Inspired by Braid

Part of being a game developer is the chore of playing other games to find inspiration and ideas. The much-hyped (for an indie game) Braid was recently released for Windows, and I just had to try it. Did that, and bought it immediately. It’s a brilliant game and you should all try out the demo at least.

So what has this got to do with Mad Skills Motocross, you ask? Stop playing around and get that game finished already you lazy bum, you say.

I agree. However, I did get an idea from Braid. It has been done before, but this got me thinking about it. In Braid, you can play the next level even if you didn’t manage to complete the previous. The mere action of playing a level unlocks the next one, so you are forced to try the levels in order, but not to complete them in order.

Frankly, Braid would have been unplayable without this particular feature of its meta-structure. The puzzles are really intelligently constructed, but you still get frustrated sometimes when you can’t complete them. All you need to do is continue playing and bend your mind around a few other puzzles, and then go back and complete the unfinished ones.

Invaluable, because otherwise I would have shut down the game when I got frustrated. Most likely I would have returned to it later to bang my head against that particular puzzle again, but it is so much more fun to keep playing other levels than to stop playing.

So that’s how we are going to do it in Mad Skills Motocross, I believe. When you play the first race the second race is unlocked, and so on. But to continue to the next division, you have to win all races in the current division. So when you get stuck, just play the next race to improve your skills.

What do you all think of this? Sounds like a good idea? We’d love to hear your feedback in the forums or by mail.