A few years ago, I was part of the Dare to be Digital competition, in which students are locked in a room for 8 weeks and told to make a game.

We based our game on one mechanic - a gun that could give objects magnetic charge. Shoot one robot with positive charge, and another with negative charge and they'd swoop towards each other and explode in the middle. some posters from the game that explain the gameplay and a screenshot

We decided it was to be a first-person action-puzzle game, and began the design process. Now, after early testing, it turned out solving puzzles in three dimensions is difficult and confusing. It needs to be extremely clear what you can interact with and how. In game terms this means that the non-interactable game environment has to be fairly nondescript, and the interesting stuff has to stand out. In Portal, this meant pristine lab environments, color coding the portals, drawing lines from buttons to doors, and so on. It's a real abstraction of an environment to suit the gameplay, and it's extremely functional.

When we came to develop our visual style, we realised that the 1950s aesthetic we were planned needed to be scaled back. There's no room for potted plants, secretaries desks and typewriters in the areas where the physical gameplay is occurring (although, like portal 2, you can put them in areas without puzzles), and when gameplay gets serious, you can't have distracting colours and patterns covering the walls. We decided that if a static object was to be magnetizable, it'd be bright yellow and chrome. These objects needed to be everywhere, so they became the fans and vents of the ventilation system. Part of the gameplay involved combining objects of the same size to make a bigger object, so these sizes were also colour coded (small = purple, medium = green, large = orange).

We also found that our expansive multi-stage puzzles fell apart in practise unless they were rigidly compartmentalized. Thus, we started putting in doors that blocked progress until each puzzle section was completed. The environment needed to become arbitrary, homogenous, it was the only way that these odd environment elements made sense. Where portal had decided on a famously-meta interpretation of a lab environment, we went for a factory on security lockdown, and hoped the player would suspend their disbelief.

The moral of the story is - by the end of the day we had something that on a surface level shared many similarities to Portal, despite arriving at each design decision from first principles. It's a testament to the design of their game. To share a familiar quote "Perfection in design is not achieved when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove." and that's why Portal 1 is held in such high esteem.

When we were nearing the end of our development, we realised the similarities of our game, and had to make a strange decision. Would we take steps to distance ourselves from Portal, knowing that it meant taking the 'wrong' decision in gameplay terms? We seriously considered moving the game to 3rd-person even though it would make it harder to solve some of the puzzles. The magnetic charge was shown by objects glowing red or blue, as that's what we and players expected - but portal had blue and orange portals. Should we change it to glowing white and black? We decided not to, and I'm glad we didn't, and although we went on to win the audience vote, we perhaps deservedly had our share of criticism for the similarities.

In conclusion, I'd defend the developer of this game, because a lot of the re-trodden ground is likely done so because it is the 'right' choice in response to a gameplay problem. There may be creative solutions out there to avoid similarities, and perhaps it's worth looking for them, of course. It's certainly the case that producing a first-person action puzzler funnels you down a certain path, where the similarities are much more peculiar than the similarities when making a Gears/CoD clone.

I also bristle at your suggestion, Zwiffle, that gameplay is "untouched" when the Portal developer swapped out the core mechanic. You have to design completely new gameplay, and a completely new set of puzzles! It's not easy to create a satisfying puzzle dynamic with a nice difficulty curve in the FPS environment, and if she succeeds in making a compelling game with her new mechanic, then it wasn't easy, it's a great achievement. 

thanks for posting that, starbuck. i love reading about the design process like that. very interesting! 

You have to design completely new gameplay, and a completely new set of puzzles!

That's kind of what I'm getting at. 

you misunderstand me - I just don't like the reaction that this stuff is there because of easiness or laziness. I'm saying that regardless, she STILL HAS TO create a whole game's worth of puzzles, with a difficulty arc and all that hard stuff. I don't disagree that she's borrowing from her back-catalogue of mechanics, but as my lengthy novel asserted, some of these tropes are very natural and useful for this form of game, and a lot of the design decisions seem almost inevitable. 

and thanks necros! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxaaNosNa_Q 

aka the new cs from valve going into beta somewhen

http://uk.ign.com/videos/2011/08/25/counter-strike-global-offensive-video-preview?show=HD 

Actually Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a very good remake of one of the absolutely best ever classic games of all time, the original Tomb Raider.

