Week 07 - Always Booyah! Back

Let’s talk about Splatoon this week, specifically how everyone might interpret its design. Let’s get a little help with a bit of writing from “The essence of Splatoon, and what it gets right” written by Christian Nutt for Game Developer/Gamasutra, too. While I did base my prototype on the second game and the writing is about the original, the core components of the first Splatoon are simply improved in the sequel. 

When I first thought of the game, the visuals and tone were the big things I needed to emulate. Nutt described the energy as “too enticingly vibrant and au courant to ignore.” I have to agree. The chaotic and colorful nature is integral to the game’s form, and it wouldn’t feel like a Splatoon-based design if I didn’t add that in some way. That inevitably manifested in being able to throw things around at the enemy team and making the player experience all about having fun.

“Thanks to the ink, weaponry can take forms that are uncommon in shooters,” the author stated as he moved onto gameplay. Now this, this type of thinking is how I went about cherry picking my favorite aspect. It’s not a conventional shooter, so I’m not going to make my design one either. The special weapons you get are based on how much turf you cover—translated to dice rolls in my design—and they’re awfully game-changing when used right. Designing the tug-of-war aspect of inking turf didn’t sound as appealing to me.

I had my main idea at this point, so now all I needed was a system to implement these ideas. Just like the previous points, Nutt and I both agreed on two things. One, “both fighting and avoiding battle are valid strategies”, and two, “the game incentivizes painting, not killing.” The former point was something I had from the start. I realized that offense-only play captured some people’s experience with the game but not my own. Defense should be a valid strategy to keep the enemy from scoring. 

The latter point was something brought up to me after our second playtest. I had some skill-based play by letting the players themselves aim and throw objects just as the video game, but I didn’t think about the importance of positioning. The position you play in changes how you’re affected. In some game modes, you’re so spread apart from the enemy that you have a good chance of avoiding them for a long time. I expanded the playing field and created a safety area that earned no points, a middle with one point per surviving player, and a central zone where points are doubled. I also changed the goal from “how many enemies can you take out each turn?” to “how many players can survive each turn?” because you only get to earn these special weapons by participating and inking turf. Each time you get splatted, your meter resets.

The last thing I want to cover is this short quote from Nutt about how a “short match-time and the fact that you never feel "stuck" with underperformers means that the game is like popcorn.” I never got the chance to play a full 6 turn game during playtesting, but maybe I didn’t need it to be that long. Maybe the game should be even quicker, and I should think about a better end goal. The design I made is something that can be played by anyone, but maybe I could find ways to expand the playing board itself for people of high skill levels with barriers and walls that make taking enemies out harder.