RATIONAL DESIGN
Rational Game Design and Rational Level Design have always been part of my way of working. To be an effective designer, I feel the need to have a stable vision of my tools. This vision can be given to me by the project's intentions, or actually by the rationalization of the mechanics.
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Organizing game elements, making them measurable and comparable, is often the key to a better understanding of the ins and outs of different items. Of course, the RGD isn't magic and can lead to a biased or at least incomplete view of the game. But I do find that it generates discussions that, in my opinion, give a sharper understanding of a design.
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For this reason, RGD remains a tool to be used in the right way, but it has value added in many situations and I'll continue to use it regularly.
IN MY PROJECTS
Bloody Dates!
This text is extracted from the project page. To see everything about the project, click here.
Being a tactical, it was necessary to translate the game into statistics and numerical ratings. We chose values in the tens range, as low as possible to be easier to interpret by our mobile target, but not too low so as to give us enough design flexibility with +1 or -1 additions that wouldn't unbalance everything. To translate the values into useful data for the game, we created spreadsheets for each element that convert the enemies into a power value called PowerIndex.
Over the iterations we've been able to fine-tune this tool so that the values that emerge are as close as possible to the real experience. If it's not always perfect, the system helps generate discussions that always lead to design improvements. Monsters are rated in several categories according to their power value. Numerous spreadsheet functions have been added to highlight useful information and redistribute it to important pages, notably to facilitate communication with programmers.
Abawari
This text is extracted from the project page. To see everything about the project, click here.
By its very nature, the project required a certain amount of Rational design work, as all elements of the game could be statistically interpreted to match the simulationist aspect of the game. My main task in this aspect was to convert playable and non-playable characters into balanced numerical values.
RLD – Sonic 3
This is an exercise from my first year at Isart, where the aim was to build a first level for a Sonic game - taking inspiration from the 3rd - and respecting the gameplay and format of this type of level. The first step was to think through my intentions and define the general structure to follow.
Then, I defined the content of each of my situations, thinking about what they would look like in the final version of the level. From these elements, I was able to construct a V1 of the level.
I continued by entering the values associated with each pattern in my RLD table, which enabled me to evaluate the steps in my level. After several adjustments, I arrived at the level shown at the beginning of the section.
