Nathaniel Baird

4/29/16

Bulbs Write Up

The main goal of Bulbs was to provide the player an experience which involves the

struggle to figure out the rules of and how to interact with a logical yet unfamiliar system. To

best serve this goal I needed an absolute minimum of explicit tutorials. The game would need to

be composed of environmental cues such that a player could figure out how its systems work on

their own. Finally, I wanted my work flow to prioritize the essential features of the game. My

time spent making the wave-based zombie survival game had increased the efficiency of my

approach toward game making. One advantage of my approach towards that project was that I

was able to reuse much of the content which I had created. Though each zombie wave increases

in its potency and more sophisticated weapons begin to spawn into the battlefield the way in

which the game handles these procedures remains the same throughout the experience. This

allowed me to adjust with ease whatever I perceived as problematic to the game balance. I

wanted to apply the same design philosophy to my work on Bulbs to ensure I could devote

enough time to the most important features of the game.

In Bulbs a player completes a level by turning on all of its light bulbs simultaneously.

Light bulbs are attached to outlets. In order to provide power to an outlet any generators attached

via wiring must be switched on. Each generator provides a certain amount of power to any

connected outlets, a value which is displayed by the number of lights on top of the generator.

The amount of power provided to an outlet is determined by the number of total connections to

the generator. For example, if there is only one outlet connected to the generator it provides the

outlet its full power value. If there are two cords feeding into a generator its power is divided in

half and then distributed to each. A player must track the path of each power cord to see which

outlets are connected to which generators. Splitters distribute the power of one cord amongst

several others. The power level is important because a player must place the correct light bulb

types in the correct sockets. If a light bulb requires an amount of power exceeding the power

provided by the generator it will not turn on. If the generator’s power exceeds the bulb’s capacity

the bulb will break. The three different types of bulbs are color coded and it is up to the player to

learn what the coloring refers to. The player must flip the level’s breaker switch to see if they

arrived at the correct solution.

My approach to programming Bulbs allowed me to continue to make adjustments to the

game and introduce new levels without ever going back and changing the code. Every level

functions by the exact same rules; Bulbs contains no level specific ‘scripted sequences’. When a

generator is turned on its power level is divided by the number of its connected components

(whether they are bulb sockets or wire splitters) and the resulting value is distributed amongst all

of them. If one of the components is a splitter the process is repeated; the power level supplied to

the splitter is divided out amongst all the sockets attached to it.

The fact that Bulbs was designed to realize a large variety of different level allowed me

to hone in on a variety of problems which earlier versions of the game suffered from. One such

problem involved the details of the final level. In the final level the total amount of power from

each generator exceeded the amount that all of the bulb outlets could handle. This meant that in

order for the player to succeed he would need to keep certain generators turned off. This proved

to be too challenging for testers. I hypothesized that the problem was similar to one which

occurred in TRIAD. The shooting mechanics in TRIAD forced players to use the aim down

sights feature through the entire game save the final boss fight. The ADS feature was far too

sluggish to be effective during that fight, yet players continuously attempted to use it because the

game had trained them to. Bulbs trains players to turn on all the generators first and then figure

out which light bulb types to utilize. This approach proved successful for players up until the

very end of the game. Though it was entirely compatible with the rules of the game to include

uncooperative generators, punishing somebody for playing the game in a way which was

positively reinforced up until the very end was unfair. Ultimately I changed the final stage to be

compatible with the understanding the player had built up till that point by ensuring that all of its

generators were necessary for reaching its solution.

Another problem encountered in the final level was that it was originally the first place to

display a splitter. Players were suddenly faced with an unfamiliar game feature in a level that

was already very difficult to wrap one’s head around. Whereas the prior generator-related issue

prompted me to remove entirely the aberrant game play mechanic, here I chose to add an earlier

level designed to explain to the player how the splitter functions before they encounter it in a

more complex environment.

The first level originally began with a bulb properly placed in its only socket. The player

merely had to learn how to turn on the generator and flip the breaker switch in order to succeed. I

made the first level more difficult by also forcing the player to place the first bulb. My hope in

doing so was that players would be encouraged earlier to learn how the game functions, steering

them away from randomly placing bulbs to see which ones work and which ones do not later in

the game.

The second level initially had a generator that was more difficult to locate than in the first

level. The power cord attached to the bulb outlet went through the floor and into the basement,

so it was not directly traceable by the player. I changed this so that the cord could be directly

traced all the way from the generator to the bulb outlet. I hoped that this change would encourage

players to pay attention to the power cords rather than merely rely on guess work.

Eventually I added a lighting effect to bulbs when they are turned on. I did not just add

this feature because it makes sense in the game world, but more so because it solved two

problems. By adding light that spills out to floors other than the one containing the bulb (such as

through holes in the floor) I showed the player that the breaker switch merely toggles the status

of each bulb, rather than functioning as a rigid on and off switch. The player can see that bulbs

are being affected by the switch even if they are not within direct line of sight of those bulbs.

Furthermore the player no longer needs to run up and down the floors of the final level to check

which bulbs are on and off because he can see the effects of each bulb on the walls surrounding

the stage. By solving these two problems I make the game system easier to understand and less

tedious to interact with while still ensuring that the player is figuring it out on their own. Rather

than include a menu that displays for the player what is on and what is not I allow them to see

the effect of their work through environmental cues.

There are many problems with Bulbs, some of which relate to the identity of the game.

After changing the final level to lack unhelpful generators I had appeared to remove the only

justification for including a generator on/off switch. Why should the player need to manually

turn on each generator in the level if there is never a disadvantage to doing so? This is an

example of how Bulbs is a game struggling with its own identity. On one hand it plays like a

typical puzzle game with independent levels, on the other hand it contains a degree of game play

which is not explicitly concerned with solving puzzles. For example it takes no mental work at

all to run around the level turning on all of the generators.

So why not simply remove the player’s capacity to interact with each generator? If I had

sought out initially to make a clean puzzle game this would be a reasonable suggestion. But

when I reflect on my initial goals for Bulbs it is evident that I never aimed to create such a game.

The real world experience of learning how a system behaves involves engaging, to an extent, in

repetitive procedure. One must first remove the screws of an outer panel, perhaps, or apply a

lubricating substance to a moving part. And learning how to properly interact with such systems

usually involves a degree of guess-work as well. I tried to front-load as much of the player’s

guess work as possible. This was to first provide the player opportunities to observe the system’s

reactions to various inputs, and then to allow the player to make informed decisions based on

their theory of how the system behaves. Unfortunately some players that tested the game

engaged in guess work throughout the entire experience and never came to formulate any theory

to explain the system’s behavior. When there are only three choices of different bulb types it is

not unbearably tedious to continually guess and check until one arrives at the correct solution. It

is possible to get through the entire game without ever understanding its rules. Furthermore there

is no punishment for continuing to place incorrect bulbs in the incorrect sockets, so it could be

argued that there is too little incentive to pause and think about the laws which govern the

system’s behavior.

If Bulbs were meant to be a full-on puzzle game it would be a good idea to cull the

features that allow the player to rely on guess work. Additionally it would make more sense if

the generators were permanently on or if the concept of unhelpful generators was introduced

earlier in the game. A more attractive big picture approach, on the other hand, would be to feed

the game’s power system into a larger game environment. For example, perhaps the player is

exploring a space. It would make sense if there were certain locations in which depending on the

generators you turn on different pathways would open up to the player. A player would need to

manipulate a system designed to accomplish a variety of tasks to gain access to whichever

features of the space station were immediately desirable. Such complexly organized power

systems would also be more believable if they achieved a great deal more than merely turning on

various lights.