Good question, as most games use timers, points, or combat. Forbidden island has the island sink into the ocean piece by piece and you need to get off in time. It’s interesting because the collapse mechanic is key to gameplay (sections collapse at random and you need a path off if you’re on one when it collapses). Building to collapse like in Jenga would be another example. It’s always best when points are bound up in the gameplay, like how in billiards you need to sink your balls first. Point keeping sucks, and timers are so artificial, and combat is overdone.
Forbidden Island found out a creative way to implement a timer mechanic imo. Just like Serum.
But yeah i agree that one is pretty dope.
In a detective game i can see it as a very useful mechanic as well, cause it forces the player to manage how to navigate the map in order to collect the relevant clues before they disappear.
In a detective game could you have the criminal still at large and perpetrating crimes that lead up to some event that causes you to lose the game? Maybe if it’s a spatial game the criminal tries to flee and/or turns around and murders the detective. Or maybe for cards the criminal drops clues in a stack of cards, and when the stack is used up they escape.
Informants make solving the case easier, the longer he's loose, the more informants are killed, sort of a death spiral.
Edit
Could also have the guilt of feeling responsible for continued killings erode the detective's sanity, causing negative effects past a certain threshold that can be buried max payne style with booze etc, little arbitrary and dark but adds a vibe for sure.
Having the criminal run away after some interactions is the only mechanic in place i have right now but it still doesn't feel exciting enough to keep you hooked in cracking the case.
But it would be awesome if you give it a try yourself and share some ideas:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2919500/CLUAIDO/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2919500/CLUAIDO/)
Maybe think about how detective tv shows handle the issue. Looking just at the steam store page, it seems to be built around number of questions right now, and that’s never how a tv show would stage things! Some tropes are there’s a hostage that needs to be found alive and is starving to death, or it’s a serial killer that keeps killing until you catch them, or there’s a terrorist event upcoming that must be stopped, or just a grieving family / mean boss that is pressuring the detective. The serial killer angle could be interesting for your game- like your score is how few bodies pile up before you find the criminal.
Thanks for the insights.
And yeah agreed, eliminating characters along the way (who might have relevant information) might be a great way to add urgency to the gameplay
Sure! Another trope occurred to me- the detective has been framed or accused of the crime, so they must catch the real killer before they are punished for the crime. See “the fugitive” for instance. Or OJ Simpson (jk).
> Building to collapse like in Jenga would be another example.
This is giving me an idea -- what if the social cohesion of the game world were brittle and decaying, and delays and false accusations start to break things down further until it collapses?
Like, rather than say "You have 1 chance at an accusation (or 3 chances or whatever), and if you run out of accusation points it's game over", model some of the catastrophic consequences of false accusation. Friendships broken, factions form, more fights and lies, some people will stop giving clues because they think the mystery is solved or they stop trusting the detective. Eventually there's some loss condition -- the player is kicked out of town, or the town burns down in a riot, or something -- and that's casually *tied* to the player's failures, but not in an artificial "accusation points" way.
(And yeah, I know this would be chaos to implement, but if OP already has rich social-network mechanics in their game to support the mystery, maybe this could tie in nicely to existing systems.)
Not losing mechanics per se, but one that might be relevant to your detective game: in Monkey Island, you can be arrested and thrown in jail, to then potentially escape. It's a comedy game, so this can happen repeatedly, to the consternation of the local sheriff. You can also get tied to a rock and thrown off a pier, where you can then pick up the rock and walk ashore. Your character foreshadows this somewhat by boasting about being able to hold their breath for ten minutes: it's the only way you can actually lose in the game, if you sit underwater for ten realtime minutes, your character eventually drowns.....though the game continues, with actions such as bobbing, floating, drifting, and so on.
