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What makes a great "short" game? [roundtable]
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Ending. That is a major factor in making a short game great. Something like Journey or The Swapper. Two games that knew what they wanted to do, had the player spend some time reaching for it, and as soon as you reached out and touched it the game ended. You didn't spend hours on hours trying to get there, you weren't lost in the haze of information, you didn't reach a goal only for the game to blow it up and give you a new ultimate goal. The carrot was on the stick, 3-4 hours later you got it, congrats on your rabbit food.
I'd compare it to a professional athelete. Michael Jordan's career could be a great way of putting it. Starts out hyped, you see the goal, you reach the goal, suddenly you are playing Baseball, then you go back, reach your goal again, now you're spending years after your peak playing so badly people don't even talk about it to this day.
RPGs suffer from this a lot. You set out on your journey. Something has done wrong to you, your village, or somebody. So you start going after it. Then the game starts peeling away the layers of the conflict and you realize there is more to the story. Suddenly you've become powerful enough to beat your enemy! GAME SHOULD END AFTER YOU BEAT THEM!! But it doesn't (?!), because there's this new, overseer villain. One you get a few hours building up. It cheapens the original conflict greatly, provides little satisfaction, and then you just spent 60+ hours on it. |
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It's tough to pin down what makes a short game good, but here are my thoughts. I'm going to use an example of a game that is great partially because it is short, and a game that could have been better if it was shorter. Through these two examples, I feel like my thoughts on what makes a short game good have been explained.
A great short game fits well with its length. It chooses to end at that point because it has executed all of its ideas, or the mechanics would grow tiresome if it continued, or for some other appropriate reason. What's important to me is that the game feels well designed and it feels like it should end when it does, whether that be at 4 hours in or 40 hours in. Thinking of one of my favorite games, Space Channel 5 Part 2, that game is only 2 hours or even shorter, but it feels complete. I don't feel like it skimmed on content. It is a finished work that is small in size but dense in quality and fun. Such an extreme level of care was put into every song, every level, every moment. It's well rounded: nothing drags and no aspect or part feels inferior to another. It left me wanting more, but I feel like it had enough. Because of this, I've played through the entirety of that game at least 8 times in the 10 or so months that I've had it. I know that I can pick up that game any time and get through it in one sitting and have a blast.
Or maybe I just really liked Space Michael Jackson.
Then I think of El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, a beat 'em up game that I like, but I feel is too long. This is a good example of a game that should have been short, but wasn't. It took about 9 or 10 hours for me to beat, but it really should've taken only 5 or 6. The reason it lasted so long is because the levels last twice as long as they should without any change to justify it. You fight the same enemies in every level over and over again. While the levels are very fun and beautiful at first, by the time I'm 2/3 the way through one, I just want it to end already. I think I would have enjoyed that game a lot more if it was shorter. I would actually get more playtime out of that game if it was short, because I would replay it more. I don't want to replay the game as it is because I don't want to deal with how the levels feel monotonous after a while. If the levels were shorter, I could easily see myself replaying it 2 or 3 times in the near future.
Basically, making a game short gives you the opportunity to make it a better, more solid experience that people will want to come back to.
To use an analogy, I'd rather fight with a sharp dagger than a dull sword. While the dull sword is bigger, it's not going to be as effective as the dagger. Okay, maybe that isn't a very good analogy. |
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