Beyond Machines explanation

So, I think it's time to begin talking about my project, Beyond Machines. You'll remember this image from last time:

So what are we looking at? Well, it's like this...

Monetary Systems in Games Part 1: Metal Gear Solid V

Money has always been a big part of games in different ways, outside the games and inside, for better or for worse. It's an easy way to make the player get a sense of achievement, as they obtain currency and see it rise higher and higher as they do better. I'll be analysing a few games to explore how they use money, and how it works with their systems. Today's installment will be:

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

In alot of games, money is used mainly for upgrades and items to improve your character or give you better chances, ammunition, ect. The Phantom Pain however, takes it one step further. Money is not just used for upgrades, oh no. In this game, you need Money to do just about anything.

The way it works, is that Snake is in charge of a Mercenary Company called Diamond Dogs, and it needs funding to operate. This funding is GMP, or Gross Military Product. Not just hard cash, but resources, materials, and assets. That doesn't matter though, since it still just amounts to a name given to a numerical amount. GMP needs to be expended for the majority of actions, including:

* Buying upgrades.

* Using Fulton Balloons to extract soldiers.

* Calling in your helicopter.

* Calling in air strikes or supply drops.

* Using weapons and equipment, the amount varying per item.

* Deploying most of your partners.

* Keeping soldiers on your base (They'll start leaving if you go in the red)

Earning GMP is done through completing both main missions and side quests (Side Ops), as well as collecting certain items, extracting animals and selling off the processed resources and military ordinance you collect, which also factor into them being used by you or your online bases.

This system really makes you have to calculate your spending. Money is not just a tool to grind up, and then spend on every available upgrade you can find. You are motivated to spend limited amounts at a time, so you have the budget for everything else. It creates gameplay mentalities by encouraging you to try to cross the landscape on a single trip as much as possible to get every Side Op you can, and try to experiment more with your current loadout, or suffer a GMP loss through a supply drop.  It adds more weight to Sub Objectives when they'll get you more GMP by the mission's end. It keeps usage the game breaking abilities in check by having them be expensive to utilise.

Overall, it's a system that adds alot to the base management aspect of the game, and helps you get more involved in building everything up.

Undertale Game Analysis: How to tell a story through mechanics

This post I would like to talk about specials mechanics in games, and today, i'm going to be looking at a game mechanic that manages to add alot to it's game. The game in question is the recent Indie RPG Undertale.

Undertale is an RPG made in the same kind of mold as the Mother/Earthbound series. Being a somewhat minimalist game visually, but having a very unique kind of tone. In this case, being a quirky one, where inanimate objects have personalities, weird things have casual conversations with you, and there's a big focus on themes of bonds and family. Undertale is focused on the former, and it's all about making friends with people. However, that's not the focus for this discussion. This discussion will be about how enemies attack you.

When you are attacked in Undertale, you control your soul, represented by a heart icon that you move around in a space. Enemies will launch projectiles at your that do damage. It's supposed to invoke a Bullet Hell game, where you control a small object trying to dodge massive swarms of bullets,

Where this system becomes brilliant is how each enemy has a fairly different attack pattern to each other, and they reflect the enemy not just visually, but emotionally as well. You can change the moods of enemies using Act commands, and doing certain actions will change their attack patterns as well.

For battles created using static, black and white sprites, this is an amazing way to convey to the player what enemies are feeling while you're still in gameplay, and having a challenge. It gives every enemy character a personality while fighting them, and helps you get more involved, even motivating you to make friends with them and spare them. Which of course, is the whole theme of the game. They go one step further with this system, and make the U.I get involved as well.

The defining moment of this system I feel, is during a boss fight I will not spoil. Without going into context, the boss starts out doing complex patterns (Compared to everything you've seen up to that point)...

 ... But when you get damaged to a point where another hit will kill you, the boss only uses one pattern. A pattern where the shots actively avoid your heart.

Even without the context, it's a spectacular way to tell a story. The person your fighting can't bare to kill you. When you see this, there's a real tragedy to the experience, and one that really makes you want to find another way to end the fight.

This is all from the demo. The game itself takes the idea even further, expanding it in new directions that utilise player expectations and the fourth wall more and more. I'm hesitant to spoil it though. It's an experience that deserves to be played in it's own way.

That's all for now. I may come back to Undertale in the future for a more spoiler focused post, but not for today.

An introduction to Beyond Machines

I would like to introduce the new project I will be undertaking over the next month or two. A game tentatively titled Beyond Machines.

It's an endless runner... In a sense. I want to put more of a unique spin on it. The game is currently in pre-production. I want to let our viewers know that alot of what I will reveal over the next few days is still being fleshed out, and will definitely be subject to change.

I'll go more into how the game will work next time, but for now, here's the very first concept image i've photoshopped together, using pre-existing assets from other sources.

What the heck are you looking at? Find out next time!