Check out the new minigame design challenge. 

First off, my apologies to everyone who looked for the answers to the challenge last week, due to the overwhelming nature of the response, I’ll be posting these every other week from now on.

The inaugural challenge was a phenomenal experience.  I was having an impossible time deciding between a series of fantastic submissions until two designers from Buzz Monkey Studios swept in at the last minute and took it to the next level.

My Observations:

In an MMO, monsters are puzzles.  It’s just that simple.  What amazed me about today’s submission is the richness 2D lends to the nature of that puzzle.

Because the options are so much more limited in a 2D environment the player is much more likely to understand the designer’s intent, which allows for more intricate battles.  In 3D MMOs it seems as though most of the puzzles are really equipment puzzles rather than battle strategy puzzles, where as in a 2D game with truly real-time combat the puzzles can by dynamic positional and temporal puzzles.

I also found it interesting how many people wanted more ways to interact with a monster than just to kill it.  One of the very clear trends from this week’s set of answers was that monsters that served a dual purpose were "cool."  This is good news for us developers as it means less assets, but I think dual-purposed NPCs are only useful in instances, because no one wants to realize the vendor they were looking won’t respawn for another 30 minutes because somebody needed his boots.

The possible double purposes were:
 

1. Quest Giver
2. Vendor
3. Ally (fights with the party)
4. Buffer
5. Enemy Debuffer
6. Passage Granter (opens up new ways to go)
7. Spawn point controller (turns off or on spawn points for the party)
8. Loot table modifier (if killed other enemies would drop from loot table X, if left alive they would drop from loot table Y).

Another trend is that “people enjoy really clear cause and effect." Participants seemed to favor easy to understand reasons for enemies to spawn that they, as a player, could influence.

And the winners are: