Content Modularity

We’re back in the world of Close Encounters for this post, and specifically the expansion pack content I’ve been working on for it. As you’ll know from previous posts on the subject, I have plenty of content for expansions, and testing and tweaking isn’t a huge obstacle – the issue is figuring out how to group all the content together. I still haven’t made a final decision about that, but I do have an interim plan.

I’ve talked before about how I’ve broken up the content into different areas to allow easier testing and development. What I’ve found is that you can’t really test a piece of content by itself – it unbalances the game in one way or another, and because of that it can be hard to clearly distinguish the effects of the content you’ve added. Only adding the heavy weapons, for example, tilts the game very strongly in favour of the troopers.

Because of this, I’ve been pairing up the content into what I think of as ‘modules’. The modules are something significant for the troopers, something significant for the bugs which balances it, some extra map tiles, and maybe a little bit of additional stuff if it feels like a natural fit. Ideally there’s also a thematic link which makes all this feel “correct” when bundled together like this, but I’m less worried about that for now. Going back to the heavy weapons example above, the advantages given by the heavy weapons are balanced out by there being bigger bugs to soak up that firepower, doors which block line of sight and cause delay, and map tiles which either provide good points for the troopers to defend or bypass the advantages given by their firepower.

I have four or five modules like this, and when I playtest I choose which modules will be involved and pull those sets together. In fact, it’s quite similar to the ‘multiple small expansions’ idea I mentioned in an earlier post. The concern I had then was really that each small expansion might feel unsatisfying. That doesn’t seem to be the case, however – each module seems to be sufficiently ‘meaty’ that players get plenty out of it. The cognitive load caused by each module is fairly light, and having these modules satisfies one of the design principles I’ve been trying to follow (a core game, to which you can bolt-on whichever additional material you choose).

At this point, I’m starting to think this might be a viable model for expansion packs. The content seems satisfying, the bolt-on nature is appealing, the cognitive load is low and can be increased at whatever rate the players choose… now I just need to keep the price of each module low enough to make it feel like a good deal! I very much want to avoid this feeling like an extortionate DLC cash-grab, as is unfortunately common in video games.

As a side effect of this, though, I need to increase the number and diversity of tile types (because each module needs a few to go with it). My current challenge is finding and making art assets for these. Looks like there’s more time in front of Inkscape in my future.