About easiness of games/depth in gameplay/noncombat gameplay

Hey there, some of you might know "The escapist", possible known much for zeropunctuation's game reviews (wee, fun). But through more browsing there last night I found two rather interesting videos on the topics mentioned in this thread's title, and it made me think of Nifflas' games for reasons you might be able to figure out on your own. sooo...just thought I'd share.

Easy Games=Good/Bad? Why?

Games without fighting?!? How can that be!

Cool video's

Thanks for posting.

Amazing videos Paula, you hooked me to this series now! ^_^ I've watched them until 2am last night, and still haven't finished yet... great stuff!

I can see how the non-combat stuff relates to Nifflas' games, but not sure about the first one, which talks about how difficulty is not so much about difficult execution, but about more choices to tackle a problem (depth). Now, I haven't played all of Nifflas' games, but the ones I have, those had only one way of tackling a given obstacle. Any difficult moment I had was either due to hard platforming, or hard puzzles (ie. execution).


On the somewhat-related subject of Nifflas and non-violent games: I wonder what everyone thinks about Knytt Stories and violence. Is a defenseless non-combative main character enough to call a game non-violent when her world is full of creatures whose sole purpose seems to be to kill her? In one adventure, Juni can be skewered, shot, incinerated, electrocuted or mauled to death, and then I didn't even mention the numerous objects that can crush her or slice her to pieces. Just some thoughts...

Now I gonna go back and watch the rest of the series. Thanks, Paula! ^_^

SiamJai, you really should play Within a Deep Forest. You'll retract your statement.

I've played it a long while ago, but ragequit after the nth failure on a (to me) particularly challenging timed puzzle and haven't touched it ever since.  Maybe I'll give it another go sometime.

timed puzzle?

There are only 2 puzzles I can think of that are time based. One is the minecart race and the other is in Dr. Cliché's lab.

It was one with an internal timer: after activating a mechanism in a... tower, maybe? there was a limited time to maneuver the ball through three gates before they close, or something like that. It's been a while.

So, the different balls in WaDF give multiple viable choices to tackle obstacles?

Ah, the tower one, which is semi-timer based. I say semi, because the same timer also opens the gate again. But beating it is pretty simple if you look at a youtube speedrun video.

nice, I can use his videos to kill time. They're so interesting!

Interesting. The second video actually made me think about Morrowind with that "persuaded" bar or whatever they called it. There were many other non-combat things. I remember I hated most of them, all that alchemy, tricky skills training, merchants with limited money etc.

I can see how the non-combat stuff relates to Nifflas' games, but not sure about the first one, which talks about how difficulty is not so much about difficult execution, but about more choices to tackle a problem (depth). Now, I haven't played all of Nifflas' games, but the ones I have, those had only one way of tackling a given obstacle. Any difficult moment I had was either due to hard platforming, or hard puzzles (ie. execution).

In Night Sky some levels can be solved in multiple ways. In KS it's quite common in challenging levels that you should find the better way to do each challenge and not just rely on perfect timing. I also think that having choices doesn't necessarily mean that there must be multiple right choices.

On the somewhat-related subject of Nifflas and non-violent games: I wonder what everyone thinks about Knytt Stories and violence. Is a defenseless non-combative main character enough to call a game non-violent when her world is full of creatures whose sole purpose seems to be to kill her? In one adventure, Juni can be skewered, shot, incinerated, electrocuted or mauled to death, and then I didn't even mention the numerous objects that can crush her or slice her to pieces. Just some thoughts...

Yes, it would be cool to see Juni die correspondingly, like in "N" game

The real problem with multiple ways of taking on problems is that they usually have to be put there by the game designers. Therefore, if a game designer didn't think of using something to solve a certain problem a certain way, you often won't be able to do it, although of course there are a multitude of exceptions.

Emergent gameplay, a method of giving multiple methods to solve a problem, seems to be becoming more prevalent, though. I've seen a lot of multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead that either have players set up the challenges themselves or randomize them so they're always different.

But it seems that one caveat of using emergent gameplay to create problems with multiple solutions is that sometimes there's no solution. Maybe there isn't a good way to take out that sentry. Maybe you can't dodge that Charger. Maybe your only choice is of how you want to lose. But then again, that's realistic. You're never guaranteed that a problem has a solution in life, and the idea that maybe you're going up against something you really can't beat gives a much greater sense of accomplishment when you do beat it.

ooh, another interesting, perhaps-related video: Good Tutorials

Interesting video. Coincidentally this Sunday I made a tutorial for ball mode of KS Ex. Now only winning screens and finishing new KS Ex version are left.