Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto!

[Weeble]

Looks promising. I suspect this game might be more my kind of thing than Battlescape, although I'm looking forward to both.

It's still hard to tell exactly what this game involves. A robot and lots of crates, at a minimum, I suppose. You mention collecting crew keycards - I'd show caution there. I think that's one of the reasons I don't like the Resident Evil series - what's that, this door's locked? I need the copper mongoose key? Where on Earth do I find one of them? Oh, inside the haunted grandfather clock that bleeds when it chimes. How logical.

Does Mr. Robot push and/or pick up crates? Can he jump or climb? Is there a puzzle element? (Anybody played the SNES RPG Lufia II? It has some amazing block-based puzzles.) Is it dexterity based? (Dodging traps, leaping between moving platforms, etc...) Can we expect plenty of secret stuff? Does anybody feel brave enough to answer these questions at this time?

Weeble.

[Fost]

[icarus]

[starscape junkie]

My 2 copper on the subject is dont make any of the puzzles tedious ( i do like challenges ), i however hate having to do the same thing multiple times to solve a puzzle. (or going back through every puzzle ive solved to get to the newest part)

Frustration is bad, so any super hard puzzles should probably be optional(improve your puzzling rank or something)

Action is good(again, as long as its fun...not that you guys would make any other kind), as is secrets. Maybe a malfunctioning robot can give a secret hint in icarus speak .

[Fost]

[Weeble]

On the subject of keys and locked doors, my primary concern is with a certain common implementation used to make a linear game appear not to be linear. You come across a locked door at some point, but you get little or no clue as to a) why it's locked, b) where the key might be or c) what is behind the door. Then after being funnelled in the right direction for a while longer, you find the key right out of the blue.

It's very important for any non-linear game to allow the player to build up a mental model of the things he needs to achieve and how they are interdependent. You don't need to (and you probably don't want to) let him know absolutely everything ahead of time, but if you let him know nothing in advance then he'll never feel like he's got any control over the game, merely that he's wandering at random in the dark.

Of course, I couldn't say whether Mr. Robot is in any way non-linear, and so this advice may or may not have relevance. Is it just a case of complete room 1, complete room 2, complete room 3? Or will you explore from room to room, branching out, backtracking and finding different connections? If the latter, do rooms reset when you leave them? Again, these might not be issues yet decided.

[Poo Bear]

Don't focus too much on keys, currently the only reason for their existence is to partition the ship into discrete zones. They aren't really part of any puzzle (yet). Just having one room followed by another is a bit boring so instead a number of rooms are grouped into a themed mapped zone. Completing the game requires you to have completed all the zones in any order and the keys act as proof you have finished a zone.

I don't have the mentality or stamina for things like:

a) complex puzzles that take ages to solve
b) super dextrous platform sections over pits of instant death requiring 10 retries.
c) illogical puzzles requiring searching for seemingly random items in bizarre locations.
d) cheap game extension devices like "hey lets do the whole thing again backwards" (cough Halo cough).

so don't worry...

[Johnh]

*possible spoiler warning for Halo*


I actually liked the idea of returning to the Pillar of Autumn/Truth and Reconciliation (you did return to the Truth and Reconciliation to find out Captain Keyes got infected, right?). One of my biggest gripes about an RPG/FPS is that , due to linear design, you go from one town, to the next, and once you leave a town, you never come back. It's almost as if the entire object has disappeared. In Halo, returning to the Pillar of Autumn/Truth and Reconciliation reminded me that those two vessels still exist, and are important to the plot.

Or you could be talking about the various levels where your mission is to go from point A to point B, and then back to point A (except with more enemies). THOSE were annoying, but to me, realistic. It's just as hard, if not harder, to escape from the enemy base you just infiltrated.

[Fost]

Halo has to be the king of stringing out a game, and yet I fully understand why they did it - reviewers would complain in their droves if there was only ten hours of gameplay. Yet it would have been a better game if it had culled all those repeated corridor sections where you fight the flood, and the section with zig zagging corridors where you fight the ... ...other guys whos names I've forgotten...

[BluePhoenix]

[Fost]

As mentioned in other places - this isn't really a puzzle game, so randomly generating rooms would be impossible - or at least, it would be extremely difficult to make one that was any fun!

I wonder how hard it would be to make a random sokoban level creator as an addon? I suspect that would be pretty hard too, but it's an interesting, self contained programming problem. It really wouldn't reflect the rest of the game though, so I think a comprehensive level editor would be the best way to extend game life - and whether we have that depends on other factors. I'm at least hoping I'll be able to come up with some additional levels after release without having to involve the programmers.

[Gravitron]

If the game is rich enough in content, diverse enough and just very entertaining, I see no reason why it wouldn't last many long hours.
Repetitiveness is a tear done though, and I would prefer a game to end fast if it didn't had much to offer beyond its intitial start, as long as at least that part was done right.


(domo arigato) "Mr. Roboto"...Nice weeble, been listening to the Styx as of late?

[HunterXI]

[Fost]

The Covenant! Sorry - I had to play the original Halo late at night after my wife had gone to bed. Generally, if I had the volume too loud she would come downstairs and punch me; so I missed a lot of what was said!

[Jake89]

Dern! I was hoping that battlescape would be done soon... I guess not. Just for putting off battlescape, the first thing I'm going to do when I download Mr. Robot is make a ridiculusly hard level and (if possible to share them) upload it somewhere to taunt you all! Anyway, I guess a puzzler would be fun. Contrary to the general opinion of everyone else (which is: Yay! ACTION!) I actually am more excited about the puzzle part of the game. Sure action puts in thrilling points, but a trully twistedly-engenious puzzle can entertain me for DAYS. Even though I said this earlyer in the post, I would like to stress that the ability to share custom puzzles with other users would be very entertaining.