Exercise Two Brainstorming

Exercise two is taking an existing game and adding a unique mechanic created by me, then designing a level within that game to show off the mechanic. I thought this exercise would be easier than the first but when I actually started thinking about it I soon noticed it was trickery than I thought. I had to make sure the game mechanics I selected were appropriate for the game.  For example, if I picked Resident Evil it wouldn’t be appropriate to have a mechanic which revolved around platforming as that would completely go against the rest of the game.

I had a look at some of games and mechanics from my exercise one brainstorm to see if it would trigger any ideas to which games I should look into. I wanted to pick different types of games so that mechanics I created for each would have to be exclusive to that game and not something I could apply to another title.

The Legend of Zelda was my first obvious candidate. Not so much because there is alot of variety in the tools and mechanics but because Zelda games are made up of dungeons which revolve around puzzles and enemies requiring you to use the new piece of equipment you gain in each dungeon. That alone sounded like a good match to show off a level design using my own mechanic. 

Each dungeon introduces a new piece of equipment the player must use to solve puzzles and beat the boss at the end of stage.

My second thought was the God of War franchise. The reason I thought of God of War is because the mechanics and equipment in God of War usually have dual usage. Almost every piece of equipment is used to both solve puzzles/obstacles in the environment and to bloody defeat enemies. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I’ve always liked mechanics that have one than one obvious use.

As with Zelda, I brainstormed some mechanic concepts in a God of War fashion, it was important to make sure they felt consistent with the rest of the series, the equipment being primarily combat oriented. I started by researching some mythic object/weapons from Greek mythology but it soon became apparent the series has already exhausted the most obvious/coolest Greek mythic concepts. So I looked into other mythologies to find some ideas that God of War hadn't used yet.

I tried coming up with different uses each mechanic might have besides fighting (some alot more interesting than other). My next step for this exercise is to define each of the mechanics with specific features and from there pick the one best suited to design a level around.