Tober's Nightmare (2600) - The Pumpkin Smashing Game!

[+SpiceWare]

@mickmuze - Video Game Critic has been updating his Halloween Review Special page. I let him know about Tober's

 

Quote

There's a really cool 2600 game in development that you'll want to add once it's finished:

...

 

and his response was:

 

Quote

I can't wait to play this. Looks great. ... Please let me know when these are available!

 

[mickmuze]

Thanks SpiceWare! I appreciate that

[mickmuze]

Something I’ve been thinking about and was hoping to get some opinions.

 

For a game that never ends… Is it fair to continuously increase the speed of the enemies over time to the point where it is basically humanly impossible to go any further. If the game is all about points?

 

Or should there be a limit to the enemy speed so that there is always a possibility of the player outrunning the enemy if they are skilled enough.

 

The latter sounds like the correct answer but then comes the question of where to set the speed limit, and if the player is so skilled to always outrun the enemy, should the game really be set up so that skilled player can play basically forever, racking up points, and then only gets game over from exhaustion?

 

I’m sure this has probably been discussed a ton, I’ve looked before but had a hard time finding any thoughts on the issue.

I’m currently leaning towards having the speed increase with no limits for Tober’s Nightmare for the infinite levels game mode, unless you think this is the wrong way to go and feel it is unfair. Because at some point it will become impossible to outrun the green flame and tracking enemies, though most players will probably not make it far enough to get to the “game is now impossible” point.

[vitoco]

This topic wants its own thread...

 

A game could have an end when the next increase of the difficulty would turn the level unplayable or impossible. But it could happen that you would always get the same max score or that the score could depend on some bonus points collected during the game. If there is an absolute max score, once you reach it, you are done and you might forget the game, but if there are bonus points, you might want to try again and get all that extra points in your score. Of course you could finally get another max score that includes all the available extra points.

 

An aproach for an endless game is to go back to a previous level of difficulty, in order to disturb the player's muscular memory or concentration. In one of my endless games, the game iterates between the three most difficult levels.

 

If the game gives you back some lives or power during a level or after completing it, you can disable that feature when iterating in the most difficult level(s), giving less chances to remain in that/those level(s) to the infinite.

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

2 hours ago, mickmuze said:

For a game that never ends… Is it fair to continuously increase the speed of the enemies over time to the point where it is basically humanly impossible to go any further. If the game is all about points?

 

If a game is all about points (or levels) and there's no end state planned then I don't see an issue with increasing the speed to beyond human abilities. This prevents burn out from marathon, unending sessions and expert players possibly quitting midgame after mastering the hardest level. For the casual player it won't matter much as they'll never reach those high levels where only the few will make it to so that's no problem.

 

For the competitive players, they will try to squeeze out every available point on their way up to the levels of human impossibility and then try to eek out those remaining points near the final difficult stages through luck or sheer skill.

 

Given that, I think the most important things to concentrate on are a difficulty ramp up that's fun for new players but not boring for skilled players while also maintaining a decent length of gameplay before it gets too hard for humans to play.

 

- James

[mickmuze]

I like the ideas about switching between different difficulty. I seen somewhere about game design that through a level you should aim more for a wave than just a straight line of getting more difficult, which definitely makes sense.

On 10/3/2022 at 6:41 PM, vitoco said:

If the game gives you back some lives or power during a level or after completing it, you can disable that feature when iterating in the most difficult level(s), giving less chances to remain in that/those level(s) to the infinite.

I like this thought too and did that in my first game.. I believe after floor 50 it is no longer possible to gain health or free lives, but it definitely a big challenge to get that far. However I also made a limit to the enemies speed as well. Was never sure if that was the right direction.

 

On 10/3/2022 at 10:43 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

 

If a game is all about points (or levels) and there's no end state planned then I don't see an issue with increasing the speed to beyond human abilities. This prevents burn out from marathon, unending sessions and expert players possibly quitting midgame after mastering the hardest level. For the casual player it won't matter much as they'll never reach those high levels where only the few will make it to so that's no problem.

Good points, I think I agree with you here. Would definitely want to avoid marathoning and I like the idea of reaching the human limits but still going back to push further in game to find ways of reaching the highest possible score within those limits. I think I’ll go this route with this game, in that game mode at least.

 

On 10/3/2022 at 10:43 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

Given that, I think the most important things to concentrate on are a difficulty ramp up that's fun for new players but not boring for skilled players while also maintaining a decent length of gameplay before it gets too hard for humans to play.

That’s the trick right there. The hardest part is finding that perfect balance.

 

I find when developing and testing a game, you become very skilled in it yourself, without really noticing. I think that might be why a lot of the early games were so difficult at times. Probably from developers bug testing and playing their game so much that they lose track of what the game is actually like for a new player who doesn’t yet know how to play or what to expect.