A core mechanic is a term coined by myself so I didn’t have to write game play. It’s quite an obvious thing, but if you set out to make a platformer you would most probably dive head first into making levels, characters and physics engines to make it all work. This was definitely my own and the majority of Psync’s approach in the past. Did any thought really go into making PowerPoint games other than “lets make this do what Myst does”? Nope, that being said, we had our reasons and did pretty bloody well! Still, until the now quite unique Blitz, even when opportunities to genuinely produce something not so generic presented themselves, we time and time again fell back on the “let’s make ___ do what ___ does” approach.

Super Mario Galaxy, Just Beautiful.

One of my all time favourite games is Super Mario Galaxy. Just so you are aware this is coming from a life long sonic fan. You wouldn’t have caught me loving Mario back in the 16bit days, oh no, it was Sonic ’til I die! (or at least until he started becoming rubbish). My point is that it’s not the mascot I care about in the game. I’ve heard people rave about the fact Luigi turns up, but at the risk of being hated by Italian loving plumbers I couldn’t care less. There are so many things the game does so well but, for now, lets stay on topic.

Before I start contradicting myself, the Mario developers started with Mario as an Atari game (yes he was in Donkey Kong before that if we’re going to be anal about it, but the first Mario Bros game was on the Atari 2600). As we all know he’s had many-a-sequel since, so yes quite possibly the developers originally dived head first into making levels, characters and physics engines to make it all work, but they got there first, so live with it. If we’re going to make any stand out games we’re going to have to be a bit smarter, kapish?

Super Mario Galaxy takes the 3D platformer (that again the Mario dev’s pretty much invented) and wraps it round a ball. Sounds so simple, gimmicky even, but it works so well! Now again you would have forgiven the creators for basing the entire game around that concept and had Mario legging it around a planet for every level, except they don’t. This brings me nicely to an obvious, but again quite easily forgotten, rule that is:

Don’t base an entire game around an un-expandable concept.

When planing a game I think it’s very important to see where you can take the concept. Keeping with Mario Galaxy, when Mario is running around the outside of a planet in the above image, there is a course of holes he must avoid and crystals to smash. On a similar planet later on, rolling boulders are added, then electrified barriers and then homing missiles, so there are four elements that can be mixed and matched to create a unique level, and these are just four out of literally hundreds of unique elements that this game constantly throws at the player, which stops the game from ever feeling tired or repetitive.

Portal, Just Genius.

While Super Mario Galaxy constantly throws new ideas that compliment the core mechanic, another brilliant game I’ve been promoting around the Psync forums lately is Portal. While Portal does employ quite a few different elements and obstacles, at the heart of all of them sits it’s core mechanic, which is essentially shoot a doorway at one wall then shoot a doorway somewhere else.

The developers of Portal could have relied simply on shooting portals and physics based puzzles, but by including a few extra elements they increased the depth of the game and the fun aspect went through the roof (quite literally)!

Before I started thinking about these games, my initial intention with this article was to highlight the importance of having a strong core mechanic, but throughout writing this it’s become clear that for a game to ensure longevity, you really need a concept that can be tweaked and altered to keep a player’s interest, but without betraying the game. You wouldn’t want to change the whole style or genre of a game half way through because the original concept had become so mind numbingly repetitive that it was the only thing you could do to keep it interesting.

The Company of Myself, Just Clever.

The company of myself is another fine example of a strong core mechanic, but with just enough added elements (and there are literally only about four) it becomes a very enjoyable and clever game.

My humble advice to myself and everyone is to be bloody inventive with your approach and don’t simply try to clone a game you particularly like. Most importantly, before diving in, make sure the game play can be expanded upon without becoming something completely different. It’s almost another dreaded, but at least if you feel you are working on something unique, it’s an added drive to see it through.

In between looking for work and residence, the group set about planning for their next project. The obvious choice was to play it safe and make a sequel to the project that had given them such a sense of achievement, but the planned Dome XIV was unfortunately ill fated. Let’s face it, educational games are a bit boring when all’s said and done. The next thought was to return to good old Zip n’ West, but in an unforseen act of sanity, the group realised that it was probably too big a project for them at that time, so they decided to do something new.

