Consistency in Design

Consistency is very important when designing a game. It helps players immerse themselves into your world better as well as understand it more easily.

When you create a rule in your game, ensure that that rule remains the same throughout your game. For example, let's say you have a blue ball that can be picked up and thrown. In this case, ensure that all blue balls in your game behave the same. Don't suddenly have a blue ball that the player can't throw. The reason for this is because you have just taught the player one of the rules in your game: "Blue balls can be thrown". It would be bad design if you were to suddenly break that rule, especially without informing the player.

Imagine you're in maths class and the teacher has taught you that 1 plus 1 equals 2. But one day, during a test, when you put 2 as the answer to the question "What's 1 plus 1?" your teacher suddenly tells you it's wrong. Wouldn't you get annoyed or feel betrayed? Well that's basically the same with video games.

Now, you may be thinking "what if my game involves breaking/bending the rules?" or "what if I need to break/bend my own rules?"

Well for the former question, that's still a rule of your game, no matter how you slice it. Whatever type of game you're creating, you will have to teach the player the rules of your game, no matter how weird or bizarre they may be (after all, what is a game without rules?). For example, one of your game's rules could be that in each level, the ball that can be thrown changes colour. Usually, games that appear to be breaking/bending their own rules will still have at least 1 core rule underneath it all that will still help the player.

I'll give you an example. In Assassin's Creed 3, there are objects that you can jump into and hide in. One type of object that you can hide in are 'pile' objects (the haystack being the famous one in the series). But when you get to the forest, you'll notice that the pile object has changed to a pile of tree branches rather than a haystack. This may look like they're breaking their own rules, but in fact, they still have at least 1 core rule regarding these objects that will still help the player determine whether or not they can hide in them. This is the fact that all pile objects are shaped like a mound that is roughly the same size and have a 'noisy' texture, which in this case are a messy collection of hay or tree branches.

Assassin's Creed 3
(TOP: haystack in a cart; BOTTOM: pile of tree branches in the forest)

For the latter question, ensure then that you give some contextualized reason. I highly recommend a visual one over a text-based one. Rather than having the game tell you that a particular blue ball cannot be thrown... instead, have the ball be made out of steel or some sort. This way, the player can see that something has changed to the blue ball, thereby telling him that something must be different about said ball. This brings me to my next point.

Consistency doesn't only apply to mechanics. The visuals of your game must also be consistent. It must be clear to players whether something is A or B because players interact with your game through visuals more than text.

For example, let's say you're making a third person shooter with no jumping. However, there are low objects in the game that when approached, will cause the hero to hop over it. Now, for the sake of this example, let's say said objects are 1 meter high. This means that all objects that the hero can hop over must be almost exactly 1 meter high. If an object cannot be hopped over, make it obvious to the player by, for example, making the object 2 meters high instead (as oppose to making them only 1.1 meters or 1.2 meters high). If the difference is too small, the player may never notice and it may break their immersion or worse, they might think it's a bug.

Basically, if you look at an object and your immediate thought is whether it's A or B, then unless that's a rule in your game, you may want to re-design it. For example, this wouldn't apply in a "spot the difference" game.

Well, that's it for this week. I hope this post was clear and wasn't too confusing for everyone. It's quite late here and I'm a bit tired *yawn*. Anyway, see you all next week!