28th September 2018 - Unique Mechanics

Submitted by @Firecakes

What is a system that is pretty unique in a game you play that you think would be cool to see in other games? Ex. I like how gemcraft lets you interact with the wave markers by more than just speeding up the waves, such as via gem bombing.

TisoLast Friday at 19:27
I want to see realistic gunhandling controls like in Receiver be implemented in other shooters. Or weapon degradation in far cry 2. It leads to tense moments and really makes me care about my weapon.
Mad PigeonLast Friday at 19:29
As a programmer I love the system that is present in a game called "Else Heart.Break()", it allows you to code things in player character's world as a game mechanic and it's fascinating. I realize that this is a pretty heavy thing to implement and it will get a lot of attention to itself and might make other parts of the game obsolete, but I'd love to see it in more games, maybe in smaller portions at first.
Even if in games you had to code for real in some parts that would be pretty interesting, if you really had ability to hack something, as opposed to playing a minigame. It has to be skippable for the majority of people and there has to be enough prior information in the game to figure it out, but if I could finish this optional quest and get some extra lines that make the game world all the more rich? I'd definitely play more of that.
Another cool aspect of a game, not sure that it's a system is present in several games, but produces the same or very similar effect. I'm talking about mind blowing effect when you realize that the game is bigger than it seemed. All it takes is to set initial boundaries and break them later. It's done multiple times in "Antichamber", it's done pretty masterfully in "Nier: Automata" and even in Metroid when you discovered some new game mechanics that were not over-tutorialized and required at all times, you'd get yourself more abilities when replaying since you as a player know how to wield the character better. It's a powerful feeling and it always makes you question whether you've discovered everything.
TisoLast Friday at 19:37
I also love shadwen's rewind feature where you at any point in time can just rewind to a previous point of time and not make the same mistake without having to play to the same point from a checkpoint or quickloading.
FirecakesLast Friday at 19:56
This is expanding on the example I gave earlier. GemCraft is a series of tower defense games, and like all tower defense games the enemies you fight come in waves. In most other TD games the wave markers are just for visualization so that you can prepare yourself for what's coming up next, and the newer games let you speed up the rate at which the waves come. GemCraft takes this several steps further.

The waves are represented as a stack of stones on the screen, each stone moving upwards until they reach the top of the screen, which will cause it to break and start the wave. In addition to pausing and speeding up the waves by X times, you can also click on a stone in the stack, which will force it to slide all the way to the top, breaking all other stones above it. You can summon 5 waves in rapid succession by clicking the 5th stone down the stack.

Most of your ability to fend off enemies comes in gems that you place in towers that fire at them. You're able to sacrifice a gem for a substantial amount of damage by dropping it on the enemies directly. This is known as gem bombing. You're also allowed to gem bomb a wave stone. By doing this, you "enrage" a wave, giving the enemies more hp, defense, count, etc. The purpose of this is mainly for gaining extra XP. In higher levels of play, 10s of gems can be bombing every wave, which gets tedious quickly. This annoyance may be remedied in the next release of GemCraft by placing a gem in a socket above the wave markers, which will automatically enrage all waves that follow, the intensity of which will depend on the quality of the gem.

The additional physical interactions of the wave markers allow for greater expression of play, and it rewards the player for accurately gauging how much load their defense can take without accidentally being overwhelmed. These features are also not required to use, so that newer players don't need to be concerned with such complexity early on.
ArgoLast Friday at 19:57
@Mad Pigeon I know a game similar to this, its definetly simpler though. Its called Hack nSlash

As for me ive always adored the weapon and equipment variety in custom robo arena.
I wouldnt call the game a masterpiece by any means, but I get the feeling they really went ham with those weapons,
for example there are weapons that exclusively shoot in an arc to the right or left. In this game it makes sense for the topdown view, so you can shoot around walls and obstacles but I would really love to see some more of these highly situational weapons build into other games. It would greatly break up the monotony of just firing the same weapons over and over again and you could find your own niche playstyle instead.

Another sadly pretty much dead game I loved is S4League, its movement system is my favourite across any game, right up there with Warframe. Movement is what we do in games, so i would very much encourage movement systems that feel responsive fast and fun to get around with.

Actually in line with custom robo arenas customization aswell, God Eater series, employs a bullet creation system that lets you customize how your bullets work to a great extend. If I had to pick a system which I would love to see elsewhere it is definetly this one. You really have to experience it for yourself to get this. But I love the bullethell genre like Touhou, and if I could have a bullethell game that lets me customize the way my shots and ultimate attacks work, i could die happy. But alas ive been searching for years and not found the one, so im actually planning to make it myself in the future if I have to (Yes my obsession goes that far)
FirecakesLast Friday at 20:43
To the weapon degradation comment, breath of the wild handles this very well. There's always a disadvantage in picking a stronger weapon, in that it will break and you won't be able to have it for other encounters.

Another game that achieves a similar effect is Blinx, way back in the original Xbox. In that game, you pick up trash around the world using a time controlling vacuum cleaner and fired that trash at enemies. The trash gets stored in a stack, meaning the most recent trash you pick up gets fired first. Since this is how you kill enemies, it makes you strategize not only which trash to use to shoot at enemies (some are more powerful, some take out specific enemies better), but it also makes you think about the order in which you pick it up.

On top of that, any remaining trash you have at the end of the level gets converted into gold, which further encourages optimizing picking up stuff. You'd want to pick up valuables early on and then pad it with lots of junk for ammo so you can keep your precious stuff for the end.
ArgoLast Friday at 22:11
Well since I was just playing it The Binding of isaac item synergies.
In most games it would be harder to implement but synergies always add complexity that will give the game longevity