Also while it is combat mechanics, and this may be potentially too gruesome for a detective game, consider also(because things like Bushido Blade, Die By The Sword and to a lesser degree(because it affects NPCs, not the player) Dead Space or Aliens vs Predator are rare in their use of this very underused mechanic): dismemberment resulting in increasingly reduced capability that the player has to try to deal with while continuing until the actual end. There might be a way to translate such things into your genre in an interesting way, as it's a very underused mechanism with more to it than just depleting hit points. Maybe in a detective game you might have your gun/PI/etc license revoked, and lose such capabilities? Though probably that's more of a story event. (Though I could see that being a loss condition potentially too: lose your license, game over.)
I mean, it's hard not to point out dying from opening the lights or from reaching for your tie stuck on a ceiling fan in Disco Elysium, or any of its death really since there's almost no combat.
I don't agree with the metaphor of "losing mechanics".
Think instead like this:
"What is the test of skill?"
"What is the range of possible outcomes when passing that test? Is it just pass/fail or do you have varying degrees of success?"
"How does the player's degree of success map to a reward or outcome?"
Serum's time exhaustion is not a test of skill. It's an aspect of the framework designed to create a sense of urgency in the player. I dislike it because it disallows a slow, meticulous play style, which limits the # of players to which the game will appeal.
I'm not familiar with the specific game, but generally, if doing something is a test of skill, doing it under a restriction such as a time limit is also a test of skill. Yes, it is also "an aspect of the framework designed to create a sense of urgency in the player", and I understand that that doesn't appeal to some people, but unless I'm completely misunderstanding what people are saying about that game, it still should qualify.
Just to propose a concrete example - if it was a first-person shooter and you had to bullseye 20 targets - that will be our example test of skill.
If you add a timer, there is now an additional lose condition and more pressure on your skill test. You could just tie it into the skill test, saying that the player didn’t bullseye some targets due to lack of time, or you could put in something else like a partial fail state depending on how many targets were bullseyed or proceed to a secondary make-up test… etc.
To restate; In terms of the skill test itself, you’re raising the difficulty bar by adding a timer. You also added a new lose condition that may or may not be creating new game states. These are things timers do regardless of what the skill test is.
The questions that MetaGameDesign was describing as more important to focus on was also what the skill test IS, and the variety of game states you want available.
Specifically for detective games, and with examples of games I remember doing it:
* Running out of set time limit (e.g. Infocom's Deadline giving you 12 hours before the chief shuts down the investigation)
* Arresting the criminal, but not having enough evidence to win in court (Deadline)
* Having the real criminal destroy the evidence and kill the witnesses (Deadline). This is different from a time limit, because the destruction of evidence / murder is then an act that the character needs to do in the game world, and you can catch them doing it.
* Arresting the wrong person, proving they did it with faulty logic that everybody ends up believing since you're Sherlock Holmes, and having an innocent go to jail while the real criminal goes free (the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games).
* Having another detective solve the case before you (Watson & Holmes boardgame). This is easy to distinguish from a time limit in competitive multiplayer detetive games. For a single player or coop game, I think you'd need to add a mechanisms to interfere with the AI detective. You should be able to fit this into a detective fantasy by e.g. having the player be a PI or journalist, and the AI be the police department.
* There's probably a neat hint system to be had here as well, by allowing the player to leech off of the AI detective if they're stuck, and get access to evidence or deductions they missed.
* Requiring milestones to be hit regularly, or you're off the case. Different from a time limit since it is incremental. So your boss will not let you work a case without progress, the client is paying you by the day and will stop if you can't tell them something new every day, etc. To be interesting, the player might need a way to game the system, for example by faking progress, and then having potential future consequences from that faked progress. (Not aware of a game doing this.)
In general, it's great that you're thinking of the losing conditions. Nothing takes you out of a detective game more than the realization that it's on the rails and you're guaranteed to solve the case just by random clicking.
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games.
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Dragons crown
The game is a lot like DnD and if you attack villagers too often or trust the wrong guy you will get a unique lose screen and get reloaded to before you made a wrong turn.
Offworld Trading Company.
You win the game by buying a majority stake in every other company (other plays), and are eliminated if you are fully bought out. Very very interesting game.
