What do you think about time-limited games ?

[Dear_Elise 36]

Greetings dear utopic people .

 

I was wondering something , what do you think about time-limited games ?

 

Just like the title says indeed .

 

Like , you have a story line , and during brief moments you have a certain amount of time to find specific objects and once the time is up ,  you are led to different endings depending on the items you had enough time to find . ( Like a bad ending , a true ending and a good ending .)

 

Let's say you have to find a rose , a fruit and a cat .

If you had enough time to find a rose and a cat , you have a good ending .

If you had enough time to find a rose and a fruit , you have ending number one .

If you had enough time to find only the cat , you have a bad ending .

And etc ...

 

So . What are your thoughts ?

[lonequeso 1,921]

I'd need to see/read it when i's more fleshed out. it's very hard to come up with a bad concept. Whether or not it works is all in the execution. The Devil is in the details after all. =) Timed events can be a fun way to change up the pace and give the player something different to do. As for branching stories, if the paths were cumulative throughout the game like if you do the bare minimum consistently the story ends up the "bad" ending.

 

"Dishonored" had a couple features that were effected by how you played. It's a stealth based game, but you can run through with guns blazing. However, the more guards/soldiers you killed, the more there would be in later levels. It would also lead to a bittersweet ending if you kill too many overall.

 

Now if some of these timed events were for little side stories/quests, having a single timed event determine the outcome would work just fine. The simplest way would just be the rewards. 

[Kayzee 4,032]

Well it's a tricky proposition, especially in longer games. As long as you are given enough time and have reasonable options it's not too bad, but it's annoying if you have to start the game all over because you dallied too long. Let me give three examples I can think of:

 

1. Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters - This game has a few nasty surprises for those that doddle too long, but the time limits are generally reasonably long. The nasty thing is, you aren't really even directly told about them. It has both a 'soft' limit and a 'hard' limit. Without giving too much away: The 'soft' limit is that one of the common enemies are crazy self-replicating probes, and unless you find a way to take care of them they will wildly replicate till you can hardly go anywhere without being swarmed. The 'hard' limit is that after some time an event will happen that will trigger what is known as the 'Death March', where one by one every species good or evil will be killed off (save the one doing the killing of course) in a genocidal purge. It reaches Earth, game over. And you can delay it but you can't stop it unless you figure out how to win the game (the 'good' news is that once a species has been killed off they are not guarding some of the needed artifacts anymore). It's no fun to have to basically replay the whole game if you take too long, but it does make the game feel a bit more alive that events are happening in the background that can really effect everything unless you figure out a way to stop it.
2. Persona 4 - Though it doesn't necessarily count each second down, once a victim appears in the 'tv world' you have x number of days to save them, till whenever the next foggy day in fact. The whole game works on a scripted calendar of events in fact, but the foggy days are the only real urgent limits. Otherwise you can spend them however you like. It seems nicer to have smaller more obvious goals rather then big ones you aren't really told about.
3. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - This is kind of cheating because while a time limit and schedules are the bread and butter of this game, you don't have a real over all limit as you can just go back in time and start again. Still, that many of the quests and events are timed makes for a bit more urgency and since you don't lose much progress if you mess up you can have a lot more elaborate and detailed sequences without it messing up too much.

The first example is probably the closest to your example but is the most tricky to pull off without being frustrating. The second is much more reasonable I think to most people, and the third is probably not really what you want.

Edited March 8, 2017 by KilloZapit

[Rezanta 373]

Time sequenced games have always held their charms, whether it would be something like Star Fox 64's timed match in Sector Z, to something fully themed by time like Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. They're fun, and it makes the player have to complete the game before they run into a game over or a more negative ending. There's quite a few issues that this style does have a tendency to rise, though. Some are little minor things people are nit-picky on, but the key ones are listed below.

 

1) A timed-based game can end up having a continuous switch, whether it be a faulty switch or because the game is forced to continue, like Harvest Moon: Wonderful Life.

 

2) If the developer adds a lot of secrets that can't be fully explored due to time constraints, and there's an award for 100%, then the game should not have a time constraint.

 

3) Time limits must be fully reasonable. If the developer can beat their own game without any dev exits or dev controls in under allotted time, then it makes sense to use that new record as a focus point of what the time limit's starting amount be. However, if the developer is forced to take said exits or routes just to actually complete the game, the game itself would need fixed in order for those not to be needed, but still provide the game's challenge.