Analyzing Bomberman 64 multiplayer

I recently went to a Unity User Group in my city (Guadalajara), and in this particular meeting we were going to be able to show our games to the others, so I took Jumpjutsu with me and presented it. I haven't had a chance to update here my progress, but well, this entry is not about that exactly.

As you might know, Jumpjutsu is going to be mainly a multiplayer game. Currently if the player that killed other players is killed, the players he killed revive. Say Tom kills Jerry, and Itchy kills Tom, Jerry would revive. So only the player that kills all the others would win. It certainly could lead to infinite matches, but that could be solved by making the game more hostile (e.g. stronger items) or putting a timer.

Anyway, when I explained this, and explained the purpose of it: "keeping the players interested in the game, even if they died", multiple people said - "ah! like Bomberman!" - and well, even if it's not the same, I could certainly learn some things from Bomberman and improve my design. So I will make a quick analysis about Bomberman 64 multiplayer mode, writing it here will help my analysis, and may help you to notice some of the different elements of this game:

I played a lot this with my brothers and cousins when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed it, it was very fun and just remember playing it makes me want to play it again (it would be great to make a game that evokes that, right?).

Rules:

1. The main goal is to blow up the other players. The last player standing in a match gets a point, or if the 3 minutes timer ends, whoever is still alive gets a point. The player that gets 3 points wins.
2. The one that bring us here: when you die, you become a ghost. Ghosts can possess for a few seconds other players that are still alive, so they can posses the others and do things like dropping bombs close or run towards bombs close to explode. You are not able to win, but you can affect the results, and with a bit of lucky produce a draw. So, in some ways, losing is kind of cool because you don't have to fear dead, and can continue playing. Nobody stops playing!
3. Players can get power ups, the ones I can remember are bigger explosions, speedup, and red bombs. They were also some curses, for example make you bigger and slower so you are more likely to be in the range of explosions, another kind-of-curse is to catch fire, you would kill others when touching them, but blow up if you touch any bomb. When you die your power ups spawn from you and others can get them.
4. About the movements, you can place bombs, kick them, stop them while sliding, grab and throw them, and make them bigger.

In other Bomberman games, instead of having the "Ghost mode", you become a cannon that throws bombs from the margin of the map, however I haven't play that so I'm not sure how good it feels compared to the Ghost mode. The reason to have a different dynamic could be that those games are similar to the original Bomberman, i.e. 2D gameplay in a grid map... I don't know why people preferred that, I really liked the N64 version.

Making decisions

I'm not going to go very deep into game theory, but a fundamental piece of a game to be fun is to be able to make decisions. What decisions you can make in this game? well, some of them are:

Who should I attack now? Should I select just one? Throw some random bombs? Should I attack the strongest opponent? Should I throw a big bomb? Where should I go (which of these bombs is closer to explode)? What power ups I should take? What power ups I should not take? Should I look for power ups instead of attacking? What power ups I should try to take from others?

Many of these decisions are taken constantly and quickly in any point of a match.

Ending the game

There are multiple features to make sure the matches are short and fun:

1. The powerups play an important role in this game, the more power you have the easier is to kill others or to die, it is a balancing factor and helps to make the game more dangerous with the time. In Bomberman it is not rare to die because of your own bombs.
2. Also, there is a timer, so if you are being too coward, you know the others will get a point as well, you don't want that. The timer not only ends the game after 3 minutes, it is a trigger that injects sense of urgency to the players so they focus on winning the match.
3. Not enough? well, when there is only 1 minute left the arena enters in "sudden death mode", so the players can die by wall pressing, meteorites, or drawn, it varies depending on the map you are playing.

Variety

In this game you can customize the characters, selecting different heads, arms, body, and legs. They don't make any difference in the game, they only look cool :)... well also when you win a point you can here "yay!" if you are using custom parts.
There are different scenarios as well, I think there are 6 of them, each one has some particular features that make them different to the others, so the decisions you take are affected by them. This is important because otherwise you could easily feel all matches are the same.

Rewarding the winner

When a match ends you see this screen where the winner receives a medal, and you character does a small victory animation. When you get three points and win the game, you see a bigger animation, with music, etc. As a game designer it's easy to overlook this detail, but I believe it has an important psychological effect in the players, it helps to conclude the game, to accept who won and get ready for the next round, and specially to reward the player that won! Without this, win would not feel that good.

Conclusions

This analysis has helped me to notice some important elements I could miss in Jumpjutsu, so let me take note:

1. Decisions. Make sure the players have multiple decisions to take simultaneously.
2. Speed. The game must feel quick and exciting.
3. Rewards. I need to reward the winner! Also, reward the losers with a little fun.
4. Maps. I need to have multiple maps, and if possible, that affect the players' decisions.
5. Items or powerups. They don't just balance the game, they help to end it quickly!
6. Ending the game. Make sure the game ends, and don't fear to use multiple techniques for that.
7. Keep playing. Why just give the losers the hope of continue playing... can I make an interesting mechanic to keep the losers playing and having fun?

Well, I may be able to find some more interesting things in this game, but let's just stop here for now :), hope you find this useful!