The only thing they were sure of at this point, was that they wanted to create their next project using C++ and, preferably, DirectX. This proved to be something of a stumbling block, as despite their numerous degrees and awards, none of them could program in C++ (De ja vous anyone?). Fortunately, Jim knew a man who could…

Let’s look back a few years to 2003 when Jim was still studying at Coventry University. There’s a group of friends sitting in a pub that they refer to as ‘the library’, for reasons best known to them, who’ve recently formed a ’study group’ known as ‘The Pork Pie Club’, for reasons best known to no-one. Now, one of the group is someone we’ve met before, Jim, who at this point, as we’ve mentioned, still has a fairly large amount to learn about programming, but he is getting there. Fortunately there’s another lad sitting close by who’s far more adept at the aforementioned artform, known as Chris Siddall, or to the group as ’Little Chris’ or ‘Other Chris’ (all the good nicknames were apparently taken…).

Now, at this time Chris was, unfortunately, not a great Pool player and he most certainly could not hold his liquor, but what he could do, what he could do better than anyone else in the ‘Pork Pie Club’ and possibly better than anyone else at their University, was program. He’d been programming for years and could code in VB, Java, C, C++ and most likely many more besides. Clearly, him and Jim had a lot to offer each other. Many games of pool and even more pints of beer, plus one rather dubiously completed Java coursework, followed and not only were the two now friends, but ‘Chris’ had become known as ‘Sid’ (now that’s a much better nickname isn’t it?).

After introducing Sid to the rest of the team, some modest plans were made for the next project. It was a top down, 2D, flash style affair that could be completed very quickly and would be a stepping stone to the next, more modern and professional, game. Those more avid readers of this here website will know that, in typical Psync style, it didn’t quite work out that way…

…

Anyway, that brings us up to date. It’s 2010 and not only can Sid handle his drink a lot better and play a mighty fine game of pool, but we’ve also nearly finished our first attempt at a game since we grew into a five piece band. If all goes well ’BL!TZ: Requiem’ will be finished and released soon, then we can get on to the next stage of Psync Interactive, which will hopefully lead to that shelf in HMV before we’re too long in the tooth. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, back in the 90’s (pretty much all of it) the four of us who would one day found Psync Interactive were more or less only interested in one thing… playing Worms. Starting with Worms United and eventually moving on to Worms Armageddon we more or less became obsessed. It’s fair to say, without any exaggeration, that we could have given anyone on the planet a hell of a game and probably won. Actually, scrap that, stuff the modesty, we’d have ripped them to pieces and made them wish they’d never heard of the game in the first place! If there is such a thing as a professional Worms player then we were it. We were monsters and at times (most of the time actually) we hated each other because of it. Were we really friends back then? It’s possible that our feelings towards each other were more like the mutual respect shown by rival sportsman than actual friendship, but nonetheless we did spend a lot of time together, even if it was spent trying to massacre each other’s teams in the most embarrassing ways possible.

There irritatingly came a point in time when we finally realised that we had something of a problem and had to agree to stop playing for the good of the group. There’s only so many times a man can cope with waking up in the middle of the night screaming, because someone’s just placed a cluster bomb on his last worm’s head, before he starts to question his sanity. So, we put our lives as they were then to one side and started trying to get real ones. This amongst many other things, involved us forming Psync Int.

Fast forward to the time when we were finishing our degrees and we’d found a new lead programmer who needed an introduction to the group. We started talking about the ‘good old days’ and what games we used to like and then inevitably, we broke out Worms and started again. Fortunately, the craze didn’t last as long or become quite the obsession it had been before… otherwise I most likely wouldn’t be writing this now. In fact it had a much more positive effect on the group and led us to start a new project with the aim of providing the sort of entertainment that our beloved Worms had given us over the years.

Now, back to the present and our latest project, known as ‘BL!TZ: Requiem’, is a four player non network game just like the original ‘you know what’, but that’s pretty much where the comparison ends. If I was pressed to suggest similar games to our new one then I would struggle a bit, but I’d say it’s somewhere between Bomberman, Speedball and Thrill Kill… how good does that sound?

Progress, as I mentioned earlier, is going really well. The game is in fact now playable and we had our first test run just weeks ago, something that we all enjoyed massively, even if it did bring back the fear that we’d stop making games to become full time players again. Updates will surely follow and a download isn’t a million miles away either.

Just a word of warning though, you will need a friend or two if you want to play it. We could have got into making it a network game and adding artificial intelligence for computer controlled players, and one day we may well do that, but quite frankly, right here and now we’ve got bigger fish to fry. There’s a spot on a shelf in HMV with our name on it and we won’t be forgetting that any time soon.