Let's Undo the Time Warp

October 1

A new call for game idea submissions is coming up on Wednesday, October 3rd... post your ideas in this thread to start brainstorming and getting feedback now!

The submission prompt will be: Using 300 characters or less, describe an idea for a Puzzle Clubhouse game in which the player must turn off a time machine which has gotten into a loop. Change the past in order to stop the machine from being turned on. Be as creative as you can!

deathbow · October 3

Fix the machine in the least tries. Levers are adjusted to 1 of X numbers. If the combination is wrong, a crazy historical person appears (gladiator, caveman, etc). Different character combinations interact in zany ways, endangering the player more with each attempt. Higher levels have more levers.
In a timed game, you must navigate to the end of a hallway and twist a series of knobs on the machine, and hit a button. Each time you fail, the level repeats the same way, but Jasper is dressed, and talks, very differently (cowboy, Egyptian, etc). Higher levels, add steps or decrease time.

Nozcumber · October 3

I was thinking maybe of a time machine central to the screen, with time periods that change the background on a loop. For this crude mock-up I've just used a common phone box to represent the time machine. Excuse the crudity of the model - I didn't have time to build it to scale.

As for the game idea itself, I was thinking......nah, that would never work... Anyone got any ideas?

Laura · October 3

One of our hopes with Episode 3 is to ease up on the art and animation workload -- @Brittany and @Chez have been really busy creating new PCH rooms, arting up the Woe Goggles and Transplanar Bat of Whiffling, and bringing Episode 2's special guest star to life! We came pretty close to adding an extra constraint to the game idea prompt specifying that the entirety of the game would have to take place in a single location, to try and limit the amount of background art we'll need to create this time around. The trouble is, with time travel involved, the same location can end up looking very different, to the point that it might as well be an entirely different place. =P

So when you're coming up with game ideas, keep this in mind -- if you can find ways to cleverly limit the amount of art assets your game will need, or to rely on art that can be supplied by community members, we'll feel a lot more comfortable letting your game idea through to voting. This is a Call for Submissions where we may have to ask people to make changes to their submissions to help bring down scope. The earlier you submit your game idea, the sooner we can message you with any changes that may be needed, if we think it would be out of scope. If you have any questions feel free to ask em here or message me!

For example, having a game with lots of different background art is very doable, if we were to send out a Call for Submissions for game background images from different time periods and get the background images that way. Having game characters from different time periods or different historical costumes for Jasper is much trickier, because it's harder to have the community submit art assets for those things that we could use without additional processing (i.e. articulation and animation on game characters and outfit pieces).

Kale · October 3

I think I may have two ideas...

Assuming I can fix some kinks with my second idea would anyone be willing to post it?

Kale · October 3

Idea #1 is simple and sort of Arcade-y

Jasper accidentally falls through a hole or off a cliff or something. Just before he hits the ground, he turns on a time machine to go back in time to before he fell. But there isn't enough power! He only goes back a few seconds and is still falling. But those few seconds give him time to try to quickly rewire the time machine to use its power more efficiently and trigger again before he hits the bottom. He'll need to do this repeatedly until he does well enough to warp all the way to when he was on solid ground and can turn off the time machine.

The playing board is a grid where some lines are open and some are blocked. You drag a wire from the Battery to the Switch. The path you take is up to you, but you can't cross the wire and the longer the wire is the more power you'll get. Find the longest path that you can and flip the switch before you hit the ground to keep rewarding time towards safety!

EDIT: The grid doesn't sound interesting enough. I think that instead the board should have a bunch of pegs and you're basically pulling a rubber band around them. So touch a peg 'anchors' the wire there and you pull it to another peg, making sure not to cross the wire. Eventually you pull the wire to the switch and that determines how far back you rewind.

Nozcumber · October 4

Laura said:

One of our hopes with Episode 3 is to ease up on the art and animation workload -- @Brittany and @Chez have been really busy creating new PCH rooms, arting up the Woe Goggles and Transplanar Bat of Whiffling, and bringing Episode 2's special guest star to life! We came pretty close to adding an extra constraint to the game idea prompt specifying that the entirety of the game would have to take place in a single location, to try and limit the amount of background art we'll need to create this time around. The trouble is, with time travel involved, the same location can end up looking very different, to the point that it might as well be an entirely different place. =P

No worries. Not the first time I've seen gameplay resources cut for pretty presentational elements ;)

As you say, backgrounds might be doable by the community and perhaps a good experiment of trying them out on something bigger - a full screen backdrop might give @postArgus, @Werehare and the guys a chance to flex their artistic muscles even further, and give later episodes opportunities for more scope. Or be too intimating, in which case it was a good trial and can be ruled out in future.

