Player Empowerment in Lore Arcana

Empowerment is the game designer's gift to the player. It's the feeling the player gets when restrictions have been lifted. When they can go anywhere or do anything. RPGs are perhaps the easiest games in which to see that empowerment; there's a number corresponding to it. Once a player reaches a high enough level, enemies that once felt frightening or challenging become a breeze. While the lack of challenge is not in itself fun, that feeling of power often is.

Other games have less clear empowerment divisions. It's not uncommon for players to feel the same way in action games, once they've honed their own skills, acquired new weapons, or discovered the tricks to defeating certain enemies. And then there are games that seek to empower players from the start. Let's look at Scribblenauts as an example. Write down whatever you desire into your notebook, and it magically appears in the world.

The original Scribblenauts received critical acclaim, and for good reason. It was ambitious, and ultimately reasonably well-executed. However, giving the player so much power from the start limits their room to grow. In order to keep the player's attention, the game provides challenges of increasing difficulty.

There were some issues with the game, however. Such freedom made certain tasks a little too straightforward. Many challenges that were clearly intended by the developers to be long multi-item obstacle courses could be skipped over with a jetpack. Later games addressed this issue, and even rewarded players for solving the same puzzle in multiple ways.

So how do we get it right the first time? How do we make sure that the player will feel adequately challenged without losing that sense of power? And how do we do all of this while still crafting a fun experience? Those are the issues I faced when laying out the design for my current project, Lore Arcana.

My objective with Lore Arcana is to have the most flexible and powerful magic system in video games to date. This is achieved by empowering players to create their own spells using a wide variety of runes. Early on, the plan was to implement a drag-and-drop programming interface. Once this was implemented, however, I began to have some concerns about the player's experience.

I've been programming computers since second grade, so I naturally have a slightly skewed concept of accessibility. My game is about empowering the player. Spell creation should be simple and straightforward; the game's challenge is meant to come from its missions, puzzles, and objectives. So if it's difficult for players to create spells, I've failed as a game designer. This is when it pays to step back and reexamine your goals. Will the average player feel empowered by the spell creation mechanic, or hindered by it? After some experimentation, I decided to change the spell-writing system.

I use several node-based tools in my own development: World Machine, Houdini, and Substance Designer. I've also seen a lot of tools on the Unity Asset store that love to advertise "No Programming Required." Many of these are also node-based. The approach was clear to me. Changing the interface proved to be surprisingly straightforward. A node UI is much easier to develop than a programming UI. I also found the tools to be more powerful, and other aspects of the implementation to be more straightforward. In two weeks of work, I accomplished what had taken me a couple of months to implement on the previous interface.

Now, all of my runes have been reimplemented in the new interface. Each node has anywhere from zero to four input ports. Data types are color-coded, so each input port accepts one color-matched output from another rune. A single rune can have multiple outputs, so all that mess associated with instantiating and storing variables becomes moot. By experimenting with my design, I was able to create a system that will empower players to the extent I intended.

Most importantly, the game is fun. It's always been a game I enjoyed developing, but now it's also a game I can't wait to play. Think about how your game empowers the player, and how you can make the experience better for them. In the end, I had to scrap a lot of work. But the result has been well worth the effort.

Lore Arcana has just launched on Kickstarter. Support the game here.