It features modern FPS-like controls and flawlessly working 3rd person camera, very nimble platforming, the classic 90s feeling of being isolated in another world, uncompromising difficulty, and at times awe inspiring level design, all the while respecting the original and its mechanics. This is why you have oldschool puzzles, traps and key finding, and it's just doing its job as a remake.

The grappling hook is an absolutely awesome addition to the game. It creates entirely new challenges for the player and adds variation to old ones. And this is what Tomb Raider is about, actually: brutal, murderous challenges, acrobatics and traps. It was too hard? It is supposed to be hard. TRA will absolutely make you want to smash your monitor at times. In this, it is true to the originals, which is its damn job as a remake.

Lara moves slowly? Perhaps, but it's not really an FPS, and the enemies are very fast, especially lions, panthers and the like, and they are trying to grab and tackle you. Yes, lions run faster than Lara. This is simply part of the challenge. Once you get the controls down, combat is actually very fun. You do have to use the grapple in some boss fights, this is a staple carried over from Legend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSX_8zdu_zM

The over-the-shoulder free-aiming mode isn't for combat, it is for puzzles, hence why you can't move. There is that puzzle where you have to shoot lights on and off to make constellations, and the shootable ropes that make the statue fall down in Croft Manor or the bridges that reveal secret grapple points when demolished.

Not looking like Crysis? Well, TRA is largely an indoor game, since it's a remake of a 1996 title. Tomb Raiders are generally indoor games. It is rubbish that Legend looks better. Underworld looks better, though it's noticeably still the same engine.

TRA is indeed the hardest of the "new" TR titles; in this way, it's just an uncompromising remake of the old ones. If failing to do a grapple run 20 times makes you hate it so much you never come back, then TR isn't for you. It's a common trait of the franchise, and it's why hardcore fans love it. Why would you want an easy platformer. The multiple wallrun thing in the great pyramid level is indeed fucking hard, yes. And the timers are generally short in the game. But it's totally beatable without cheating just by using the game's standard controls and Lara's possible moves to their full extent. People are doing it for sport on youtube, so it must be doable. It's also the second to last level, so it should be OK to be difficult.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXj7hMmjUNE

I don't know what you did with the T-rex checkpoint - the checkpoints in this game always worked brilliantly for me. Probably bad luck.

You didn't mention the awesome secrets, which at times are much, much harder to get than some of the grapple-wallruns and are actually unique archaeological artifacts.

As for the traps - they're simple but effective. Simple elements like crushers and rotating blades create the challenge, you can't get more hardcore than that. The grapple adds an additional timing element.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2tgFOIAo2Y

I guess it's the same as many things - you like it, or you don't. It's not a bad game at all though; as a remake, it is just perfect. If the game it's remaking wasn't up your alley in the first place, you can't really blame the remake.

Cursing at the monitor is expected and socially acceptable when playing Tomb Raider. Early on, you could impale Lara or kill her off in a myriad of ways to vent your frustration, sadly this has been restricted and the most painful deaths were removed due to political correctness I guess :-) 

was expecting a shooter from a puzzle game. his post almost says as much :) 

but that registration put me off

http://www.daretobedigital.com/FreeFullDownloadableGames/PlayFreeComputerGames/ 

Although your core argument still holds, it increases my gut feeling that puzzle games suck. ;-) 

Nah I wasn't expecting a shooter, I'd played the original so knew it was jumping puzzles. I think I was just hoping the combat might have improved from the original, but for players that liked that it was quite hard then it'll be fine.

And for players that like doing this over and over until they get it right, they won't find the game as frustrating as I did. I can understand that plenty of players won't mind it - afterall before the quicksave came along in gaming, games were all about repeating it over and over again. I'm just one of the ones that hates doing things any more than twice.

Re grapple hook, yeah that was a great addition. The grapple puzzles were quite cool, although they were some of the harder ones actually (the 2 puzzles I had trouble with were both wall run grapple ones).

