The Game

The game to be analysed here is “Fieldrunners-2”. It is a cross-platform tower-defence game, and the Steam version will be used. The URL of the website of this game is http://subatomicstudios.com/games/fieldrunners-2/

5 Lenses

• Challenge(31)
• Visible Progress(49)
• The Puzzle(52)
• Punishment(41)
• Freedom(71)

Challenge

The challenge in this game is to build towers appropriately to stop the fieldrunners. The game offers three difficulty levels – casual, tough and heroic, which can accommodate a wide variety of skill levels. New maps of higher difficulty will be unlocked as the player finishes the relatively easier ones. The game also has endless mode for all the 25 maps, where the difficulty will increase as the rounds goes up, with no upper bound. The benefit of this is that players who are really interested can explore various possibilities and find better plans. Such design is easy to implement, and at the meantime, leaves a wide space for the players to attempt. There will always be challenges as long as the players want.

Visible Progress

There are four kinds of visual progress in the game. The first one is in the world map view, the flags indicate the maps that have been finished, and from the number of stars on the flags the players can know the highest difficulty level that they succeeded.

The second one is for each map, there is a highest score.

The third one is the card view, in which the player can see the achievements they have made.

The last one is the tower view, where the information of the unlocked towers will be displayed.

All these representations are quite direct and easy for the players to see.

The Puzzle

Among the 25 maps in this game, 5 are puzzle maps, in which, the players will be reminded of some rules of the game, as well as be given hints on how to make use of the rules in the game. The five puzzles almost cover all the tricks that the players can play. They are purposely designed as an introduction to advanced levels. From the world view we can see that the puzzles are in a separate area, which indicates that other maps have no dependency on the puzzles. If the player find the puzzles are too difficult they can just ignore them, and maybe they will learn the skills in the process of playing.

Punishment

The game has only one type of punishment – every time the player sells a tower, 2500 points will be taken away. In this kind of strategy games, players should have a complete plan before the game starts, so although selling towers – or changing plans—is allowed, the player will receive punishment. In this case, I do not think there is a better way the change this punishment to rewards. The punishment of 2500 points is used delicately that it will not affect the final score very obviously, but it can distinguish the players with better plan. This is more like a reward for the good planners than a punishment to casual players.

Freedom

Except for the five puzzle maps, the players can choose any unlocked towers and place them in any way they want. The game offers perfect freedom to players. The players only have to follow two rules – buy whatever you can afford and place it any one of the green cells. Beside the rules, what matters will be the imagination of the players. Such freedom is very easy to achieve in terms of game design, and can lead to players to explore. Given this freedom, the players are not so easy to get tired of the game. Only one suggestion for the game – if the players can create maps themselves and share to others, maybe more players will enjoy this game.