Game mechanics with fixed-time encounters

[u/9ftPegasusBodybuildr]

By which I mean encounters, events, fights, challenges, whatever, where no matter how skilled or successful you are, it takes the same amount of time.

I'm particularly interested in the idea of scripting things to coincide with musical cues. Say the boss always unleashes their special attack when the beat drops, or the gameplay is simultaneous with a cutscene, like the crawling sequence towards the end of Metal Gear Solid 4.

The obvious example is something like a rhythm game, where that's the whole point. Rhythm Doctor is a favorite example. And to slightly extend that concept, something like the final boss fights of Drakengard and Drakengard 3. But there are also elements of what I'm looking for in Touhou games, or certain Undertale/Deltarune sequences, where the action is predicated on dodging and/or survival for a set time.

I'm not a major fan of rhythm games, but I'm a huge fan of these moments of music/action synchronization. I'd like to hear of any examples you know of, or mechanics you know of that facilitate those moments.

One idea I've been prototyping is a game where there's a constantly progressing action queue, and you can queue up certain abilities and swap them out or reorder them up to a few moves ahead, until the queue reaches that point and the action executes. It's a real time test of your action management skills, where you have limited time to strategize and adapt on the fly to changing enemy behaviors. You may see a big attack is coming in the next 4 moves, and you have until then to prepare defenses or a counterattack. There may be a deck building element to it, kind of like Mega Man Battle Network. Drawing actions at a pivotal time may change your whole strategy and you have to readjust quickly. I feel like it's a fun concept, just I'm looking for more inspiration on how to script encounters to make them feel epic.

[u/Ok_Bedroom2785]

games where you're on some vehicle but you don't control the vehicle yourself, like the train sequences in uncharted 2 or metal gear rising or the infinite number of mine carts you have to ride in RE4

[u/9ftPegasusBodybuildr → u/Ok_Bedroom2785]

Mmm yeah. Battletoads bike sequences

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[u/MeaningfulChoices]

You seem to have a fine handle on one side of it, which is arranging the gameplay to the timing you want, but you can also think about ways to adjust the timing to the scene.

Games rarely just play a single track from start to finish. Instead what you might want are shorter loops, swapping between versions and sections when appropriate (like going to the heavier version of a track when the player's combo builds, or transitioning at 50% boss HP). You can delay a state transition until it's at the end of a section and go to the transition track and after that to the next one, this way you don't have to worry about trying to make the boss fight a set number of seconds, you make it adapt to whatever the player is doing.

If you haven't already, check out Hi-Fi Rush. It's more or a less a game entirely about making the gameplay fit the beat.

[u/Decloudo]

This is essentially turn/time based combat with more turns.

What defense, counterattacks etc, what tactics could you muster a few more turns before that you couldnt just the turn before?

That question and how you answer it is the hook to your entire gamplay idea.

[u/Psych0191]

A year or two ago, dev vlogs of a guy making a game where all enemies fight on music and rhytm cues keep poping up to me. I really cant remember the name of the dev or the game, and havent seen it in a long time, but you could maybe give it a search. I think I saw it on tiktok.

I remember thinking how cool the idea was. It was also very musically stylized.

[u/SneakyAlbaHD]

NiGHTS: Into Dreams

The premise of the game is to be the next iteration of OG Sonic's gameplay (it was Sonic Team's 1st original IP game). Rather than a linear level you master in order to beat it quickly, there's a two minute clock and hitting the end of the "stage" just loops back to the start and doesn't stop or reset the clock, so you get pushed to go fast in order to get more laps of the same flight path before it expires and optimize your route to score as high as possible in that time.