Friday, October 24, 2008

Metamorphosis


When I design gameplay rules I often use comic strips to capture the essence of the rule. By 'essence' I mean, the important element of the rule. For example this comic strip shows the rule of metamorphosis. When the three monsters (Brown, Orange, and Gray) step on a certain metamorphosis-box, they will shape-shift. One of them will shape-shift to be Antler Ancestor and the other two will be little flies. They follow Antler Ancestor around, wherever he goes. When all three are close enough to each other the transformation goes back to three monsters. See, it's so much easier to convey all this information in a comic strip.

3 comments:

Louisload said...

Great method!

Heather Conover said...

Wonderfully creative method. Game mechanic storyboards. Brilliant!

Bernhard Schulenburg said...

It really helps getting stuff down quickly and it also gives you a feeling of what works and what doesn't. So it's a little like 'rapid prototyping'. This method, where you design applications with sheets of paper, displaying the menus and options, and stuff like that.