#weaselhunt

I've been working on Weasel Hunt for almost six months. It is my tenth game since starting in this industry back in 2001 but the first game with a staff of one and a six hour work week (in two hour bursts between 9 and 11pm on occasional weeknights). So, it's not moving very quickly.

Weasel Hunt is also my first foray into iOS development and so i'm learning (and having a lot of fun) as I go. Recently my focus has been on higher level game design issues and I thought that writing down some of my options and decisions might help me gain confidence in them. 

The game is a single screen, top down path drawing collection game. You control Mr and Mrs Weasel and you navigate them around the screen by drawing a path. The goal is to gather up enough baby weasels and bring them home before the timer runs out or the evil weasel hunter captures one. There are different stages with different maps and each one has various different tweakable gameplay elements that make the stage harder, longer, more frantic etc.

What I've been dwelling on lately is the question "Why keep playing?". There are lots of traditional models of engagement and progression, some of which might apply and some not.

Level Progression - you keep playing because there are more levels to play, as you complete a level you can continue from that level next time and the overall goal is to complete them all. Often this is supplemented with a "degree or success", a star system, or a bronze, silver, gold medal that provides a reason to go back and play the same level again. This is usually a very linear progression, giving the user one real path to move forward in the game at any given time.

High Score - Simple and classic progression, you always start at the start and your motivation to keep playing is to gain a higher score. This progression method is entirely reliant on player self motivation, the progression itself does not motivate or reward the player in any way. 

Objectives & Achievements - Less subject to conventions than the first two, progression is tied to completion of objectives in the game. An example simple case may be collecting coins to hit a goal, or (as used in Tiny Wings) simple unique criteria for progression such as "score X points" or "reach level A". This method can present the player with options by providing multiple objectives and allow them to choose how they want to progress at any given time.

Story - I call this out because it feels like it should be considered as a method of game progression but it seems to fall into the Level Progression bucket to me. Linear progression with defined sections, just like levels only a little fuzzier.

So, how would these progression ideas fit into Weasel Hunt? Let's look at each of them again...

Weasel Hunt has the concept of distinct levels or stages, there is a transition between them that feels like progress but the truth is that the gameplay between levels doesn't change much and to make a game of adequate length would require a lot of levels. I think it would start to feel boring fairly quickly.

Aiming for a high score is the simplest option but has never felt engaging enough for me. In every game that uses this style of progression I loathe the start from scratch approach and the better I get at the game, the more those first few levels/minutes feel like pointless "going through the motions" gameplay. I have to reject this option from a purely personal taste perspective. It would fit the game but not my play style, and i'd like to enjoy it myself.

Objectives seem to make sense for Weasel Hunt. I have numerous different attributes on any given level that could be keyed off to set goals and keep them different enough between stages that the goals remain fresh and add a new spin on gameplay.

So it feels like i'm settling on an objective based system but I've still got issues with that. If I set objectives but do not let you start from the highest stage you have completed then I suffer from that "grinding" first few stages that gets worse the better you get.

Alternatively if I let you start at the stage you left off then I need more levels and more variation to combat the repetitive nature of the levels. Also, by allowing you to start at any level you have previously completed I can no longer maintain an overall high score for the game, since the only real way to get the best possible score is to start from stage 1 and grind through all the boring levels just to get the points.

So I need a couple more things...

Stage replay-ability, can I provide a limited set of levels and have the gameplay within them change as you progress further? Adding in new gameplay elements to older levels as you progress lets me open up options for new objectives and keeps content feeling fresher for longer. 

I don't want to force users through the grinding gameplay so I need a new way to track scores. If I track a high score per level and consider your overall high score to be the sum of all your high scores then we get the best of both worlds, you can replay any level and your high score can only ever go up. This provides an incentive to replay early levels and try and get a "perfect" game without feeling like you need to get a perfect game on every subsequent level for it to feel worth the trouble.

So, this is where i'm settling and writing this has helped solidify these decisions. I will build a fixed set of levels and provide an objective list. Completing levels will unlock new levels and you can always start from any level you have completed. Completing objectives will unlock new objectives and new gameplay elements that will add new gameplay elements (and opportunities for higher score) to all levels. 

I think this will provide the user enough options on objectives that they will have a goal to shoot for every time they play (including a high score goal if they want to shoot for that) whilst avoiding the problems of forcing you through easy levels or overly repetitive levels.