In terms of characters - just how restricted are we, @Laura?

Is a single one possible - replicated, like a generic monkey or scientist to form the chains?
Second idea - a bit more complicated. *This is real time travel*. At the kickstarter launch, @Jesse talked about republishing episodes with new content (the example given was fish hats). Is that still on the table? If so, could we have generic silhouettes for characters now (i.e. a blacked out existing one), that get replaced later with characters produced in future episodes, like special guest star, Mr. Rollins, marketing penguin, etc.

E.g.

Jasper: "Who are these guys?"

Cornelius: "Why, these are characters from your future episodes, Jasper."

Nozcumber · October 4

"(J)asper and (C)ornelius hold onto a central time-machine - or they do when the user holds down their keys. As the backgrounds phase in and out of alternative time zones, use your finger placement to grab escapee monkeys like (Z)ed and (P)am, and chain up to bring them all back to the present day." [299 chars]

Laura · October 4

Nozcumber said:
In terms of characters - just how restricted are we, @Laura?
Is a single one possible - replicated, like a generic monkey or scientist to form the chains?
Second idea - a bit more complicated. *This is real time travel*. At the kickstarter launch, @Jesse talked about republishing episodes with new content (the example given was fish hats). Is that still on the table? If so, could we have generic silhouettes for characters now (i.e. a blacked out existing one), that get replaced later with characters produced in future episodes, like special guest star, Mr. Rollins, marketing penguin, etc.
E.g.
Jasper: "Who are these guys?"
Cornelius: "Why, these are characters from your future episodes, Jasper."

You just blew my mind, Noz. =D

@Dani and @Chez, I'm throwing this one over to you guys... thoughts?

Laura · October 5

deathbow said:

Fix the machine in the least tries. Levers are adjusted to 1 of X numbers. If the combination is wrong, a crazy historical person appears (gladiator, caveman, etc). Different character combinations interact in zany ways, endangering the player more with each attempt. Higher levels have more levers.
In a timed game, you must navigate to the end of a hallway and twist a series of knobs on the machine, and hit a button. Each time you fail, the level repeats the same way, but Jasper is dressed, and talks, very differently (cowboy, Egyptian, etc). Higher levels, add steps or decrease time.

I really like the idea of crazy historical characters and costumes coming into play. We've been talking a lot within the team about art & animation tricks we might be able to use that'd make it possible to draw on community-submitted art for this, which could bring it within scope.

Game-design-wise, it strikes me that for both these game ideas, as a player, being really good at the game doesn't seem like much fun -- the more successful you are at the things you're trying to do, the less cool stuff you get to see. The most interesting things in the game are the things that happen when you fail. It makes me curious about changing what triggers the different zany characters or costumes, to make winning feel more rewarding than losing.

Dani · October 5

@ Nozcumber -- sorry it took a while for us to respond! This prompted a lot of discussion yesterday and we were trying to figure out the best answer :)
re: just how restricted are we
We're going back and forth on this, but we really don't want to put "restrictions" on the community, it's just that we sometimes get worried about the "scope" of the submissions, and whether or not we can make the games in the tight time frames we have in our cycle. I believe that's something we need to figure out internally, rather than putting limitations on the community submissions. Is a single one possible - replicated, like a generic monkey or scientist to form the chains?I think this depends on the game idea, so its hard to say if it would work or not. Something we might be able to do is outsource characters to the community, like we did with the gnomes from episode 2. I don't think we'd want to always limit ourselves to 1 character because of a situation like the gnome game or if something unexpected comes up in our production cycle -- it really is a per idea basis. (wow...I'm sorry that wasn't more helpful...)

Second idea - a bit more complicated. *This is real time travel*. At the kickstarter launch, @Jesse talked about republishing episodes with new content (the example given was fish hats). Is that still on the table? If so, could we have generic silhouettes for characters now (i.e. a blacked out existing one), that get replaced later with characters produced in future episodes, like special guest star, Mr. Rollins, marketing penguin, etc.

