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Contents |
Problem Summary
The player does an action that they would like to reverse because they made a mistake or because they changed their mind.
Use When
- The loading of saved games for your game is time or resource consuming.
- The player might frequently make a crucial mistake that results in death or some other mischief.
Solution
Record all actions and allow a player to view previously executed actions for a brief period of time.
Either all player actions and states of the underlying model are recorded or one can video capture all actions until the rewind event. When rewind is activated, all sounds and previous actions play backwards (either animated backwards based upon the captured states or reverse play the video capture) and the game environment accurately resets to its previous state. Rewind should not come for free as being able to rewind at any time without cost will remove the challenges in the game play.
Recommendations
- Visual feedback can be used to indicate that time is being rewinded, such as blurring or a sepia visual effect during the rewind.
- Rewind can be activated once on a per level basis, such as the first time the player dies on a level. Alternatively, the rewind feature can be activated once the player has died on a level more times than a specified threshold value.
- Associate a cost with the use of the rewind feature in order to prevent users from overusing it. In the game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the player spends Sands of Time in order to do time manipulations, including the rewind feature.
Rationale
Offering the possibility to rewind actions gives players a comforting feeling. They can explore, make mistakes and, to some extent, easily rewind (fix mistakes), which facilitates learning the game. Rewind therefore increases reliability and efficiency and reduces user frustration.
Examples
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- NFL Madden 09
- Braid
- Blinx
- Full Auto: Unwreck It!
| Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time | NFL Madden 09 | Braid |
