Porter's World

Inspiration

Game inspiration is one of the most important aspects of game design. Inspiration can be found in a wide variety of things, ranging from classic or modern games, to a real life event that you witnessed or read about. Such things help make the designer passionate about the project, and this passion generally fuels a much stronger creative process and higher willpower to complete the project at hand. No matter how well you can program, or how well you can do art, having proper inspiration will definitely boost the outcome of your projects.

There is definitely a difference in flash game design Vs console game design, but that’s an entirely different topic, one to come in a few days at that. Regardless of these differences, inspiration can be found nearly anywhere. I personally find games that reside on the classic systems to hold the most inspiration. Not only are these games the most fun and most challenging, they are the most diverse with their use of basic gameplay mechanics as well as creativity of combining those mechanics. Games such as Shatterhand on the NES executed elements such as platforming, customizable power-ups, gravity switching, boss battles, and much more, something that many games just don’t go to such lengths to do anymore, especially flash games. Although nostalgia definitely plays a part, I think there’s a deeper reason for why games like Super Mario World and Super Metroid are still remembered so well today, they were simply better games with far more thought put into them. I can’t think of a single modern game that captures my imagination as well as Little Nemo: The Dream Master did, and it’s reasons such as this that make classic games far more inspirational for me.

I used the classics as my first example, but that’s definitely not where your inspiration needs to start or stop. I find inspiration in many other games, flash games included. A small list of games that have really reached out to me and sparked my creative process include (but are not limited to), Castle Crashing the Beard, Chronotron, Closure, Don’t Look Back, Drakojan Skies Acolytes, Fishing Girl and RaidenX. All of these games are top notch in production value, but most importantly are incredibly inspirational. When I look at Castle Crashing the Beard, I instantly think of River City Ransom for the NES and what could be done to combine these two games. The smooth 2D fighting Castle Crashing the Beard offers, combined with the RPG elements, variety of attacks, and explorative gameplay River City Ransom offers would create one of the best flash games the net has ever seen. It’s this kind of inspiration that game designers need, they need to be able to look at a few different games, figure out how to combine the best elements those games offer, and then evolve upon the idea. If developers would just stop repeating what’s already been done and proven to work, and just take a risk like designers of the past did, we would see modern games that rival, or even surpass those of our past.

Games are definitely a great place to find inspiration for game design, but believe or not it can easily be found elsewhere. Inspiration can be found basically anywhere, such as books, movies, dreams, and even a real life situation. A simple day dream can turn into a full fledged idea if you can relate the scenario to a game you’ve played before, or if you can pick a few basic mechanics that would fit well with the scenario. For instance, if you day dream about jumping over tall buildings in giant leaps, you probably don’t want to build a puzzle game, you may however look into what popular platforming tricks have been used and think of how you can turn the concept into something fun. As far as real life scenarios go, I’ve caught myself staring off at a scenery over the lake that had fog over the mountains, and then proceeded to coming up with a random RPG oriented world with a fair amount of depth all pertaining to this one scene. As corny as that sounds, it’s a great place to start. That idea, combined with a game I played on a PS1 demo disk nearly 10 years ago sparked an even further  idea, one I’ll eventually bring out someday.

As you can see, inspiration can be found basically anywhere if you’re looking for it. Not everybody can remember every mechanic of NES games they played 10 years ago, or stare across a lake and get a brilliant idea, but with a bit of work and desire, I’m sure there’s plenty of inspiration to be found. Game design is as open as writing, it’s not set in stone. Just because things have been done, and certain things continue to be an unofficial standard, there’s nothing stopping  you from going completely out of the ordinary and pulling something new together. All in all, there’s plenty of inspiration to be found; if you weren’t seeing it all that clearly before, perhaps this article will open the way.