We could also do something like the silhouetted future characters, but I think that might be more dependent on the game idea itself....it might not make as much sense in all cases? I think there are a bunch of possibilities, but it is hard to give those specific limitations without seeing some example game game ideas. Personally, I think having the silhouettes as placeholders might seem like a cop-out on our end for making actual content for the game, even if the "future episode characters" idea is pretty funny :) We're also not sure if when we would follow up on these future characters or when we would go back and put in characters. It would be sad to have these remain question marks for an extended period of time. Perhaps it could work as a 're-released episode' or a 're-run' if you will, with some new characters in place...

I'd say just try to keep it in mind that creating something like 20 new characters for a game could be quite time consuming, and that there should always be some sort of middle ground we could meet on to alter the actual submission before voting starts.

Dani · October 5

Also...don't know why all of my formatting is wonky....

deathbow · October 5

Laura said:
Game-design-wise, it strikes me that for both these game ideas, as a player, being really good at the game doesn't seem like much fun -- the more successful you are at the things you're trying to do, the less cool stuff you get to see. The most interesting things in the game are the things that happen when you fail. It makes me curious about changing what triggers the different zany characters or costumes, to make winning feel more rewarding than losing.

I'll do more pondering about this, but also...if it's more fun to fail...is that a problem? I remember playing this arcade game as a kid, called "Jungle King." The most fun thing about that game, was failing. Your Tarzan guy would miss his vine, and land on the ground all twisted up, and just blink at you. My sister and I used to laugh until our bellies hurt. We wasted whole allowances deliberately losing at "Jungle King" because losing was more fun than actually playing (or winning). My 8yo's idea of "playing Skyrim" is to throw his character repeatedly over the waterfall to die.

I'm interested to hear what other people think. Is "winning" more important than "playing?" I've experienced it both ways and found both to be satisfying in certain cases. This does not mean I won't re-work the idea...it's just an interesting philosophical question. ;)

Nozcumber · October 5

Dani said:

Also...don't know why all of my formatting is wonky....

Thanks to you and the guys for giving it some thought. Sorry all the rumination wonked your formats.

Laura · October 5

deathbow said:
I remember playing this arcade game as a kid, called "Jungle King." The most fun thing about that game, was failing. Your Tarzan guy would miss his vine, and land on the ground all twisted up, and just blink at you. My sister and I used to laugh until our bellies hurt. We wasted whole allowances deliberately losing at "Jungle King" because losing was more fun than actually playing (or winning).

Ha, that's brilliant! Especially for an arcade game, like you say. So many of those games had players intensely focused on stretching their quarter as far as possible... I can imagine having people walk away from Jungle King laughing instead of drained probably got other people curious to check it out too.

And yeah, no need to re-work your idea -- I bring it up because it's an interesting thing to talk about. Creating the game idea as-is, I suspect we'd want to start the player out in a situation where they're inevitably going to lose at least a little, so that they get the chance to see the kind of stuff that happens when they do. Both these game ideas are pretty forgiving, allowing you to fail repeatedly without destroying the possibility that you'll eventually succeed. Since we kind of want the player to fail at least a few times, though, in order to have the most fun experience, I wonder if we could integrate that into the gameplay in a way where it's more obviously in the player's interest to do so. And at that point, maybe it's no longer failure, but something else.

Nozcumber · October 5

Nozcumber said:

"(J)asper and (C)ornelius hold onto a central time-machine - or they do when the user holds down their keys. As the backgrounds phase in and out of alternative time zones, use your finger placement to grab escapee monkeys like (Z)ed and (P)am, and chain up to bring them all back to the present day." [299 chars]

I trialled this explanation on my better half. She looked blank. But "like playing twister on the keyboard with your fingers" seemed to make more sense, so it's had a rewrite...

Now I find myself with (community designed) monkeys and scientists to give the levels scope to get harder (only like types chain/get in the way and have to be moved first). And a back story of a time travel experiment room, gone wrong, and scientists stuck in time trying to recapture monkeys that now find themselves in key moments in time...

deathbow · October 5

Since we kind of want the player to fail at least a few times, though, in order to have the most fun experience, I wonder if we could integrate that into the gameplay in a way where it's more obviously in the player's interest to do so. And at that point, maybe it's no longer failure, but something else.

