Slow Eelke Folmer The player needs to successfully perform a series of actions in a short period of time, which is difficult if the player suffers from a physical, cognitive or visual disability since they need more time to respond to multiple events at the same time. Players have to wait for something to complete in the game. Match between system and the real world Time manipulation cannot be implemented in multiplayer games. Players don't want to have to play part of the game over and over again when they die. Making the game too easy ruins gameplay. Use when - This is common to action games such as first person shooters or platform games. achieving a certain goal (such as finishing a level) depends on successfully performing a series of actions. Sometimes this has to be done within a constrained period of time. For example, the player may push a button to open a door. The door closes in a certain amount of time. In order to go trough the door, the player may need to jump over a pit, defeat an enemy etc. Game designers put such 'challenges' in the game to pace the game and make it more exciting. For advanced players such a challenge may not be an obstacle but (novice) players may find it very hard to accomplish and the player often has to try several times before the player succeeds (if the player succeeds at all). Allow the player to slow down the time Throwing the world into slow motion while moving around in real-time gives several advantages. Faster movement - being able to run, jump, dodge, fight and shoot gives unique advantages over enemies and obstacles, which is especially helpful when trying to achieve time related goals. Increased damage - when fighting enemies one can do more damage as one can deal more blows/hits/kicks and the enemy has a harder time blocking the attacks. Care must be taken that the world can only be slowed for a brief period of time as slowing it all the time can make the game too easy. In order to achieve this one can consider letting the player sacrifice something in order to activate slow. In the action game prince of persia slow is activated by means of tokens that can be collected during the game. At any given time there is only a limited amount of activation tokens available. This makes sure the player only uses slow sparsely. for disabled gamers this might not be an issue and they should be able to use slow whenever they feel the need to, it can also be automatically triggered when multiple enemies attack. The player however needs to be notified when slow is about to be enabled to minimize confusion. This mechanism is also known as bullet-time in first person shooters. Implementing a speedup should be fairly simple if the game uses a tick based system to schedule the simulation (there may be constraints however). Increasing the number of ticks may affect rendering: it may not be possible to still smoothly visualize the game and one may decide to revert to showing only intermediate states. Accessibility - Throwing the world in slow motion will allow disabled players to make less errors because:Players with a cognitive or physical disability have a hard time responding quickly and dealing with multiple events, slowing down the game will adjust the pace of the game to what they are capable of handling without overwhelming them. Players with a cognitive or physical disability who find it difficult to position a pointer or cross-hair have more time to achieve this task when the game slows down. Usability - Slowing down the game makes will improve reliability and satisfaction as the player has more time to respond and will make less errors. Max Payne - One of the first game to introduce matrix style bullet-time (slow) in a first person shooter. The gameplay of Max Payne revolves heavily around bullet-time. When triggered, bullet-time slows down the passage of time to such an extent that the movements of bullets can be seen by the naked eye - it is a form of slow motion. The player, although his movement is also slowed, is still able to aim and react in real time, providing a unique advantage over enemies. This makes avoiding being shot easier and enables Max to perform special moves, such as shootdodges where Max leaps sideways through the air while continuing to fire his weapon Prince of Persia: warrior within - This platform/action/puzzle game allows the main character (a prince) to slow time through the use of a dagger. The dagger contains "charges" of the Sands of Time from the hourglass that allow the Prince to "slow" time for a while. The usages of the dagger are limited. However, defeated enemies leave behind piles of the Sands of Time, which can be absorbed by the dagger to replenish its stock. This encourages the player to confront and vanquish enemies (as opposed to avoiding them) in order to replenish the power to manipulate time during the more tricky acrobatic sections of the game. When slow is activated Blinx: The Time Sweeper - This third person platform game offers time control which allows one to control the flow of time e.g. slowing, speeding up, reversing or stopping its flow entirely. close. Also prevents rockets being launched from close potentially damaging the player.