Re secrets. I'm not a secrets person, I never bother with them. Just wanted to get through the damn game tbh lol.

I didn't mention in my review, but by the end of the game I was really quite over it. It's one game that after 8 hours I'd had enough. I watched the last 10mins of gameplay that I missed on youtube and thought, I really can't be bothered with those boss fights. Back to shooters yay :D

And yeah it is mostly indoors so they couldn't really have too many big vast Crysis'ish outdoors areas. But they could have made it a bit more epic I guess. The scenes that WERE outdoors looked pretty bland compared to Crysis.

I guess I will give Underworld a shot though, especially if the puzzles are so cunty and it looks better. I'd probably slag it off when I review it though haha. But I'm sure plenty of ppl will disagree with my review above, it's a fairly popular franchise so i'm probably a smaller minority of those who didn't like it much. 

I'm not defending TR anniversary. I can't I've not played it.

Buuuuut you are comparing the graphics of a game originally designed for the PSP and PS2 to a game that is considered the benchmark of PC melting graphical detail. 

I didn't misunderstand you, I think perhaps I didn't clarify myself that well. I don't think it was laziness - I think Portal was a successful design that she probably either felt she could improve upon or provide a quality variation of it.

But, I just don't think this is it. Portal was interesting not because you picked up blocks and set them down, but because Portals were mind bending. What I've seen from QC is very underwhelming. You still pick up and put down blocks, but nothing in the game is mind bending *yet*. It seems to me to be a step back from Portal.

Again, not that it's going to be a bad game, but it just isn't nearly as interesting or innovative as Portal was, and doesn't seem to want to differentiate itself at all/that much. 

I guess not everyone keeps up with video game deals, so I thought I would post this.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1631538 

thanks for the link, zwif. yeah, i don't usually keep up with games. i will drop in to the steam store every once in a while, but rarely try to stay up to date consistently, so i appreciate these heads-up on good deals. :) 

That's why it gets compared to Crysis, because up till 2007 Crysis is the benchmark of graphical awesome. I'll probably compare most games' graphics to it if they attempt outdoors.

And why not? They're released both in 2007 for probably the same price. Crystal Dynamics just didn't make an awesome enough engine to clean up Crytek's. Sure it's probably a shitload better performing, but 4-5 years on I have no problems running either game maxed out. 

looked better than Crysis? I think Metro took the crown last year. 

Don't know, haven't played anything beyond 2007. I'm hoping Far Cry 2 or Crysis Warhead might have looked even better?

So in the last 5 years, is Metro the only game that looks better than Crysis? Fuck I hope not. 

It really depends what you mean by "looks better" Crysis excels at doing realistic outdoors, but otherwise the designs in it are pretty bland in my opinion.

To me Mirror's Edge looks better than Crysis, because I feel design is more important than just trying to reach realistic quality graphics (which is fine really).

I'd even still say Team Fortress 2 looks better than Crysis, and even Portal 2 at some points, despite that engine being super dated. 

But yeah - Crysis really held the benchmark for 'sexy graphics engine' for a long time because I guess in layman's terms developers didnt want to use the new tech because it didn't run so good on consoles.

As for the styling and art of level design and games design in general in other games - yeah, there are a bunch of games with sexy graphics just because the designers and artists have done a really good job, even with an older engine. What I men about Metro is that it runs worse than Crysis cause of the rediculous level of detail. Metro was probably the first game which came out running slower than crysis.

I think the STALKER games have pretty advanced graphics engines and you need a hefty rig to run them maxed out. 

Mind-bending mean? 

It means thinking in ways you wouldn't normally think, or thinking of something you thought impossible as possible. 

The distinction you're trying to make, but I see lots of reactions to games based off too-little information to form a complete opinion - not necessarily what I think you're doing.

My point of view comes from the developer side as opposed to the player side, and I think it's bit unfair to judge a game based on a preview.

I'd assume a designer who came up with Portal probably wouldn't just rehash it without the portals.

In my experience such a designer wouldn't have gotten to a position of being able to make Portal in the first place. 

Random selection of Ludum Dare #21 games being played. NSFW commentary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVCj2kyOf1E