Perhaps the clue to the puzzle is that you pay attention to which characters show up, and that gives you the clues as to how close you are to the right answer. Kind of like hot, hot, cold. You're trying to get them to input a number...so the further away their guess is on the low side, that gets indicated by specific historical figures from the past, and the further away their guess is on the high side, that gets indicated by futuristic outfits/characters. If you see a caveman, you know you're way off. If you see a hippie in a dashiki, you know you're getting close. If you see a robot...you've overshot. (Of course, the danger here is, anyone who has read this thread understands the puzzle...)

Werehare · October 6

Wow. That one was quite difficult to put into 300 words! I submitted this:

"Viewed from above. You step forward (or back) one second at a time.Get Jasper to Cornelius (who is moving) to stop him turning on the machine. If he is to far away then maybe pick up a rollerskate and roll it at him. More complicated levels work like dominoes. Find the chain reaction that works."

I was trying to come up with something that isn't going to be a lot of crazy work and feels very different to the games we have had so far, so this one is turn based. Cornelius is walking to the machine and if he gets to it then the level is reset. You have as many "moves" as Cornelius has steps to the machine. If you can intercept him then it's all good. If not then you must find a way to stop him. Or maybe you have to block his way so he has to take a longer route and give you more time.

From an art asset point of view it should be easier because you will only need little tile items. You could even include laz0r frogz or gnomes as more potential ways to stop Cornelius.

Laura · October 7

Submissions close in ~8 hours, so get your game ideas in!

Kale · October 11

I'm a sad panda that my idea didn't make it. I'm considering making it for iOS or some such. Do people have opinions on whether the 'drag-a-line-between-pegs' mechanic would be fun on a phone-sized touch-screen?

Nozcumber · October 11

Potential community contributions (to help the overworked team out) could be:

Name of game*
4 beautifully drawn backgrounds in time (e.g. ice age, volcano, forest, desert)
13 scientist drawings - arms out
13 scientist names (from a-to-m, e.g. [A]lbert and [E]mmet)
13 monkey drawings - arms out
13 monkey names (from n-to-z, e.g. Project [X] and [Z]aius)
Monkey sounds

*Hmm - time travel, primates, bakers dozen. 13 monkeys?

mr42 · October 12

I've been thinking about on my idea, and I have a few thoughts on how to keep it manageable.

The most scope would be to have every choice change the animation. They least scope would be to have none of the choices affect the animation. We probably want to pick 1 - 3 key points where the choices affect the animation in some way. You also want to lean on VO and small impact art changes for feedback.

Suppose that Jasper an Cornelius were having a running conversation in front of a long control panel, or series of machines. Cornelius flips switches as he goes. At the end the disaster happens and the animation loops. While the animation is looping the player can interact with the environment, dialing dials, and nobbing nobs. the players goal it to take the machine from "Very Unsafe!" to "Ready" before Cornelius flips the switch.

Other possible interactions
Cornelius reaches blindly into a tool box, click on the tool box changes what item is prominent and taken. (wrench, hammer, saw, fish)
Safety first Jasper. Cut to a table with three items (helmet, goggles, pillow). Player can pick one, Jasper wears it, at some point the choice is meaningful.
Click on a plug to plug in a machine (itself, not a character animation)
turn on a fan to blow something out of the way.
click on a duck, it quacks. C:Duck! J:
Any Rube-Goldberg-esque interaction that happens along side the characters. Ball roles, flips the lever, toppling the statue, pressing a button.
In general, small interactions and animations along side the primary animation.

Other thoughts

State could be preserved, or reset each loop. I'd lean toward reset.
The loop point could changed. The loop could get shorter based on your success in the puzzle.
Foreshadowing is cool. Jasper could duck for no reason in the initial loop. C:"why so Jumpy Jasper". Eventually the duck would make sense. Play with time!

Nozcumber · October 12

mr42 said:
I've been thinking about on my idea, and I have a few thoughts on how to keep it manageable.

The most scope would be to have every choice change the animation. They least scope would be to have none of the choices affect the animation. We probably want to pick 1 - 3 key points where the choices affect the animation in some way. You also want to lean on VO and small impact art changes for feedback.

Suppose that Jasper an Cornelius were having a running conversation in front of a long control panel, or series of machines. Cornelius flips switches as he goes. At the end the disaster happens and the animation loops. While the animation is looping the player can interact with the environment, dialing dials, and nobbing nobs. the players goal it to take the machine from "Very Unsafe!" to "Ready" before Cornelius flips the switch.

