6.- THE HELP SYSTEM
I spent a lot of time on the help system, as I understood that it could be necessary for many people to end the game, or at least to move forward on it without being too frustrated.
I decided to make it “less integrated” with the game as a design criterion: The help must be specifically requested by the player typing “help” and is different from the hints of information you can get from the responses to the actions you are taking. This is because this help system is in fact a list of clues that are given to the player when he is stuck somewhere. This is to prevent the player from leaving the game without reaching the end. And the system is incremental, so you get more clues each time you request them.
As it was on my mind, the help system should have the following:
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Different help in each location, telling you what to do there
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Different levels of help, from almost obvious answers, to very clear solutions, without solving it for you.
This last one could lead to tedious situations when you already ask for the previous one, but they are easily skippable when pressing “space”. One of the beta testers told me about telling the player this possibility, as it was not as obvious as I thought, and the text “press space to skip” is a good, good idea from his side. Thanks man! : D
I also thought about the possibility of adding an additional key to skip all the previous help images but the new last one the player was requesting, but I decide not to do that although it was technically very easy for two reasons:
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Adding more keys would lead to adding more texts, and options for the player, and I wanted to keep all as minimalistic as possible.
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I liked the idea of the player seeing all the images again as a last chance to rethink them, no matter if he skips them quickly. Perhaps the player can solve the puzzle without using that last hint, in a brilliant last time Sherlockholmesian blow (I think I have invented my first English word here).
Visually the help system image clues are still as minimalist as the other images in the game, but I wanted to make them a bit different to set a difference between what is happening in the game, and what is a result of a kind of “metagame” help command, things that are information for the player, but not things that are happening in the story. Those images are more iconic in the sense of “windows icon” and less hand drawing. They also add a red color to try to lead the eye to the important stuff of the clue.
The main difficulty is communicating to the player without words what is happening in the game. In the help images ,I also had this problem. It needed to avoid giving too much information on each image, and still be universal enough to make them understandable worldwide. It was in fact a very funny part of the game development.
Things like the “big fish eating the little one chain” were the kind of help I like the most, being more metaphoric, but in some places, I needed to use mathematical symbols like “a man = a watering can” that is not a purely graphical language but a mathematical one, a more symbolic one that needs previous knowledge of English. Some of that symbols used are mainly recognizable like “=” or “+” (“1 hand + 1 hand = 2 hands!!!”) but others like the “implication/then” one “=>” can be less universally known by everybody.
Not everybody would be in the same level of disorientation, not everybody has the same clever mind, and not everybody comes from the same cultural context, so a help system like that seemed very difficult to do successfully. Anyway, regarding the help system, I like the resulting game very much.
There is, however, one point that leads me to consider some changes in the help system, and this is the fact that allowing players to obtain hints so easily, even if it is by requiring them to type again the “help” command, seems to lead players to put their arms down more easily, to give up and not take the risk of typing other options or put their brains to work with the epic mode on.
I don’t think it is necessarily worse to finish the game having asked for help, but I have the feeling that more people could have finished it without that, and that somehow they have been deprived of that pleasant feeling of “Hey, I solved it by myself alone!”.
That’s why in the game’s page at Itch.io I put the image with the graphical message of “superstickmanheros don’t use help” under the image telling about the availability of the “help” command, as an invitation for not to use it too much, that has not worked too well.
So, thinking of a way to limit access to help, I came up with the possibility of giving help on a timer, so it will require the pass of a certain amount of time (let’s say a minute) before a new “help” command returns a new help image for that location. In this way, the player will be able to have that “mandatory” time to think about the help received so far, try to digest it, and type commands, even if desperately.
We’ll see if Gent Stickman ends up implementing this variation in the help system, but any feedback on this will be very welcome, even if I end up doing whatever I want : D
Looking at people playing, I must say that some of them reached the last location without need of help, but once in this place, all of them asked for it. The system help I mean, not the death : )