Dokidoki! Surprises! Where are they

nowadays in mobile era?

Sirawat Pitaksarit5argon.info

exceed7.com

Games of the previous days

• The visual/audio style• Chiptune music (8-bit music)• Pixel art• Game genre (platformer? RPG?)• Surprises!

People are utilizing them

• Pixel art sells like hotcake nowadays. It does not look outdated but instead “flashy”. See 50% of first-era kickstarter game, Shovel Knight, Undertale, Towerfall, Broforce, Tap Titans, FF Exvius, FFATB, Crusader Quest, etc.

• Combining with high frame rate, smooth camera shakes, dynamic lighting it WILL result in eye-catching gameplay.

• 8-bit music also make some return occasionally.• Game genre more or less not invented nowadays, save for

gacha-troop management genre in mobile today that I think is quite rare in NES era. (or none at all?)

• But one aspect that seemed became lost is “surprise”.

Surprises• Is a “fanservice”.• Very rare nowadays especially on mobile.• Maybe because they hold no obvious financial value they

slowly fade away that it becomes a norm that mobile game would not have any surprises, just core experience. (Why should we do additional work!)

• Gacha is not a surprise because I think it is the core system. The result might be surprising but it is far from being “hidden”. (The grand prize is shown to the player even)

• Let’s see some examples?

Mini Games• The true core idea of “mini games” is to give

fanservice. It is very surprising, and makes player go dokidoki!

• That feeling in FF7 when you arrived in Golden Saucer! That advancing troops minigames! The snowboard! The motorcycle!

• Insane trolley minigame in Tomba 2! (excuse me if you don’t know this game, but its final reward is an ingredient for ultimate weapon)

• It seems dumb to implement a mini game surprises in mobile phone. We kind of feeling that it is “too much”.

Hidden Items• There is an armor capsule hidden somewhere in the

stage!• Collecting the gems in Crash Bandicoot.• We see these briefly in Angry Birds, where you can

find golden eggs and access hidden stage. I liked that a lot, I can feel that the creator has the same mindset as me.

• Hidden songs in Cytus where you have to tap certain portion of song’s bg.

• But nowadays it is getting rarer. It feels “absurd” just thinking about adding them.

Extra Area• Most RPGs have post-game dungeons. FF, Pokemon, etc.• New game+?• Hidden bosses!• Super secret shop with fun items! Like black market in Wild Arms.• That feeling when you get an airship in FF games, then you found some strange, odd

and small place that is optional to go or not! (dokidoki!)• Fly the airship to the corner of the world map!• There are many such areas in Zelda! Bombing the cracked wall! Use your end-game

tools to access hidden area in the first village you started out! (dokidoki!)• There is a village! In the dangerous dungeon! (In FF4) Defying the World map <->

Village/Dungeon layer convention! (dokidoki!)• Final Fantasy 5 have 3 fucking worlds. That is completely unexpected when I got the

“first world”’s world map that is already so huge. (ultra dokidoki)

Extra Area• You could implement hidden stage in Candy Crush, with

forked path and bonus stage filled with few colors of candy? (nah, too much work) Or even a second snake map that you can switch to any time but 1 stage unlock for every 100 stages 3 star-ed in the main map. (too much work… why not put those stages in the main map?)

• How about boot the player to the extra stage, with exclusive song, but with 1 health if you get full combo with 95% perfects in LLSIF? (just the core experience sells already so why should they do it for free..)

• No one really “service” players this way now. Instead, events and new contents that is directly related to the game are added which is nothing wrong, but it is not “the old” surprising we used to experience.

Optional Fluffs• Might seems odd if I say this, but many houses and

townspeople in FF, Pokemon is optional.• The text that appears everywhere when you inspect

things in MMBN are optional. It took a lot of efforts to put them in.

• These things are “mildly fun” but at the same time “captivating”.

• Games nowadays does not have much of these things. Only the very core of the game has been extracted and made into the final product.

• Text that shows when you touch your idol in idol music games is kind of this. It adds details to the game.

Unexpected Events• Scripted fights in RPG where you are overpowered but does not result in a

game over. Or a fight that ends half way.• Realizing that you will be fighting Zero. OMG! Isn’t that insanely cool!?• Blues just appears in the middle of the stage and fights you. You have no

idea what the hell is that but it makes you go a little bit dokidoki.• You equipped an unknown item but turns out to be a cursed ring! It can’t

be unequipped until you go back to the town to purify it!• All that bosses with 2nd form.• Another boss just standing behind the first boss! I am screwed! Oh! The

save point just appeared! And that girl can heal me too? (dokidoki!)• That moment when BGM changes in MM Starforce without any

explanation, and the next “random” battle is an insane boss that kills you very quickly! When you thought this might be scripted, you get a game over! Ha ha! WTF!

Unexpected Events• In a single hero, single player game that you have played as that

one character for 40 hours you got captured by the villain, but your younger sister appears and comes to help you. (She is just a side-character before) Just before you think this is a cutscene, your sister is now controllable with new HUD skins even! When you press menu key, you see myriad of sister-unique skills that you cannot access! OMG, fucking cool! But damn, she is only playable on this particular event in an entire game. Wow, the programmer really put a lot of work in this! (And pardon my weird imagination but I really want to make an event in my own game like this..)

• Game these days is pretty much predictable. You might surprisingly lose a game (Candy Crush failed a stage on the final deciding move, running out of health in LLSIF because you sightread and don’t know it is this hard, etc.) , but it is not in a cool way. You know you can lose.

• No dokidoki!!

What should we do!• Does it really not belongs in games today? Maybe it conflicts with many

monetization designs?• I haven’t tried implementing them so I don’t know what is the obstacle, but I am

making this slide because I am looking forward to exploring into them. The area that many overlooked to bring back.

• It is the source of addictive-ness of games in the past, where today I am addicted to the game mainly because of the core design. (Be it exciting like music games, or weirdly flowing auto-battle games or cookie clicker)

• Is it possible to bring that addictive-ness of the past to combine with present day’s design?

• Well, I don’t know until I tried, but I like surprises a lot. And I want to bring them back.

• For starters I want to include a sound room (another staples final unlock in old games, where dev just put a music player with all music in the game. Potentially spoiling the story if unlocked too soon.) in my party game Duel Otters.. (as a hidden area that require absurd amount of play time to go in) yeah pointless to the core gameplay but why not when I meticulously made all the music. Dokidoki!

• Lastly I realized that my grammars, spellings, article usages, etc. are wrong in a lot of places. Sorry for that…