Introspection into my game design process, the conceptualisation, prototyping and playtesting in the span of 2 days.
Context
Chair Spinning Simulator 2021 is a comedic game where you try to spin a chair as fast as possible within 60 seconds. The game plays as it is titled, and was developed for the Kenney Game Jam 2021 with the theme: Rotation. The game jam lasts over a weekend (2 days). This was the first game I made in 3D so it was very exciting new ground for me to cover.
All in all, the game did reasonably well:
Out of 366 entries in the jam, this lands the game in snugly in the lower end of the top 10% which is a great achievement for me!
The game has received generally good feedback which I will talk discuss about down the line.
The gameplay design is extremely simple with little depth – simply spin the chair by dragging with your mouse. And when you do so at the perfect time, your spins are even stronger ie. Perfect spins. These are done by timing your spins with the sound of the ‘woosh’ of the chair.
So why did this game work? How did I come about this idea?
The Actual Process
When it came down to the brainstorming, I prefer working alone but am amicable to suggestions. In this case, I worked on the ideation phase alone. I jot down ideas on paper any words that come to mind related to rotation and ideas may or may not be related to each other. The unfiltered ideas I came out with were:
- Rotating entire screen, mimicking trying to get something out, like getting a coin out of a tin can
- Rotate camera
- Rotate a wheel to drive a car
- Drifting, controlled by rotating a wheel on the UI
- Iceskating
- MMO skill rotations
- Twirling someone in an office chair
- Rotate a wheel to control a ship, with clunky & physics based movement
- Spinning a top (beyblade)
- Grinding flour by rotating the wheel
- Use mouse to rotate a wheel
- Rotate a cuppa’ tea to face the right way before serving to customers
- Spin basketball
Notably in bold, was the idea I landed on. While this is no longer chronogically accurate, what is definitely true is the fact that the idea of spinning a chair occurred somewhere in the middle of the brainstorming process. I’ve made several mistakes in the past of making decisions too quickly and ending up with a half-baked idea that I tossed aside and lost precious time so this was me making up for that.
However, I remember how I physically laughed when I jotted the idea of twirling a chair as an entire game and that was when I knew this idea was a good one (although I only decided on it after allocating at least 30 minutes of unfiltered brainstorming).
Coming up with the idea of twirling someone in an office chair was primarily due to past experience with spinning my friends in an office chair and trying to get them to puke, or at least horribly nauseated when they get off. Fond memories they were, I tackled this idea to explore that child-like state of mind, a better time of lesser pain.
Ultimately, that became the design pillar with this game: Designing with child-like wonder.
But what does child-like mean to you, or in this case, to me?
Designing with personal experiences
If you’re familiar with game design conceptualisation, you’re going to be familiar with the idea that game designers have to be present in their day-to-day lives; analytically and mentally. Games have been postulated to be an emulation of real-life systems, so being a game designer is analogous to being a systems designer – understanding and distilling real world systems into play mechanics. By breaking down real world systems, we train ourselves to have the skillset to understand where fun is derived from and being critical about breaking down specific game mechanics.
Of course, game design extends beyond just play mechanics – and the heart of this post-mortem is to tackle this: the dramatic aspect of the game. The narrative design, the backstory, the premise and the characters, designing to insight particular emotions and invite the players to escape to a different life – a brief respite from the harsh reality that is life.
When I said I designed the game with child-like wonder: what that meant to me was exaggeration, adrenaline and wanderlust. I had been exposed to Anime in my childhood in all its splendour up to my adulthood and on the surface, mainstream anime (the ‘shounen‘ genre to be specific) ticks all these boxes. While I did not directly inject them directly, I was definitely influenced by the energy that they carry.
While it was not a deliberate decision to include these ‘anime’ moments at the time of design, looking back now, I realised I’d have subconsciously injected my love for anime into this game regardless.
Earthquakes, Rockets and the End of the World (by spinning chair)
The game was initially designed to have earthquakes, chairs-becoming-rockets and taking down airplanes in its final design to ascentuate the sheer kinetic force the chair is at high speeds. Much of realism was thrown out the window when I went down this direction of design.
Alas, because the game jam only had 2 days – I could only implement one of it.
The decision to include these effects was to emphasis on the ‘anime exaggeration’. During the game jam development, I had never considered these as important but in the process of the post-jam development of the game, I’ve come to recognise how crucial they are to delivering the ideal experience of this ‘anime exaggeration’.
This is well supported by the comments on the game jam page complimenting the subtle details such as room shaking and the camera zooming out at high chair spinning speeds. So this may, in turn, be the design direction of choice for the post-game version to come.
Formal Aspects of the game – Ie. Parts to improve
I had decided the game to be a highscore chaser at the beginning of the design process. This was a decision from simply wanting to finish something in the least amount of time given that the game jam only lasts for 2 days.
As a game jam submission, a highscore chaser objective also works because it ties in directly with the game’s main core loop: spin the chair. However, this is insufficient to generate enough interest for the player to dedicate their time into it. This is well reflected in the relatively lower gameplay score.
If I were to criticise the game, I would first note the lack of depth in the game. For example, the lack of a progression system to help guide the players towards the end game, or give them enough motivation to try for a high score. Things like a shop, or upgrades to encourage replayability and repeat runs.
The lack of a leaderboards was also dentrimental to its identity as a highscore chaser game – there’s no point in highscores if there’s no one to share it with.
There is an inherent difficulty scaling with the current game mechanics, as the chair spins faster, the window for a perfect spin becomes smaller and smaller – and so players have to master the timing to get high scores.
These were the multiples of ways I could improve depth in the game and generate long-term playtime, however, I am still considering that they may not fit with the final game design I have in my head. I don’t think simply fitting in these features would finalise the game.
Conclusions: Designing to Fit, and the future
Bringing everything together, I’ve been approaching this game with a child-like wonder to it to bring out an ‘anime’ feel to it. I’ve wanted players to play the game to have a good laugh, not neccesarily to have extreme mechanical mastery or the sorts. In Layman’s terms, I may have been approaching the game design wrongly in contrast to what I want to achieve in the player ideal experience.
The final experience in my head is ideally a more casual experience. The game is meant to be experienced once or twice before putting it down. Herein I came to the conclusion, that I may end up removing most of the mechanics that add to replayabilty as I believe they do not contribute significantly to the ideal player experience I am working to deliver.
As of now, my work on the current post-jam version is turning itself to be a highscore chaser. Though, I am also knees deep in working to make this game a much more bigger, full-fledged game to put on Steam. When it comes to that, it is very likely I will revisit the core design of the game and make proper amendments, especially with regards to having it approach the casual player better.
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