Yesterday’s post was a little wide of the field, more social experiment than design. So today, an actual game. But as I am prone to themes and motif’s, let’s talk a little about chaos. First,s a quick recap of the three laws of thermodynamics, eloquently summed up by C.P.Snow :

1. You cannot win
2. You cannot break even
3. You cannot get out of the game

With the exception of the 3rd Law, this sounds like the design mantra for most of the early arcade video games, with the part of entropy played by waves of Space Invaders, or an unending rain of Nuclear Missiles. Of course, all that was required to get out of the game was to run out of quarters.

But today we focus on the Second Law: You cannot break even. Things fall apart. Entropy, as a measure of chaos. In physics, this means that in a closed system, entropy always increases toward maximum.

In video games, it generally means blowing stuff up.

This may be a bit glib. An explosion is most certainly a rapid increase in local entropy, but as a game mechanic, it is frequently employed to clear the board, imposing a new sort of order.

But let’s stay focused. People like blowing things up [in video games, he said, hoping to avoid “domestic surveillance”]; taking something ordered and rapidly reducing it to a disordered state, preferably with 6.5 surround sound and big subwoofers, be it robots, Nazis, alien spaceships or simple barrels.

The goal of today’s design is to refine that impulse to it’s pure form.

Urban Renewal: Expert Demolitions

So ‘fess up; at least once you’ve taken time out of your busy day to watch a link sent by a friend of a large building being taken down by a demolition crew. It’s called implosion, but I have it on good authority that it is actual explosions doing most of the work.

The game puts you in charge of a demolitions crew that works to take down unsafe buildings and clear areas for urban renewal.

I am such a liar. This is really a puzzle game. It is a puzzle game on at least two levels. Level one is simple determining how to use your available kit of explosives to successfully implode the building. Level two is properly placing the charges to keep surrounding buildings from taking damage.

Each building has it’s own unique construction which requires study and proper placement of charges to bring down. Some are very sturdy, some prone to fall the wrong way, some so rickety that navigating them to place the charges is its own death defying event. Eventually, you may be taking down groups of buildings.

You have a changing but limited palette of devices, in the early game because you are a small, poor company, later because of zoning restrictions and worries of collateral damage. Some devices may require wires to be strung, some are wireless, some charges are set so they trigger other nearby charges.

Each demolition site has it’s own challenges. Early in the game, you are dropping a single building in a vacant lot, as you progress, larger building, smaller lots, more neighbors, nearby buildings, bridges, train lines etc.

Additionally you are commanding a crew, small at first, which grows with your success. Each crewmember has a unique personality, skills and flaws. The flaws can be very dangerous in this business, so there is plenty of room for drama, excitement and tragedy. If only Johnson had given up smoking!

The explosion, when it comes is the cookie, but man, what a cookie it is. While most explosions in games are over in a matter of a couple of seconds, this gets the royal treatment, the countdown, the “all-clear” siren, and then an extended orgy of dust, fire, multiple charges and collapsing. With option for slo-mo replay. Unless, of course, you fail it. As rewarding as a flawless demolition can be, I can imagine that the failure states would be quite rewarding too, in a “oh cr*p!” kind of way. As in, “Oh cr*p! I just dropped a hotel on the Mayor’s Penthouse!”

It’s a first person Incredible Machine with high explosives. Can you reset and retry? Tough call. I think so. It reduces the drama, but the “let’s see what happens if I do it this way,” mechanic, coupled with the big cookie at the end demands it.

It might also be possible to use the build-up before the detonation to do a bit of pre-rendering or precalculating. These explosions have to be visually amazing.

The game has to focus on the benefit of bringing down these unsafe structures.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow, Order gets its turn in the limelight.

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.