Related Sections: Casual Interviews
The secret ingedients in Bejeweled Twist
Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield interviews PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka. It's fascinating to read some of the insight Kapalka provides into the game's design, particularly if you've played it for any length of time. What might have seemed like a minor variation on the match-3 theme is actually a carefully calculated game design.
On how Bejeweled Twist would be different if you were allowed to rotate gems counter-clockwise, instead of just clockwise:it increases the number of possible moves by a dramatic amount, so it slows down the way you play. You suddenly have a lot more potential moves any time you scan the board, so instead of playing the game in a fast kind of way, it slows you down since you have so much more to consider. You have to consider left, right, left, right. It's one of those things where, for the average player, it makes the game more difficult, even though it actually theoretically makes it easier, because you have to consider a lot more to play it.
On having a grid of squares instead of a hexagonal layout, as PopCap did in the Bookworm games:Hexes look like, I don't know, I think they give off a vibe of science, of dirty stuff, of war games, and hex paper, something about them just turns people off.
On the number of "special pieces" in the game:There used to be ice gems that you could make by forming an X. When you formed an X of gems, they'd turn into the ice gem. And when you used the ice gem, it would freeze time for a few turns, and all that stuff. It was kind of cute -- but again, along with a bunch of other things it's like "Alright, how much stuff do we need?" We took out a lot. We tried to keep it down to a reasonable level. There were lots more special power gems that we took out, and so we kept it to the basic fire and lightning.
On why PopCap doesn't make a game with an elaborate Puzzle Quest-style structure (along with an amusing instance of the interviewer inadvertently answering his own question, and possibly not even realizing it):Jason Kapalka: It's one of those things where you have to draw a line at some point and aim more at the casual audience, and so we did restrict some of those things.
Brandon Sheffield: I think it'd be good if you made one of those. Most people aren't aware that games like that have been made since 1994 -- Puzzle Quest-type games. There's a Puyo Puyo dungeon game, where you walk around on a world map and then you have random battles like in a traditional RPG, but you play Puyo Puyo.
JK: Well actually, I was aware Puyo Puyo had a lot of variants. I don't think I've played that one.
BS: It never got released in the US. And finally, something I've never considered in terms of how you have to tune a game like Bejeweled:If someone rips off Bejeweled, sometimes they'll do dumb things -- like they won't get the gravity of the gems right, so when they fall down they either fall down really fast, or really slow. It seems like a simple thing, but it could make a big difference, in terms of how the games feel. That's one of those things where it's like, "Dude, if you're going to rip off the game, rip it off right. Get those things correct."
niseca:
saw this on sci fi hawaiian wants to try...More »