Pick 'n' Punch

My highlights for this project were its gameplay design.

"A spin on the roguelike genre, where you fight the boss in a boxing match! Each of 5 rounds, you will upgrade the boss to give him one move. Will you pick the right one to end this ultimate challenge?"

Summary

The game is a boxing-themed, action roguelike where the player has to upgrade the boss between each round of the fight. Once the player depleted the boss's health bar, they then have to pick between two attacks to give to the boss which it will use in the following fights until the game ends.

This means that the main fun of the game is about learning to adapt changing circumstances. The boss that the character must fight is constantly changing and this means the player's strategy must also always change to suit them.

As the each round passes, the boss becomes more complex and gains more and more health, forcing mastery from the player. They must take new risks and learn their options for each attack.

Engaging Gameplay

I wanted the player to feel excited and determined. I achieved this by designing the game following these rules:

• Challenging: the player must derive difficulty and hardship from the experience, not being able to finish the game easily.

• Risky: the player must feel the need to take risks in order to complete the game, especially due to the very relevant fear of permanent death

• Fair: the game must never be unfair or it will cause frustration in the player

• Learnable: it must always be fairly easy to learn what must be done but the answer should never be given to the player as it is fun to learn

Main Gameplay Loop

I made many aspects of the game quite simple in order to keep a focus on the fun of the game. One of the ways I kep the game simple was by giving the player only 3 main resources to manage.

• Health: if either character runs out of this resource, they lose the match. This is a very simple metric for understanding the risk and reward of the game.

• Time: if the player runs out of this resource, they instantly lose. This pressure invokes urgency from the player, causing them to take more risks, which is exciting, especially towards the final rounds.

• Space: if either character is knocked into one of the walls of the boxing ring by attack knockback, they are inflicted with bonus damage. This resource drives the player's decision making, bringing a question to every action the player performs. The positioning of the player is very important, and they may have to not take the oppurtunity to inflict damage as it may give them a bigger reward later. This resource is also diegetic, meaning it is very tangeable.

I also gave the player very few attack options. The player can only walk, dodge, block, and punch. This means that the player has very few actions, mapped to even fewer buttons and are organised in a way which makes sense.

Parry: If the player blocks with the right timing, they can negate all damage and knockback from an attack, as opposed to reducing it. This rewards the player's mastery.

Charged punch: If the player holds the punch button, they can perform a stronger punch with much higher knockback. However, this takes longer and is riskier but gives a far higher reward than the regular punch.

Forms of mastery

When designing the attacks the boss can perform, different responses from the player allow for mastery. The player may dodge an attack for better spacing but must learn when and where they can dodge to. They may punch to inflict damage and even charge it for more damage but need to learn when they can do it and even sometimes where they must stand as a charged punch has a longer range. The player may parry to stay completely still and stand their ground but must time it perfectly.

Typically, the player will have to react to an attack, seeing when it happens and knowing to react accordingly. However, sometimes the player can predict an attack. This is possible as the player knows exactly what attacks the boss has, and know that the conditions of the match affect what attack the boss will perform.

Knowing an attack will come up can completely change how the player reacts even to other attacks. For example, the opponent has a move which pushes the player across the ring, but is nearly impossible to react to. If the player predicts this attack will come up next, they may block early or attempt to react and parry the attacks by looking out for it.