Difficulty Altering Challenges

[Daithi]

I've always been a fan of difficulty options in games and my favorite, bar none, is the shrine idol system from Bastion which allows the player to change different aspects of both the artificial and designed difficulty of the combat as they please for minor but satisfying rewards. It added a TON of variety and replayability to a game that was otherwise largely scripted. http://bastion.wikia.com/wiki/Idols

Enter Chasm, a game that, as the creator stated on the MANvsGAME cast, is supposed to be "the best game that you can play forever". Adding premade user picked challenges, possibly combined into the seed with the random elements already in place, could grow the possible game play variations exponentially using only minor/simple set of tweaks. A simple example would be a mode like "Beta Storm" in which the player is faced with increased bat spawns, all with the original beta super insane bat AI. Combine that with something like an increase in the base enemy speed and you have one hell of a funny/trollish seed that would force the player to find new ways to fight and survive with just two minor settings.

As far as implementation goes I would propose leaving a feature like this out of the primary game but making it, or variations of it, available for Hardcore, Time Trial, and possibly even New Game + modes. Integration into seeds would be a huge plus and could have some pretty amusing community memetic results. E.g. a game caster has a really funny run with, ooooh... lets say no weapons and exploding rats, he shares out that seed, and the next week sees an explosion of YouTube "rat bombs, no weapons" runs.

If seed integration wouldn't work, I'd suggest making the challenges unlockable, maybe tied to in game [not Steam] achievements. In time trial and Hardcore mode the addition of challenges could result in modest point and time rewards based on the difficulty of the challenge in the current game mode.

Avoiding the Bastion model of being able to pick any/all of the tweaks at once would be key. I would limit each play to no more than 3-4 challenges to really encourage the player to think about what kind of a scenario they want to face each time through. Limiting the allowed number of challenge would also grant more room to make wild challenges without fear of them breaking the game when activated alongside every single other challenge.

I thank anyone that made it this far down my half baked and poorly written idea. I'll leave you with a challenge I thought would be pretty cool:

Worms dangle from the floor up becoming little WWII style magnetic mines. When the player approaches the worm its bright blue head segment changes to red and blinks, get too close and it explodes. If the final game includes a hit box for cutting the worm's thread then in this challenge cutting the thread should cause the worms to "float" up to the ceiling and explode. [Could be a clever way to kill bats/flyers.]

[Eion Kilant 739]

While I don't know about that last paragraph, that is a great idea. Stuff like having a swing delay (slower transition to the swinging animation that's around when you deal damage, with no extra damage-dealing time) or increased knockback would certainly make for a more interesting challenge.

[Daithi]

That's the idea. A choose your own challenge system with a bunch of options means even if you don't like some of them you can always have fun with several others, or none at all. If this catches on it'd be kinda fun to see some forum user ideas for challenges.

[Lailoken]

I think this is a really good idea.

[Daithi]

I think this is a really good idea.

Ideas man, ideas. Eion Kilant 739's thoughts about delayed attack animations/timing was really good. It sounds like it would add an old school Castlevania feel to it. More than anything I want to hear what you/the community would like to see as a challenge.

In the spirit I'll add this: I'd love to see a challenge that doubles the damage of enemies and doubles the gold drops. A raising of the stakes if you will.