first time players approach playing the game?
Make mistakes! Try different things until you learn what works best for you! Especially, don’t worry about dying, it happens to everyone!
Once you get over those fears, start to make your plans, decide what you would like to do the next time you try to fix any of those mistakes you made the first time. Don’t be hasty! I’ve seen lots of players suffer from thinking it’s a race. Of course, maybe it is! Hurry, you’re going to miss that crate! Watch out for the seagull!  OMG! WHAT’S THAT!?!
If you had the chance to go back and add one new mechanic or change one of the existing ones, what would you change or add?
We never expected how much love Carl would get from players. He has really become the star of the game. I think adding some more things for Carl to do would be great.Â
If you haven’t check out Island Time VR yet, what are you waiting for? It’s available now for PlayStation VR, Oculus, Vive and Steam VR. Get to survivin’! …….and dying!Â
