作者：Brice Morrison

《Caster》是几个月前我玩过的一款小型独立科幻游戏。你将在一个广阔且充满火能的世界中扮演一个小角色，以超音速在不同平面上奔跑着，向各个方向发射激光或能量球。当你完成一定关卡时，便能够提升角色的能力，增强他们的属性，提高速度，能量以及破坏力。在整个游戏过程中，你的角色将会不断壮大，并且能够更加有利地攻击敌人。

Caster(from thegameprodigy)

这款游戏已经在PC、Steam平台以及iPhone上发行了，并且深受独立游戏社区的欢迎。《Caster》的乐趣和能量来自于哪里？是图像，控制器还是故事？因为这些元素都很重要，所以我们有必要借助于有效的“游戏设计元素”，以分析推动《Caster》成功的真正要素？首先，我们来看看这款游戏的核心体验。

核心体验：感受到强大的力量

从核心体验上来看，《Caster》类似于早前发行的两款AAA级游戏，《Infamous》和《Prototype》。在这两款游戏中，玩家都扮演着一个充满神奇力量且控制着自己居住的大城市的这种角色。在《Caster》中我们也经历了类似的体验——仿佛自己拥有绝对的权利。当然了，如果从游戏设计的其它四点元素看来，《Caster》与其它两款游戏存在着显著的差别，但是从核心体验来看，这两款AAA级游戏与这款独立游戏近乎相同。

《Caster》的开发者Mike Smith在采访中说道，这款游戏是“关于强大的力量”。这可能是我迄今为止听过的一大明确核心体验描述。Mike达到了预期的目标；因为当你在玩《Caster》时，不论是疾奔，跳跃还是加速，或者以激光扫射目标物，你都能够感受到这种强大的力量。但是他是如何从一个理念出发而为玩家创造出真正的感受？

让我们看看Mike是如何以核心体验开始，并依据游戏设计要素规划游戏。

game design canvas(fromthegameprodigy)

游戏始于核心体验。一旦确定了核心体验，其它四大游戏设计元素自然也包含在内。基础机制（玩家真正在做些什么），奖惩系统（玩家的行为受到何种鼓励和挫败），长期动机（是什么推动玩家继续前进）以及美学布局（游戏的外观和音效）。

《Caster》以核心体验开始为玩家创造了一种强有力的感觉。让我们通过游戏设计元素，深入挖掘Mike是如何通过其它原则发展核心体验。

feel powerful(from thegameprodigy)

首先，游戏的基本机制让玩家能够奔跑，跳跃，射击并选择使用涡轮而更快前行。虽然大多数动作类游戏都有移动设置，但是在《Caster》中，玩家角色跑得更快跳得更高。除此之外，玩家在游戏中发射的激光束多而快，即使玩家还未获得升级。显而易见，通过键盘和鼠标的操作玩家能够清晰地感受到一种强有力的核心体验。

其次，在惩罚和奖励系统中，《Caster》认为如果玩家在游戏中死了便会失去这种“强大力量的感觉”。虽然死亡是其它相似游戏的必要元素，但是在《Caster》中却不允许玩家死亡。相反地，如果玩家用尽了生命值，他们的行动便会暂时放缓。而这种做法让游戏可以有效地缓解死亡对于游戏中“强大的”核心体验的冲击。毕竟，强大的生命哪能如此轻易被打败？

在长期激励中，玩家期待获得更多分数并以此帮助他们更快地前进，获得更强大的武器等。经过验证，这种方法能够更好地让玩家感受到自己是“超人”一样的存在。给予玩家他之前未接触的新能力，他们便会感觉自己仿佛登上了世界顶端。而且因为玩家在每一个关卡中都能遇到一些新的内容，所以他们能够明显感觉自己在不断壮大。

最后，游戏的美学布局，尽管分布稀疏，但是却有助于游戏的核心体验。因为Mike并未拥有许多专业美术人员协助他创造出优秀的独立游戏，所以他只能尽自己所能在合适的地方安插合适的内容。玩家开火并引起爆炸是一种很逼真的表现。地域的变化（比起游戏特征，这更像是一种美学特征）更是让玩家感觉自己足够强大甚至能够影响周边环境。最后，与玩家的速度联系在一起的视觉效果：当他们在某地迅速转动时，他们跑过的地方便会留下条痕。

总结

《Caster》是一款设计紧凑的独立游戏，并且值得所有业余开发者借鉴与学习。它既明确定义了游戏的核心体验，而且还涉及了其它游戏设计特征。总之，市场上每年都会出现上千款新游戏，而一款独立游戏要想获得成功，就应该尽可能地提供足够优秀的核心体验。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

“Feeling Powerful” as a Core Experience

by Brice Morrison

Caster is a fantastic little indie game that I got into several months ago.  You play as a small character in a large, expansive world with some incredibly heavy firepower.  Acting as savior for the forests, you run around the level at sonic speeds, firing in all directions with a wide range of lasers and energy orbs.  By upgrading your stats and abilities as you complete levels, you fill out your character’s stats, increasing speed, power, and your destructive capabilities.  Over the course of several levels, your stats inevitably max out and your resulting impact against each enemy is monstrous.

