Christopher Poole - Game Design

Game Design is the field I have the most experience in and enjoy the most. I was designing hilariously unbalanced card games as young as third grade and my creativity from back then has only driven me further down a path of learning more and more about the science and art behind this amazing career. Click a section below to read more about specific examples of game design decisions I made in various games.

Time Stop

Chrona Machina was a game my team and I created for a 48 game jam hosted by our college. There wasn't a theme, but my team was eager to implement a time stop mechanic.
While I knew stopping time on its own was fun, I wanted to add a wrinkle to the idea and make it even more unique and more satisfying.
I decided that the player would be able to shoot while time is stopped, but the bullets would only travel a set distance before stopping in time themselves. Then, when the player unpauses time, all the bullets they fired would shoot off at once creating an explosion of action.
However, I knew some players would try to challenge themselves to not use the time stop and thus not experience the more satisfying bullet firing, so I forced the player to fire only when time was stopped. This had a bonus effect of making the game more strategic as you had a decent amount of time to pick your targets.
Noticing the strategy of stopped time firing, I decided shots should pierce targets. This gave players a reason to think more carefully about lining up shots while time was stopped.
Finally, I wrapped it all up in a simple energy system that prevented you from spamming time stop, limited the time you could spend in time stop, and limited the number of shots you could take all in one elegant package. This was all decided within the first few hours of the game jam.

The Juice of the Mechanic

Despite having a limited time frame, I knew time we spent on the juice of the time stop would be worth it. Our audience definitely agreed as we won the jam and an "audience favorite" award at our college's game exhibition.
The main bit of juice I came up with was a musical swap which my team executed on brilliantly. Heading into stopped time would shift the track to a slower remix with more bass.
Visually, we made sure to include a scrolling background so that we could pause it and instantly display to the player that time was stopped no matter where on the screen they were looking.

Chrona Machina's Enemy Design Philosophy

In the game Chrona Machina, you must stop time to shoot piercing bullets at enemies. Then, while you wait for your time stop ability to recharge, you must dodge the enemy's bullets in a classic "bullet hell" fashion. Enemies also come in predetermined waves.
I worked with other designers creating the enemies and together we decided to create lots of enemies with varied movement and shooting patterns for the player to try and decipher.

My Contibution: Complimentary Enemies

While enemies with different movement and shooting patterns were nice, it was hard to create enemy encounters that felt unique besides simply jamming a bunch of different enemies with different patterns into one wave. That's when I decided to create enemies which interacted with other enemies.
The most basic example of this is the Shielder which threw a shield at another enemy, preventing them from getting killed until the Shielder was killed first. This allowed us to create more interesting encounters as a Shielder paired with any previous enemy turned the strategy the player typically used completely on its head.
Another enemy I designed like this was the Leech which, instead of granting a shield, siphoned energy from another enemy to generate a shield for itself. The siphoned enemy was slower and had to be killed before you could kill the Leech. Slowing down an enemy and forcing you to attack it fulfilled the same purpose of forcing the player to form new strategies for enemies they've already seen.
While not explicitly for the purpose of recontextualizing old enemies, I wanted to quickly mention that the player could catch the shields produced by these enemies in mid air before it got to them. This is never tutorialized so its something a player must find completely on their own and in doing so get a very satisfying sense of discovery. It being a "secret" mechanic also means most players will have to adapt their strategies to the shield givers at first. After they find the mechanic, it only changes their strategy further as they try to intercept the shields throw at enemies.

The Mechanic of Phasing

Dolus and the Labyrinth's core mechanic is your ability to "phase" in any of the four direction, jumping through one thick wide walls in the process.
While clearly based on similar dash or teleport mechanics in other games, phasing sets itself apart by how its intergrated into the puzzle gameplay of Dolus and the Labyrinth.

Everything Interacts With Phasing

As lead designer of this project I ensured that every puzzle element in the game interacted with phasing. Phasing through something is how you activate things in this game, and this consistency allows the player to understand that if they see something new the first thing they should do is phase through it our use their phase with it.
This is reinforced at the beginning of the game when they're introduced to keys and switches, both of which are one by one blocks and the perfect size to phase through. I also tutorialize them by forcing you to phase through them to physically get to the other side.
Later the player runs into traps that fire homing missiles. The only way to avoid them is to phase through a wall so they can't follow you. The final mechanic is Auras which subvert the player's expectations by preventing them from phasing while inside of them. This also means that all previous mechanics they accessed by phasing are off limits until they can switch the aura off or change its position.

