Game Dev Story

Following the meeting with Vertical Slice, they recommended looking at Game Dev Story (for iPhone/iPod Touch) so I have! Interesting that in the game they start with the scenario, when at NCsoft the scenario seemed to come last and be  subject to change.

Two major things I noticed immediately:

1. It sucks you in. None of the actions take very long, but there's always another action to take. No convenient pause/break points. And suddenly an hour has gone. 
2. The in-game time display. You have a simple display in the top left: Y10 M4 W2, and then a little tiny dot indicating how far through the week you are. Quite effective, but I didn't notice it too much. I'm not sure if that's because it only seems to be relevant for when you pay your staff, and if it had more effect I'd have noticed it more. Still, I thought it was an interesting UI design for the passing of time. 

Game start options

I tried playing a game called 'Campaign Game' (http://www.kongregate.com/games/thup/campaign-game/?) to look at multi-player flash games, which had an interesting start-up setup.

Initially I was offered a choice between multi-player and single player modes - so having both is not uncommon or infeasible. Then when I got to the multi-player set up, it told me how many people were currently playing in how many games, and how many games were waiting to kick off. In a 'lobby' effectively. The other thing it allowed was the option to create or join a password protected game.

Those options appear to cover the following options rather well:

1. You want to play alone.
2. You want to play against someone else, but you don't care who. 
1. A minimum number is required for a game.
2. If a game is still in the right stage and below the maximum you could join an existing game.
3. You want to play against your friends and only your friends. 

Sweet! Answers a few things I'd been struggling with how to design in!