Unlocking features of a game

Game Play & Game Design
#1

I’ve made a game where as the player completes a level the next one is unlocked (like most games), and I use this to ease the player into the increasing difficulty of the game.
For example new obstacles and/or objectives are introduced incrementally meaning in the beginning the game is very basic (get from A to B) and towards the end there are game mechanics such as collecting items and unlocking doors. This all works reasonably well.

Now I want to extend the game with four new levels that aren’t part of the “normal” sequence of levels, they’re time-trial levels that you’re supposed to play not to unlock the next one but to try to improve on your previous time.
I don’t want these levels to be exclusive to players that have finished the normal levels, but at the same time I’m worried that introducing them from the get go will make the game not only seem too difficult but also take away a bit of the “exploring” gained by incrementally giving the player new features.

How should I introduce my time-trial levels?

#2

For every N regular levels you unlock 1 time trail.

#3

That’s what I was planning, but that means that if I want the user to “discover” new things in the normal levels as they progress, any time-trial level unlocked can’t contain any game-play mechanics not yet found in normal play.

#4

Would that be so bad? Besides, you can make the time trials in such a way that you have multiple options, depending on your knowledge of features. That way you keep your time trials interesting enough to do replays, because people learn new tricks to solve the trail in previously unknown ways, drastically improving their time.

#5

I like Rivens Idea.
The player has to play the first (for example) 5 levels, where he learns the verry basics (movement, obstacles…) and can use this knowledge in the first time-trial level.
In the next levels he will learn how to unlock doors and how to use some items and he can use this knowledge in the next time-trial level.
Maybe he also learns some new “skills” (double-jump or some thing like that) and can use this to discover “hidden ways” in previous time-trial levels to be even faster.

This adds an additional “discover-feeling” to the time-trial levels, as there are more different ways to the goal, which can only be reached with more advanced (and maybe more difficult) maneuvers.

#6

I would just make all the time trial challenges available from the start, but clearly label them “easy”, “medium”, “hard” etc. so the player knows what they’re getting into.

If the worry is that they’d immediately go and peek at the top one and it would spoil the surprise of the kind of enemies or whatever they might face later, I think for me it would work the other way. I’d be more incentivised to play through the training campaign to learn how to beat the cool-but-difficult stuff I’d seen. Also as the posters above said to learn how to pwn the easy stuff instead of just scraping through it :smiley:

As a player another good thing about having them all available is that I could go straight into the challenges if I’d played through the training campaign in the past on a different machine or with a different profile. I wouldn’t have to trudge through it again.

I guess a halfway-house could be unlock all the “easy” time-trial challenges at the start, then unlock “medium” when all the “easy” had been completed in some scratch time, and so on.

The time-trial challenges would then effectively be an alternative way of gradually learning the game mechanics, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. I mean it might turn out that your time-trial mode was much more fun than your campaign mode, and if player word-of-mouth focused on that, then forcing new players through the less-fun campaign could hinder the viral success of the overall package…

#7

Unlock the time trials when the user achieves something like they complete a level under a certain time. Then the time trials are only unlocked for users who will manage to do them.

#8

Thank you for the comments, everyone. I’m going to do a mix between the things you’ve suggested and I am going to abandon my idea of not revealing game-mechanics “too early” and take your advice that it’s just making the player more keen on unlocking further levels.

#9

Players might get pissed off an not being able to use everything in the game. Tutorial stuff for new functions is only really needed at the beginning when you are totally new, let the user try the other stuff out themselves. I don’t think i received a little tutorial on how to use the hookshot in zelda, or did i? Let them use trial and error.

#10

I take your point and I think it’s valid in the case where the features refer to stuff the player can do.
In my case the features are more like additional types of obstacles and problems to solve in the game, so that’s why I was looking to have them introduced to the player incrementally.