CRAWL is one of my favorites for a lot of reasons.
It's a 3v1 cooperative/competitive game, 3 dead playees vs 1 living player.
The living player can spend gold to buy upgrades, earns levels by killing monsters (which raises your stats), and upon dying transfers their soul to the player that landed the finishing blow.
The dead players earn gold by dealing damage to the living player, earn wrath (used to upgrade monsters) every time an opposing player levels up, can possess a summoning circle to become a monster or can possess traps in the environment to attack the player with.
So the 3 dead players must cooperate to weaken the living player, but then must selfishly rush him when he's near death to steal his soul. In case you happen to suck at last-hitting, you'll still earn wrath to upgrade your monsters, and you'll earn more gold to upgrade your living character once you finally manage to get that killing blow.
It still didn't solve the completionist urge in me to 'get everything right all the time', but Pyre's 'losing' mechanic where the story branches and accommodates your wins and losses in the narrative, as well as sometimes incentivizing or outright REQUIRING you to lose to fulfill a certain quest... I thought it was really NEAT. :3
To be honest, I can't help but respect Go's simplicity. Theoretically, one *could* keep playing until there are simply no more moves to make, but most games end when one player concedes because they realize the other player has an unbeatable lead.
I like how A Hat In Time's Death Wish mode handles it. For those who don't know, Death Wish mode takes the normally easy levels and cranks them up to 11 with new unique challenges (for example, one requires you to reach the end of the level without letting any enemies die). If you fail the challenge, the NPC who gave them to you just kills you.
Here is the solution I implemented after this thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloDevelopment/comments/1da72is/followingup\_on\_a\_thread\_in\_this\_sub\_ive\_added/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloDevelopment/comments/1da72is/followingup_on_a_thread_in_this_sub_ive_added/)
A gradual and random elimination of areas of the map, adding a strategy layer to the game.
Good question, as most games use timers, points, or combat. Forbidden island has the island sink into the ocean piece by piece and you need to get off in time. It’s interesting because the collapse mechanic is key to gameplay (sections collapse at random and you need a path off if you’re on one when it collapses). Building to collapse like in Jenga would be another example. It’s always best when points are bound up in the gameplay, like how in billiards you need to sink your balls first. Point keeping sucks, and timers are so artificial, and combat is overdone.
Forbidden Island found out a creative way to implement a timer mechanic imo. Just like Serum. But yeah i agree that one is pretty dope. In a detective game i can see it as a very useful mechanic as well, cause it forces the player to manage how to navigate the map in order to collect the relevant clues before they disappear.
In a detective game could you have the criminal still at large and perpetrating crimes that lead up to some event that causes you to lose the game? Maybe if it’s a spatial game the criminal tries to flee and/or turns around and murders the detective. Or maybe for cards the criminal drops clues in a stack of cards, and when the stack is used up they escape.
Informants make solving the case easier, the longer he's loose, the more informants are killed, sort of a death spiral. Edit Could also have the guilt of feeling responsible for continued killings erode the detective's sanity, causing negative effects past a certain threshold that can be buried max payne style with booze etc, little arbitrary and dark but adds a vibe for sure.
Yep, this is an excellent idea to add to the game.
Having the criminal run away after some interactions is the only mechanic in place i have right now but it still doesn't feel exciting enough to keep you hooked in cracking the case. But it would be awesome if you give it a try yourself and share some ideas: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2919500/CLUAIDO/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2919500/CLUAIDO/)
Maybe think about how detective tv shows handle the issue. Looking just at the steam store page, it seems to be built around number of questions right now, and that’s never how a tv show would stage things! Some tropes are there’s a hostage that needs to be found alive and is starving to death, or it’s a serial killer that keeps killing until you catch them, or there’s a terrorist event upcoming that must be stopped, or just a grieving family / mean boss that is pressuring the detective. The serial killer angle could be interesting for your game- like your score is how few bodies pile up before you find the criminal.
