09-12-2010, 12:09 AM
My thinking is that many casual gamers, old and very young alike, who have gotten into the game, wouldn't have, if we hadn't had an Easy mode in the original Midnight Mansion.
I remember watching a 6-year-old piano student of mine try the game on Normal. He literally fell into almost every ditch he possibly could, anytime there was a jump of 3 tiles or more. Lessons learned: make most gaps on Easy only 2 tiles wide at most.
While this resulted in gameplay that was downright boring to me, Jacob, or Alan, it is likely the only way that casual gamers would have ever gotten ito the game.
Even giving a player infinite lives on Normal isn't the same, because while the player can repeatedly run into enemies and
What makes this difficult however is that players have come to expect *more* changes between easy/normal/hard than just making it actually easier or harder. They want more rooms. New secrets. etc. And this takes a *lot* of time. And every minute that Jacob or I are doing easy/hard changes, is time we're not spending that could be spent on additional artwork or programming features. And when it comes to other mansion designers, it's time that could be spent instead on additional mansions.
Jacob's reason for wanting to eliminate easy (and possibly hard) mansions (and just have an
But it seems the response from this thread is loud and clear: players would rather have 8 mansions, with 3 distinctly different difficulties, than 24 mansions that are all 1 difficulty (with game modes that change how many lives Jack has).
I think sticking with 3 different difficulties is the right choices, to keep attracting more casual gamers (old and young) to the game. But we are considering ALL options for MM3!
We even briefly considered removing the
Sometimes it's just good to re-evaluate decisions and make sure they're the right ones.
I remember watching a 6-year-old piano student of mine try the game on Normal. He literally fell into almost every ditch he possibly could, anytime there was a jump of 3 tiles or more. Lessons learned: make most gaps on Easy only 2 tiles wide at most.
While this resulted in gameplay that was downright boring to me, Jacob, or Alan, it is likely the only way that casual gamers would have ever gotten ito the game.
Even giving a player infinite lives on Normal isn't the same, because while the player can repeatedly run into enemies and
take them outthat way, the jumps won't get any easier. I'm thinking mansions still need to be made specifically for Easy mode.
What makes this difficult however is that players have come to expect *more* changes between easy/normal/hard than just making it actually easier or harder. They want more rooms. New secrets. etc. And this takes a *lot* of time. And every minute that Jacob or I are doing easy/hard changes, is time we're not spending that could be spent on additional artwork or programming features. And when it comes to other mansion designers, it's time that could be spent instead on additional mansions.
Jacob's reason for wanting to eliminate easy (and possibly hard) mansions (and just have an
Easy modethat gives infinite lives) is we could provide 24 mansions, instead of 8 that have 3 difficulties. Which would players rather have?
But it seems the response from this thread is loud and clear: players would rather have 8 mansions, with 3 distinctly different difficulties, than 24 mansions that are all 1 difficulty (with game modes that change how many lives Jack has).
I think sticking with 3 different difficulties is the right choices, to keep attracting more casual gamers (old and young) to the game. But we are considering ALL options for MM3!
We even briefly considered removing the
pseudo-3Dlook that Midnight Mansion has, making it more
flatlike Super Mario, which still looks very good. But after a mockup, we decided against this!
Sometimes it's just good to re-evaluate decisions and make sure they're the right ones.