Other possible interactions
Cornelius reaches blindly into a tool box, click on the tool box changes what item is prominent and taken. (wrench, hammer, saw, fish)
Safety first Jasper. Cut to a table with three items (helmet, goggles, pillow). Player can pick one, Jasper wears it, at some point the choice is meaningful.
Click on a plug to plug in a machine (itself, not a character animation)
turn on a fan to blow something out of the way.
click on a duck, it quacks. C:Duck! J:
Any Rube-Goldberg-esque interaction that happens along side the characters. Ball roles, flips the lever, toppling the statue, pressing a button.
In general, small interactions and animations along side the primary animation.

Other thoughts

State could be preserved, or reset each loop. I'd lean toward reset.
The loop point could changed. The loop could get shorter based on your success in the puzzle.
Foreshadowing is cool. Jasper could duck for no reason in the initial loop. C:"why so Jumpy Jasper". Eventually the duck would make sense. Play with time!

Welcome to the boards, @mr42 :)

Nozcumber · October 13

I was trying to think how a level editor for user generated content might work for (working title) 13monkeys. The example below depicts a front-on view where the time machine always takes position 6, with [c]ornelius and [j]asper on either side for all 4 time zones (if holding tight!).

So in this example you'd need to use your right hand to press and hold [j], then [h], then [i], then [u] then [n] at the correct times, then release [j] on time zone 1 to get all 4 scientists home in 1 go. Your left hand would be collecting up the monkeys. Earlier 'levels' would be more basic of course.

(I'd see number of time zones and number of positions as scalable for increasing challenge, BTW, as well as the mix of monkeys/scientists.)

.

Now, while working this through, I also came up with this (consider as a top-down view):

This structure might be more familiar to anyone lucky enough to have played this year's excellent Fez, but if the puzzle needed to get more complex, we could have the collectables change position with time, instead of stay fixed/appear/disappear. For example above, monkey [z]aius is:

in position 2 when it's time period 1 in the background (imagine the 2D front-on view when looking up the table)
in position 1 when it's time period 2 in the background (looking through, left to right)
in position 10 then it's time period 3 in the background
in position 11 when it's time period 4 in the background

..meaning that entities are always available and which time zone to grab them in would now be important. In which position. And on which side. It also allows for overlap (in one view monkey is in front and can be grabbed, whereas in other view scientist is in front).

This might all be too complex. Or more of a fun puzzle to escalate. Who knows :).

Nozcumber · October 14

Woot! Potential script bookends to the puzzle could be something like:

Jasper and Cornelius walking down a corridor, bantering.
As they do historical objects around them are transforming (pictures/busts/etc.)
Cornelius: "On no - they've escape again"
Jasper: "Who?"
Cornelius opens door: "The science experiments."
Inside the room, cages are open and empty on one side of the room, control panels unmanned on the other, and in the middle a time machine phases in and out.
<play game>
Cornelius: "Ah, temporal order is restored for another Millennium."
As they leave the room, the viewer is treated to a view of the time machine at rest, the rescued scientists in the cages, and the rescued monkeys operating the control panels.

MikeT · October 16

Hey folks, sorry I'm not only late to this party but I'm about to be a major wet blanket (that's what us programmers do.)

We really can't do a game where we require players to hold down more that a few keys at a time. The reason for this is that keyboards have a hard limit on how many keys they'll report to the operating system as active. This is a hardware limitation and actually varies from keyboard to keyboard.

For instance, the keyboard I'm using right now can't send a 'd' when 'a' and 's' are held down, but it can send an 'f'. Since we can't standardize our guests' input devices we have to shoot for a low number of simultaneous keys. Holding ourselves to two at a time would be best, in my opinion.

The good news is that restraints tend to breed creativity and I'm sure with some combination of key-presses and mouse actions we can get a pretty good game a finger twister going.

Discuss...

Nozcumber · October 16

Heh. Well I guess we know when we're trying to push boundaries when we come up against them :) I'd prefer to avoid the mouse input this time, but maybe the puzzle will still work with the characters being operated on a keypress toggle (sticky arms out/unsticky arms in). If that simplifies things too much, perhaps you'd consider prototyping the Fez-like set-up structure to add the complexity there through positional overlaps instead.

Nozcumber · October 16

Number of inputs received to toggle might also be worth displaying, incase it proves a useful stat to base a performance rating on (effectively number of 'moves' for the most elegant solution).

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Let's Undo the Time Warp

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