Challenge rooms are a mechanism used in DreamStones.
The principle is : You have two kinds of areas of play :
- Public areas, which you can (generally) edit like a wiki, where you can chat with other players, etc.
- ChallengeRooms - a room or set of rooms which you play in solo mode, and are reset every time you reenter them. In them, you can find puzzles and monsters. They can generally not be directly edited.
This system is already (partially) implemented.
Gameplay justification
This makes designing puzzles and challenging areas much more easy - you don't have to worry about "is this puzzle solveable if there are two players going around the room ?", adjusting monster difficulty, etc.
Also, it takes away the problem of respawning monsters and resetting puzzles.
ChallengeRooms can be the only way to reach certain areas (even if these areas are also "public"), or of getting certain items.
Issues Raised
A few problems :
- This takes out a quite interesting part of online games, cooperative play. Players can't team up on a monster, explore a dungeon together, etc. Special "mixed" areas could be made
- The ChallengeRooms can't be edited. It is necessary - a puzzle can't be challenging if, at any time, you're allowed to modify the tiles involved. It's possible to allow modification at another point - for example, by having a "mirror" of the challenge room in a public area - a spoiler of sorts, but that doesn't break the GamePlay. Editing the "mirror rooms" may only be possible for those who have already crossed the challenges.
Variants
An interesting possibility is multiplayer challenge rooms, where several players must enter at the same time. This can be either for combat between players or cooperative adventures.
GameMetaphor
"What do you mean, I just walk into this room, and my friends disappear ?"
Well, that's what it looks like in the current ugly release, yes. But that's in no ways definitive. It's better to hide that behind a good GameMetaphor.
- The world has two faces - the world of light and the world of darkness, roughly corresponding to dreams and nightmares.
- In the world of darkness, Dreamers are alone, having as sole companions twisted and misshapen beings that do not welcome intruders. Things around them no longer follow the Dreamer's fancy. For these reasons, Dreamers prefer the world of light, and most of them do not venture out of it
- However, Those seeking knowledge, adventure or power know that they must dare to go beyond the veil of worlds and venture into the place where madness and death lurk. On many walls of the world of light are paintings of the world of darkness. Whoever touches one of those paintings will find himself transported into the place it represents.
(Hmm, I'm not that satisfied by these names, don't consider this metaphor definitive. I like the thing with the paintings)
A more common metaphor would just to have these ChallengeRooms be dungeons.
CategoryGameplay, CategorySettings