The game has since been released on the PC, Steam, and the iPhone and has been well received by the independent games community.  While I don’t have specific sales figures, it would appear that the game has been successful for a title of its size.  It was reviewed positively on many of the major indie sites, and even appears in one of the editor’s choice categories on the iPhone for a time.

What can we attribute the fun and fury of Caster to?  The graphics?  The controls?  The story?  While all these elements are important, we’ll have to turn to our trusty Game Design Canvas to really see what makes Caster tick.  To begin, we’ll start with the game’s Core Experience.

The Core Experience: Feeling Powerful

In terms of Core Experience, Caster can be likened to two AAA titles released within the past year, Infamous and Prototype.  In both of those games, the player acts as a single man with uncanny abilities and near complete control over the vast city he is placed in.  In Caster we get an indie touch to the same Experience — a feeling of near absolute power.  Of course the other four Game Design Canvas components are different between the games, but the Core is nearly identical, making these AAA and indie titles almost family in that regard.

Mike Smith, the developer behind Caster, wrote in an interview that the game was “about feeling powerful”.  That’s as clear of a Core Experience as I’ve ever heard.  Mike certainly achieved his goal; when you play Caster, dashing and jumping about and superhuman speeds, spewing gatling-gun style lasers and demolishing the landscape, you certainly do feel incredibly powerful.  But how did he get from an idea to an actual feeling for the player?

Let’s see how Mike began with that Core Experience and implemented it by mapping the game out on the Game Design Canvas.

The game begins with the Core Experience.  Once that is defined, the other four components of the game’s design are filled in.  The Base Mechanics (what the player actually does), the Punishment and Reward Systems (How the player’s behavior is encouraged or discouraged), the Long Term Incentive (What keeps the player going), and the Aesthetic Layout (How the game looks and sounds).

Caster began with the Core Experience of making the player feel powerful.  Let’s fill in the Canvas to see how he implemented that Core through the other four sections of the game.

A firm and well defined Core Experience means nothing if the game developer doesn’t follow through in the other components.  Caster makes sure that each of the four aspects of the game support the Core in a very easily defined way.

To begin, the Base Mechanics of the game allow the player to run, jump, shoot, and use a turbo option to go faster.  While many action games have these moves, in Caster, the player’s character runs extremely fast and incredibly high.  In addition, the lasers that are fired are numerous and rapid, even before the player has had a chance to level up.  It is plain to see how these controls begin to let the player feel powerful right from the first keyboard or mouse button press.

Next, in the P&R Systems, Caster understands that you can’t feel very powerful if you are killed.  While dying is an essential component to many other similar games, Caster does not allow the player to die.  Instead, if they player runs out of health, they are only slowed for a moment.  This provides some light reinforcement (discouraging the player from getting attacked) without undercutting the Core Experience of being powerful.  After all, powerful beings are unstoppable, right?

In the Long Term Incentive, the player looks forward to gaining points and being able to allocate them to new moves, weapons, or stats such as speed.  This is a tried and true method of making the player feel like they’re a real superpower.  By unlocking newer abilities that the player did not have before, they feel like they’re on top of the world.  And because the player is unlocking something new nearly every level, the player is constantly feeling like they are growing in strength even more.

Finally the Aesthetic Layout of the game, sparse as it is, does its best to contribute to the Core Experience.  While Mike didn’t appear to have an army of artists to create assets for his indie title, he did put what little chips he had in the right places.  The shots fired by the player and the explosions from contact are vivid.  The terrain deforms (arguably an exclusively aesthetic feature rather than an actual gameplay feature), making the player sense that they are strong enough to affect their environment.  And finally the player’s avatar is dripping with effects as a result of their speed: streaks behind their movement as they dart around the environment.

A Powerful Case

Caster is just the kind of tightly-designed indie title that all amateur developers could learn from.  It defines its Core Experience very concisely and then focuses on delivering just that, without getting lost in other features that didn’t have the resources to be done fully.  And in a world where there are thousands of games released every year, a successful independent game is going to want to be the best at delivering whatever experience it is promising.（source:thegameprodigy）