Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

sandbox games and spore

cliffski

I wrote a new article for bit-tech, you can see it here (courtesy of digg)

http://digg.com/pc_games/What_happened_to_sandbox_games

It’s about how sandbox games are getting less sandboxy, with a lot more in the way of aggressive hinting and quests to tell you what to do. I consider this to be a slight dumbing down of otherwise good freeform games. I don’t play games to be told what to do, I could get that in a day-job :D

I got thinking today about spore, my slight disappointment with it, and thinking about whether it’s a genre I could tackle in the future. I certainly think the game is too simple and dumbed down, no doubt to appeal to the mass market. The section of the game I enjoy most is the creature stage, but it’s far too predictable, and simplistic. There really isn’t enough in the way of simulation complexity to give me enough of a freeform game there.

So I was wondering about whether I could do a different take on the ‘cell stage’, which is more of a ‘sim fish creature’ game that anything really cellular. I love the ‘look’ of that part of the game, but I thought the gameplay was too simple. There are basically two food types (meat and plants) and you avoid big things and eat little things. Also there are some bits of meteor you need to hoover up. I’m pretty sure there is huge scope to expand on all this and make a better game. It’s certainly the sort of game I enjoy coding, and it would fit nicely in with my general portfolio of stuff whilst being a new game (non sequel).

Just a thought.

2 thoughts on sandbox games and spore

  1. I’m with you on Spore. The cell and creature stages are my favorite. The 3rd and 4th stages almost seemed tacked on with no real substance, and the last stage is just poorly designed, but has lots of potential. Never before have I played a game that really gave me an awe inspiring view on the sheer size of a galaxy.

    I played through to the space stage 3 times, once on each difficulty and once trying each type of herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore. The differences between them are moot at the creature stage, since at that point it’s not about what you eat but how you behave. The Tribal stage was the hardest to maintain the balance between peace and war to get the neutral one. Even at the hard difficulty, the game was easy until you got to the space stage, where it became absolutely brutal.

    Here’s one idea on how to improve upon Spore. At the creature design stage, you design out what you want your creature to become. Every piece of “dna” you eat, slowly evolves you towards that target, letting the player really experience the process of evolution. I think EA went with what they did to speed up the creature stage. It seemed like everything was designed to get to the space stage as fast as possible.

  2. The words and concepts in your article “What happened to sandbox games?”are like a broken record in my head with every disappointing “next best thing in gaming since…”. Thanks for finally writing it down and yes I feel as much a loner about it as you do when 99% of the market just keeps consuming these games. Maybe it’s time to face it, video games have grown up for better or for worse. Thanks for at least putting out your own stuff, I’ll be checking it out for sure.

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