Using This Interaction in Puzzle Design

Putting in all that interaction is great to create a common language the player understands, but where this interaction really shines is in the puzzles it allows me to create. You can read all about the level design for this game in the "Level Design" page of this website, but this will just briefly go over how it ties into the core mechanic.
The physical movement of phasing is used to tutorialize elements without text. When switches are introduced, one is placed in a hallway forcing you to phase over it to get to the other side.
The movement limitation also allows for interesting puzzle designs where you want to activate a switch but don't want to physically move to the other side so you have to approach it from a different angle.

How the Narrative of Phasing Reinforces Other Mechanics

You acquire the power of phasing by stealing a magic item from a wizard at the beginning of the game. The ghost of this wizard then awakens and chases you when you run out of time on a level.
The ghost of the wizard passes over all walls and interacts with elements of the level in the same way you do with phasing. Narratively the player understands this because you were the one who originally stole this power from him so naturally he also has the same powers.
This means that while the ghost chases you, different puzzle elements the player put into place, like moving walls, begin to change. This forces the player to think on their feet as they run for the exit or frantically try to complete the puzzle while the ghost chases them. This feeds into the action components of Dolus and the Labyrinth.

Working Around the Game's Systems

Defenders of Arcstone is a turn based RPG with your classic RPG mechanics such as abilities on cooldowns, items, races and status effects.
It also has two more unique mechanics in its frontline and backline system as well as its resistance and damage type system. This means I had to diversify abilities based on who they could target and what type of damage they could do. Eight basic classes formed with the pretense being that their basic attack filled a specific role in targeting either the backline or frontline and dealing either Sharp, Blunt, Chaos or Order damage. For example the Dryad dealt frontline Order damage with animal transformations and the Canoneer did backline Blunt damage.
The player has an army of units on standby, but can only take four into battle. As units get tired they can't be sent out again, forcing you to change your team. This means the player is forced to constantly make new strategic decisions on what classes they want to combine. This also means that every class has to have abilities which synergized nicely with many different class combinations so as to give the player sufficent options to where building a team of new people is always a challenge.

Crafting the Snow Storm

Snow Storm is an ability which best demonstrates how I used the game's systems to create a compelling strategic ability. This ability damaged all enemies but also damaged the player's frontline.
It dealt Order damage meaning you could build a team whose frontline had Order resistence. This could be done in many ways as race, class, items and other abilities all granted resistences. Some races even take more damage from Order like the Undead and Fiends, so you would want to avoid teaming them up with a Cryomancer who knew Snow Storm.
The overall result is a an ability which allowed the player to utilize different systems in the game to mitigate its weakness. The vast number of systems meant more options for the player and more meaningful choices on how they built their teams.

Holy Water and Ritual: Versatile Abilities

During combat its important that the player has a wide variety of choices and doesn't simply default to using the same strategy. The abilities Holy Water and Ritual both can target either allies or enemies although the effect is the same. Depending on the context, however, it might be more beneficial to use it on one than the other.
Holy Water applies the Holy status effect that reduces that unit's outgoing Chaos damage but increases that unit's outgoing Order damage. This means you can use it on an ally Order attacker to boost their damage or on an enemy Chaos attacker to decrease their damage. This encourages both strategic synergies and knowledge of enemy damage types.
Ritual deals Chaos damage to a unit but then increases their damage afterwards by applying a Strength buff. This means you can use it on an ally to boost their attack and kit them out with Chaos resistence items. You can also use it to finish off an enemy so they take the damage but can't attack back. Again, this encourages strategic synergies and knowledge of your damage output.
You may also have noticed that these two abilities synergize together! If you apply Holy to the Necromancer who is about to use Ritual, the damage from Ritual will be dramatically decreased. There are all sorts of fun synergies like this in the game for the player to discover!

Design Constraints

Ignotum is probably the least fleshed out game on my portfolio becuase it was completed entirely in 48 hours as part of a game jam with a theme (Chrona Machina was started during a jam but continued later on as well). That theme was "Dragons Awaken" and it was specified later that the dragons have brought magic back to a place where magic didn't exit before.

Gameplay and Story

The story of the game is your slow descent into a dark and mysterious cave as multiple magical things happen around you that you don't understand. This is all caused by the titual dragon at the center of the cave.
The game is a card game with light deck building elements. During combat you simply play cards onto enemies to attack them. The twist is that all these cards only have cryptic symbols on them and no description of what they actually do. The player's lack of understanding of the cards mimicks the character's lack of understanding of magic.
Over the course of the game you'll easily be able to discover what these cards do. I knew it would be frustrating to be playing with no real information so I ensured that every card did damage so the player would never feel like they completely wasted their turn. The cards also had a schema in that they all represented elements. When a card was played an animation would show them the element. The knowledge of what cards did what was helpful because combining elements in logical ways yielded powerful results (such as using fire on an enemy you previously used oil on).