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We touched on the topic in the past, in Exploring Games from the Creator’s Perspective. The way the enemies behave, the level design, the graphics and even the sounds will all work together to reinforce the game’s core.
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You can view them as a single mechanic that is part of different game loops. In the recent Rayman series, the lums aren’t only collectibles: they often outline an ideal route to follow, or teach the players new combos, new loops they’ll need later in the level. Loops build upon one another with a parent-child relationship, stem from one another, intersect or play in parallel. All aspects of a game’s design are interconnected, and so are the various loops that compose it. It’s not just what the player does repeatedly: your core mechanics are a foundation of your design, that will influence the project’s entire lifecycle.
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It is at the heart of the experience you offer. What experience do you want to deliver? What’s unique, essential to it? The core gameplay loop is the heart of your game. People will give you a single chance to entertain them. On mobiles or on the web, if the main mechanics aren’t intuitive, the controls not polished, you’ll lose them within a minute or two. The more the player has to go through the loop, the more its quality will affect your game’s retention. We’re talking about an essential part of the game, yet that’s only a tiny part of it. Think of elements like scoring, special combos, and any mechanic that’s not necessary for the game to be enjoyable.Ģ games might have exact same core loop and feel completely different in the end. Should I walk around this enemy and avoid it, or attack it for some extra experience, even if I risk dying in the operation? Other loops will most of the time stem from or build upon it. In the rogue-like example, it builds upon the basic actions players can use to take meaningful decisions: the game’s central mechanics. Enter a new room (discover its content)Īnd start over, until you’ve reached the end of the stage.That’s what you keep doing from moment to moment.Īt the same time, the users have higher-level goals that build upon the lower-level ones. Take a rogue-like: the core gameplay loop might resemble something like walk, attack, collect. That’s run and jump in a runner, swap gems and plan in a match-3, etc. We expect the player to use them at a certain frequency and conceptually arrange them in a cycle. The core gameplay loop is comprised of some of the basic actions players can take at any point in time, the main mechanics. We’ll focus on the core gameplay loop here: the one that serves as a foundation to your game’s design. Collecting coins, beating the level, reaching and beating the end boss. They echo the player’s short, mid and long-term goals. They exist on a moment-to-moment basis, can last a few minutes, etc. Game loops also depend on the timeframe you focus on. Just like there’s a core gameplay loop, there are core economic loops that will derive from your business models ( or vice-versa), level design loops, what the player must do to beat a level and advance in the game’s main plot, etc. There are several loops that structure your projects, depending on the lenses you use. A simple premise: explore every castle until you found the princess. In other words: to exploit the core loop to its fullest, and add extra depth to the experience. They are here to surprise the player, challenge his skills and keep the experience fresh. The various enemies, bosses, and environments stem from the core mechanics. In the original Mario, this would be walking, running and jumping. It’s part of the essence of the game, something you cannot remove without fundamentally altering the experience. In short, it’s the main activities that structure the entire design and the players engage into repeatedly, in a looping sequence. At the heart of your game’s design, there are core mechanics, and the core gameplay loop.