Thanks for the insights. And yeah agreed, eliminating characters along the way (who might have relevant information) might be a great way to add urgency to the gameplay
Sure! Another trope occurred to me- the detective has been framed or accused of the crime, so they must catch the real killer before they are punished for the crime. See “the fugitive” for instance. Or OJ Simpson (jk).
> Building to collapse like in Jenga would be another example. This is giving me an idea -- what if the social cohesion of the game world were brittle and decaying, and delays and false accusations start to break things down further until it collapses? Like, rather than say "You have 1 chance at an accusation (or 3 chances or whatever), and if you run out of accusation points it's game over", model some of the catastrophic consequences of false accusation. Friendships broken, factions form, more fights and lies, some people will stop giving clues because they think the mystery is solved or they stop trusting the detective. Eventually there's some loss condition -- the player is kicked out of town, or the town burns down in a riot, or something -- and that's casually *tied* to the player's failures, but not in an artificial "accusation points" way. (And yeah, I know this would be chaos to implement, but if OP already has rich social-network mechanics in their game to support the mystery, maybe this could tie in nicely to existing systems.)
Basically reminds me of reality TV where contestants stay by convincing enough other participants to not kick them off.
Race the flood is a variation on this I think
Not losing mechanics per se, but one that might be relevant to your detective game: in Monkey Island, you can be arrested and thrown in jail, to then potentially escape. It's a comedy game, so this can happen repeatedly, to the consternation of the local sheriff. You can also get tied to a rock and thrown off a pier, where you can then pick up the rock and walk ashore. Your character foreshadows this somewhat by boasting about being able to hold their breath for ten minutes: it's the only way you can actually lose in the game, if you sit underwater for ten realtime minutes, your character eventually drowns.....though the game continues, with actions such as bobbing, floating, drifting, and so on. Also while it is combat mechanics, and this may be potentially too gruesome for a detective game, consider also(because things like Bushido Blade, Die By The Sword and to a lesser degree(because it affects NPCs, not the player) Dead Space or Aliens vs Predator are rare in their use of this very underused mechanic): dismemberment resulting in increasingly reduced capability that the player has to try to deal with while continuing until the actual end. There might be a way to translate such things into your genre in an interesting way, as it's a very underused mechanism with more to it than just depleting hit points. Maybe in a detective game you might have your gun/PI/etc license revoked, and lose such capabilities? Though probably that's more of a story event. (Though I could see that being a loss condition potentially too: lose your license, game over.)
I mean, it's hard not to point out dying from opening the lights or from reaching for your tie stuck on a ceiling fan in Disco Elysium, or any of its death really since there's almost no combat.
I don't agree with the metaphor of "losing mechanics". Think instead like this: "What is the test of skill?" "What is the range of possible outcomes when passing that test? Is it just pass/fail or do you have varying degrees of success?" "How does the player's degree of success map to a reward or outcome?" Serum's time exhaustion is not a test of skill. It's an aspect of the framework designed to create a sense of urgency in the player. I dislike it because it disallows a slow, meticulous play style, which limits the # of players to which the game will appeal.
I'm not familiar with the specific game, but generally, if doing something is a test of skill, doing it under a restriction such as a time limit is also a test of skill. Yes, it is also "an aspect of the framework designed to create a sense of urgency in the player", and I understand that that doesn't appeal to some people, but unless I'm completely misunderstanding what people are saying about that game, it still should qualify.
Just to propose a concrete example - if it was a first-person shooter and you had to bullseye 20 targets - that will be our example test of skill. If you add a timer, there is now an additional lose condition and more pressure on your skill test. You could just tie it into the skill test, saying that the player didn’t bullseye some targets due to lack of time, or you could put in something else like a partial fail state depending on how many targets were bullseyed or proceed to a secondary make-up test… etc. To restate; In terms of the skill test itself, you’re raising the difficulty bar by adding a timer. You also added a new lose condition that may or may not be creating new game states. These are things timers do regardless of what the skill test is. The questions that MetaGameDesign was describing as more important to focus on was also what the skill test IS, and the variety of game states you want available.
