A Giant Problem News

Our very own CEO Marjo Sutinen will be at Arcade 5 to demo the game to the crowd and talk about its development. So if you’ve been on the fence about the game and want a better understanding of it. There’s no better time to get a look! So join us on March 5, 2020 at Arcade 5!

The whole night will be about XR gaming so you’ll also get to see what some of our friends are up to, like HipFire Games. It’ll be a Blast that’s out of this World. So don’t Fail to register as Space is limited.

See we can make puns with the names of other games too.

The night is sponsored by Helsinki Games Capital, Nordic XR Startups, Immersal, and Grib. Which means there'll be food and drinks!

Helsinki Games Capital is a non-profit association that supports the capital area game industry's community, operations and culture. With the goal of having as wide representation as possible of all the different organizations around the capital area ecosystem. https://helsinkigamescapital.fi/

Nordic XR Startups is a pre-seed investor and VR/AR accelerator based in Helsinki with a mission to contribute to and improve the competitiveness of the Nordic VR/AR ecosystem and accelerate the growth of their investment portfolio companies. http://nordicxrstartups.com/

Immersal develops its AR Cloud SDK, a visual positioning and mapping solution for markerless, persistent, battery-friendly, massively multi-user AR. It can be used for enabling immersive AR experiences like indoor navigation and multi-player AR games. https://immersal.com/

Grib is the world's first 3D modeling software for Augmented Reality. You can create and design in 3D within minutes. Grib3D is for educators, kids, hobbyists, and designers to create and showcase their 3D models in AR. https://grib3d.com/

Don’t forget to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam now! And we’ll see you at the event!

Hell there are a lot of questions around the topic, and no solid answers. Why? Well virtual reality is still such a new medium, even if it was done almost 30 years ago only to resurface last decade. At the same time user interfaces have become more important over the past twenty years, so it's not like we're starting from scratch. And to some degree the entirety of VR is the user interface, but that’s not what we want to talk about today.

A Giant Problem inherits all the issues of user interfaces in VR. Namely that they can't be pushed to the edges as they are in other video games. Poor eyesight on the edges means a player won't get all the information they may need or want. Take the standard first person shooter, what do you have to know - player health, ammo, or energy mini-map, weapon status, and maybe something else. Imagine cramming that in the center of the screen.

The fact we're making a fantasy game also affects the constraints we've put on ourselves for the UI design. Namely in that we're trying not to have any UI, well in-game UI also known as a HUD or Heads-Up Display. So there won't be ammo counts, or health bars, or other standard indicators filling your screen. We could magic our way around this, but have felt it unnecessary. Instead we have something special to help you in that regard. We just can't talk about that yet.

Where we do have UI is in the actual menus of the game. Rather than having a scene that you interact with, similar to SUPERHOT VR, we've opted for good ol' fashioned menus. The why is simple - they get you into the game faster, and more players understand what to do.

For new players every type of interaction requires teaching. Even simple things like where to look, how to move, how to grab or activate something take time to comprehend. But most people are use to point and click interfaces. So a simple, well-laid out menu is key. And we’d rather you spend your time playing the game, then trying to figure out what you need to do to play the game.

That’s not to say there won’t be a place in the game where you can go try out all the toys we’ve built for you. It just isn’t going to be the main menu. The menus instead are being designed with flow, ease and purpose in mind. So we’ve looked at the what works in other games, both VR and console, as well as mobile apps. They’re great sources of inspirations, not just because of the years of work and research spent on them, but also because they lack the hotkeys that menus often have on computers.

As awesome as Persona 5’s UI is we’re not going to that extreme. In part because we’re trying to minimize the amount of UI you experience during play. Nor are we aiming for the complexity of something like the Witcher 3 or Destiny 2. The lack of an inventory immediately makes that easier. But having two different buttons for calling up different parts of the UI is a bit much. So we’ve simplified. There’s only one. That doesn’t count any Oculus or Steam menus you can call up.

All that and yet we still can’t show you anything. Maybe that’s a good thing. After all we are trying to keep our UI to a minimum. There’ll be plenty more to see soon. So if you haven’t already, be sure to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam now!

Or lack thereof.

