Monday, March 3, 2014

Wario Ware D.I.Y.: Game Creation

Wario Ware D.I.Y. Is the first in the beloved Wario Ware series to allow you, the player to create your own games.

Now, while there are ample tutorials found in the game, I found them to be little help. Most of them end up strictly hand-holding you through the game-making process, allowing for little deviation, experminentation, or creativity.

Wario Ware D.I.Y. provides several avenues by which one may learn to create games, such as the mock-Internet Forum, the jobs that have the player finish various games, and the school, where as I said, hand-hold to no end.

It's important to be aware that game-creation consists of four components; Background, Objects, Music, and Assembly.

Background is, as the name implies, the background in which the given microgame takes place.

The Objects are the manipulatable assets that the player interacts with in order to achieve the given goal. The Objects can be given various AI commands that have them move erratically, disappear, move to another object, and much more.

The Music is as one might guess, the music that plays in the background
during a microgame.

Finally, last but not least, is the game Assembly, or the orchestration of a microgame. With the game Assembly controls, the player can manipulate the objective, means of interaction, and the goal in the game. This may easily be the most challenging feature to master in all of Wario Ware D.I.Y., as there are no templates, and it's entirely up to you as the microgame maker to make a game that's not impossible,  not too easy, and one that's fun to play.

Personally, I can only attest to broken games, impossible to understand objectives, and games that require no interaction whatsoever for lack of an understanding as to how to properly designate Win Conditions (which decide what player interactions will be rendered as a win).

All in all, I find the watered-down way D.I.Y. presents game-creation not as intuitive as I would like. On paper, tutorials, and the various guides would surely aid any aspiring game developer, but I can't help but feel the amount of knowledge necessary in order to create a game rather great for any average gamer.

10. April 2010

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