Assuming that you’ve tried the capabilities of Pikoo and got yourself a Tic-Tac-Toe or a snake game made, now you want to make a serious game.
Generally, you can arrive at wanting to make a game from two directions:
- You want to make a game about something. And will interestingly represent that idea or concept.
- You want to develop new and interesting mechanics.
If you are from case 1, i.e., you want to make a game about something, then you should do some exercise in your head or on paper and figure out a little bit more about your game idea. You should break it down into the world and mechanics.
Then Pikoo’s AI is great at generating mechanics.
How to break your big game idea into small executable pieces?
We wrote a specific blog about this. You can check it out here. But if you’re too lazy to read that one… let me summarize it here. Typically, you’d start by asking these five questions, then ask, “How can I represent it?”
- Who is my hero? – How can I represent it?
- What do they want? – How can I represent it?
- What’s stopping them? – How can I represent it?
- How do they overcome this? – How can I represent it?
- What did they get? – How can I represent it?
This question, and the subsequent question “How can I represent it?” will give you details about your world and its mechanics. Let us show you by using an example of a meditation game that we made using this technique:
| Questions | Answers | How can I represent it? |
|---|---|---|
| Who is my hero? | My mind | A leaf |
| What do they want? | To meditate or relax | To get to a circle |
| What’s stopping them? | The constant hustle-bustle of thoughts and my own constant overthinking | No action will drag the leave away. Swift actions will drag the leaf away. |
| How do they overcome this? | By practicing | If I tap gently at a slow speed, which pushes me to take a breath in between, I bring the leaf closer to the circle. |
| What did they get? | Some reward. A bit quiet. | I win when the leaf gets to a circle. |
Now, in this exercise, you will see that column 2 is giving you the details of your world, but column 3 is giving you the mechanics you want to create.
If you want to be difficult about it, add another layer of abstraction and call them simple objects. However, reaching a basic level of abstraction will allow you to interact with AI more easily. The abstractions can be removed once you have the correct mechanics in place.
So, now that you have the mechanics, you should write this as a text prompt into Pikoo’s AI game creator.
The AI game creator will demonstrate its understanding of your prompt and provide details about what you’re trying to build. The representations will be made with simple text icons.
If you’re not happy with the idea and understanding, it is best to go into details at this step only. You can also choose to start a new chat altogether if the suggestions are not getting to where you want them to be.
Once you’re convinced with the basic mechanics represented by the AI-game-creator, you just say Yes or “looks good” and it will create your game.
How best to utilize AI-game-creator?
A few things to keep in mind:
- KISS: Keep it simple, silly!
- Consider that it is generating a 30-300 seconds level and NOT a full blown 30 minutes game. This will allow you to experiment more.
- The abstractions can be removed and turned into specific story characters and more by changing the assets.
- Be patient and precise with your answers.
- At any point, if you feel tired of questions that the AI-game-creator may ask you, you can simply tell it to stop asking questions and take creative freedom and it will give you a representation of your idea with some reasonable assumptions.
- Avoid complex mechanics in your first 10 games. Try to set a good repertoire with with the AI-game-creator
Once you have your basic mechanics ready, you can further add more layers of your story and world on top of it to make it yours.
More details on that, in the coming blogs!
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