Chance and skill are intimately tied together in games. Even more so when it comes to an action game like we’re making with A Giant Problem. Which has resulted in certain design decisions. More on that in a minute, first let’s explore the differences between chance and skill and even how luck can factor in.

Skill in action games is tied to your abilities as a player, not those of a character. This is especially true in a VR game like A Giant Problem, where it’s your skill at throwing that impacts the game and your success in it. So as long as you throw an object, you’re always going to throw it.

In many games, particularly tactics games like XCOM 2, your attacks have a chance to hit. This is determined by a dice roll, as designers like to say, given the design is inheriting a lot from table top roleplaying and war games like Dungeons and Dragons. Chance is a way of abstracting skill when reflexes aren’t required to a determine success.

Chance can occur at multiple times. So in terms of Dungeons and Dragons, the first chance you experience is with your attack roll. The second is with the damage roll. Even if the first is successful the second is guaranteed to be. Which results in low damage. That’s fine for a game of DnD or XCOM 2, but not A Giant Problem.

Being a giant comes with a few benefits, beyond being able to reach anything on the top shelf. It means when you hit something, you hit all of it. That’s why we haven’t implemented any weak spots in our enemies. If you’re big when you aim you just hitting something small is a skill.

It’s why we don’t have weak spots on enemies, damage drop off, or glancing blows. Being accurate is the true test of A Giant Problem, especially as numbers mount and the odds are against you. It also embraces the arcade-y nature of the game and makes it fun for all. If we were to have a more specific damage model then things could quickly turn to become like DnD where players have a session where their hits just aren’t hard enough.

And that’s not what being a giant is about. It’s about smashing stuff - fully, completely, wholly. That’s not to say there aren’t other aspects to the game that affect the damage model. But we’ve designed the game so that when you hit something, you really hit it. You’ve gotta have that wallop. You’ve gotta have fun.

So if you want to have fun, and smash, bash and mash stuff till your heart’s delight - then wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam now!

And now we can! Join us on our official Discord server. Come talk about our work, game development, video games, and more. You’ll even be notified when we go live with a new stream, and when it’s been posted to our YouTube account.

We want to have a welcoming, fun and safe community. And that means we’re going to be quite strict in terms of our moderation. Our rules will continue to grow and evolve as our community does, but something we will always stand firm on is NO BIGOTRY.

Edgelord humor, testing the line with what’s appropriate, and pushing to get a reaction from people is not part of the Critical Charm ethos. Nor is it something we want to encourage within our community. It’s why we have these rules. And why we enforce them.

All of that said, if you think there can be improvements to how we moderate the server or our rules, then please let us know. We’re building this community with you. So let’s have some fun!

Oh and because we’re in Helsinki, Finland we’re in an awkward time zone for most other people. So don’t take it personally if we don’t respond immediately. And remember, we’re hard at work on the game. The very game you can wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already!

2020 is starting strong, our team has grown with the additional of our new Chief Technical Officer, Zachary Laster. Some of you may know him from his popular Minecraft mod, Mystcraft. He’s also worked at Mindfield Games on the VR game Pollen, and more recently at Frozenbyte.

It’s an exciting time to have Zach join us and a boost to the team. Not just in programming strength, but moral as it always is when someone new joins the team. Zach’s experience is a welcome addition for all, because you can never have too much of a good thing. And programming know-how is always needed when making a game.

And we are making a game.

We started talking about making A Giant Problem a year ago. And we’re not just saying that cause now it’s 2020, but because we announced the game in January 2019. In our initial post we said the game would be out in a few months. And oh boy were we wrong.

But such is the naivety or perhaps over enthusiasm of a new team. What we can do, a year on, is say with confidence the game will come out this year. We’re not giving a more firm date than that at the moment. Though with our strengthened team and a solid plan we know we’ll get the game out. And we know we’ll have more information for you on what that date is soon.

We’ll be announcing more in the coming weeks and months, as we can confirm things. But stay tuned, cause we’re also hoping to get the game into your hands at series of conventions. As ever, some of these things are up in the air but we’re working hard to show you the best of A Giant Problem.

In the mean time, be sure to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam, and check out out all the various places you can see what we’re doing. That includes Twitter, Twitch and Youtube!