[casual_games] [design]Geometry Wars

[Adam Martin]

I'm sorry for being late to the party, but its only in the last few
months that I've simultaneously had the 360 at home, a live account,
and the spare time to play GW Evolved...

I love the game, and as the cheerleader for XBLA for a long time it's
become widely associated with Casual Games.

But, after a few weeks and with Pacificism and the
250k-points-without-dieing achievements done, I found the game
extremely time consuming and found myself having to overcome an
inertia when it comes to starting to play.

After a week, I realised why: the game starts with one minute where
*nothing happens*. It is then followed by a further 30 secs to a
minute where you have a uniquely useless weapon and you can't play the
game properly. (for the next N hours of gameplay you always have one
of two weapons which enforce very different game play strategy to the
original one.

Yet, if you die in this few minutes, you might as well start again
from scratch, because your multiplier will be killed, and your chances
of surviving to the first bonus life and first bonus smartbomb drop
consuderably.

So, it was taking an average of around five to ten minutes before I
got into the main game - and that time was spent in boring wandering
around the screen with very little to do.

This is how it sucked up so much time, and why the enjoyment felt
after an hour seemed pretty paltry.

AFAICS, the main reason for this is to take a very hard game and give
casual games players a couple of minutes of easy gameplay, whilst
keeping hardcore gamers on their toes by forcing them to "turn on" -
and turn off - their play strategies and patterns, without having
separate difficulty levels. Since this game is so fast and hectic,
very twitchy, the on/off process is non trivial (and in a house of
professional game developers, with a xouple of very hardcore FPS
players, *everyone* dies inthe first two minutes quite often, not just
me!)

But it seems to me the antitjesis of core casual game design. Yet,
clearly, it is a substantial part of the game experience, attested by
the number of deaths in that stage in our house. Just... it *seems* to
me to be a wholly negative part.

So...is it integral to the game, or is it something that detracts from the
casual gameplay? I can't decide :), but givien the wide popularity and
recognition, thought it an interesting example.

FWLIW, I know that my own understanding and effectiveness at casual
game design increased a lot as Casual Games gained recognition and
became more analysed and more clearly defined and better understood.
GW predates most of thus, so I wonder whether the authors would design
it the same way now if doing it again?

 dam
So...