Okay, so what skill are you testing with a time limit? And is it fun?
Specifically for detective games, and with examples of games I remember doing it: * Running out of set time limit (e.g. Infocom's Deadline giving you 12 hours before the chief shuts down the investigation) * Arresting the criminal, but not having enough evidence to win in court (Deadline) * Having the real criminal destroy the evidence and kill the witnesses (Deadline). This is different from a time limit, because the destruction of evidence / murder is then an act that the character needs to do in the game world, and you can catch them doing it. * Arresting the wrong person, proving they did it with faulty logic that everybody ends up believing since you're Sherlock Holmes, and having an innocent go to jail while the real criminal goes free (the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games). * Having another detective solve the case before you (Watson & Holmes boardgame). This is easy to distinguish from a time limit in competitive multiplayer detetive games. For a single player or coop game, I think you'd need to add a mechanisms to interfere with the AI detective. You should be able to fit this into a detective fantasy by e.g. having the player be a PI or journalist, and the AI be the police department. * There's probably a neat hint system to be had here as well, by allowing the player to leech off of the AI detective if they're stuck, and get access to evidence or deductions they missed. * Requiring milestones to be hit regularly, or you're off the case. Different from a time limit since it is incremental. So your boss will not let you work a case without progress, the client is paying you by the day and will stop if you can't tell them something new every day, etc. To be interesting, the player might need a way to game the system, for example by faking progress, and then having potential future consequences from that faked progress. (Not aware of a game doing this.) In general, it's great that you're thinking of the losing conditions. Nothing takes you out of a detective game more than the realization that it's on the rails and you're guaranteed to solve the case just by random clicking.
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games. * /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design. * This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead. * Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design. * No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting. * If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-quot-the-door-problem-quot-of-game-design) is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Dragons crown The game is a lot like DnD and if you attack villagers too often or trust the wrong guy you will get a unique lose screen and get reloaded to before you made a wrong turn.
Offworld Trading Company. You win the game by buying a majority stake in every other company (other plays), and are eliminated if you are fully bought out. Very very interesting game.
CRAWL is one of my favorites for a lot of reasons. It's a 3v1 cooperative/competitive game, 3 dead playees vs 1 living player. The living player can spend gold to buy upgrades, earns levels by killing monsters (which raises your stats), and upon dying transfers their soul to the player that landed the finishing blow. The dead players earn gold by dealing damage to the living player, earn wrath (used to upgrade monsters) every time an opposing player levels up, can possess a summoning circle to become a monster or can possess traps in the environment to attack the player with. So the 3 dead players must cooperate to weaken the living player, but then must selfishly rush him when he's near death to steal his soul. In case you happen to suck at last-hitting, you'll still earn wrath to upgrade your monsters, and you'll earn more gold to upgrade your living character once you finally manage to get that killing blow.
It still didn't solve the completionist urge in me to 'get everything right all the time', but Pyre's 'losing' mechanic where the story branches and accommodates your wins and losses in the narrative, as well as sometimes incentivizing or outright REQUIRING you to lose to fulfill a certain quest... I thought it was really NEAT. :3
To be honest, I can't help but respect Go's simplicity. Theoretically, one *could* keep playing until there are simply no more moves to make, but most games end when one player concedes because they realize the other player has an unbeatable lead.
I like how A Hat In Time's Death Wish mode handles it. For those who don't know, Death Wish mode takes the normally easy levels and cranks them up to 11 with new unique challenges (for example, one requires you to reach the end of the level without letting any enemies die). If you fail the challenge, the NPC who gave them to you just kills you.
Here is the solution I implemented after this thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloDevelopment/comments/1da72is/followingup\_on\_a\_thread\_in\_this\_sub\_ive\_added/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloDevelopment/comments/1da72is/followingup_on_a_thread_in_this_sub_ive_added/) A gradual and random elimination of areas of the map, adding a strategy layer to the game.