Running out of time

Often, games limit time or turns. How the designers choose to do this has a major influence on gameplay. I’ve been looking forward to writing about this for a long time, so it’s a perfect topic to cover now that I’m back blogging again.

Time and turns are fascinating to me because they’re a common feature of game design that connects almost every game.

From Candy Crush to Call of Duty, there’s time and turns. There’s arcade games with countdown timers clearly on the screen. And there’s more nuanced examples in 4x games like the Civilization series, or Stellaris, where there isn’t a counter, but there’s AI competitors who are constantly working away building and growing until they will inevitably defeat any player who hasn’t kept up. All of these games have time limits that compel players to play the game.

Why am I talking about time and turn limits in one post?

Turn limits are a type of time limit, in an abstract way, because they represent the in-game time. The player could take two seconds or twenty minutes to choose their next moves, but what’s happening each time they finish their turn is moments of in game time are advancing. Detaching in game time from real world time doesn’t stop it being a form of time that the game designer can control and limit.

What does a time limit look like in a game?

I’m going to call a time limit anything outside of the players control that sets an end time for gameplay. It’s a countdown, regardless if it’s sharply defined in seconds, or some series of timed events inside a game that will lead to an inevitable end game situation.

Changing it up

Using timers or the advancing turns to alter gameplay is an important feature of many games. It often provides pace to the game in terms of challenge and story progression, and it can keep players focused.

Timers and turns can do more than put a limit on gameplay time, they can also change the gameplay as the game progresses

Invisible Inc. is a game with a constant focus on the turns taken. You play as a team of operatives/hackers infiltrating various sites to acquire loot. From the first turn there’s a counter on screen that’s escalating the security level of the site you’re in with every turn you take. It steadily causes the difficulty of hacking objects to increase, and for guards to behave differently. It also causes additional guards to appear. There’s no hard limit to the number of turns available, but in an actual game it makes it effectively impossible to hang around in a level beyond a certain number of turns.

A highly dynamic game full of atmosphere is This War of Mine, and it’s the turns and time limits that are used to pace these changes. You play as civilian survivors during a war. The day/night phases of the game are distinct and important, they’re effectively turns. Scavenge for resources at night in various locations, and organise and build the shelter during the day. The night cycles are where a lot of the most intense events happens. You have to scavenge for resources with the goal of finding whatever is essential, sometimes vital, without knowing exactly where it will be or even if you’ll find it that night. Reducing resource availability as the game progresses with each night is a turn based effect that forces players in to progressively more dangerous territory as the game progresses. Additionally, each night phase has a timer counting down to dawn and players have to achieve their goals and return to the shelter before the sun comes up. Safely escaping a level that the player has infiltrated past many hostile NPCs before the sun comes up is a challenging situation. The decision to stay and look a bit longer or not when you still haven’t found an important item yet is also a challenge. It’s a dynamic game world as many things change with each turn, and it has multiple time and turn limits that meaningfully influence gameplay. I think it’s one of the best examples I know for using time and turns to tell the story, set the pace and create atmosphere.

Hard limits vs. soft limits

Some games just count down time or turns and it’s over, the level ends there, but there’s also soft limits too. Some games reward players for completing levels faster, but never cut you off. The Marvellous Miss Take does this. It’s a frantic game where you play as an art thief who has to collects artwork from a gallery while avoiding various NPCs. You have to keep moving and the gameplay is often fast paced, but there’s no hard limit to the time you take. However, at the end of each level it tells you the time you took. I like this approach a lot. It makes time based play optional and doesn’t penalise players for taking longer by stopping them continuing to the next level, but it also lets them take part if they want and it gives an incentive for them to play the level again. The Marvellous Miss take is a game I consider very well made and I might write more about it in the future.

Flexible limits

Phantom Doctrine is a turn based game where players infiltrate locations to perform various espionage tasks with a team or agents. Interestingly, it starts in stealth mode and the players can – provided they don’t raise any alarm – complete the whole level in stealth. However, if they raise the alarm, accidentally or purposefully, it then switches in to combat mode when enemy NPCs become hostile, and new enemy troops arrive every five turns. This constant stream of hostile NPCs can only be avoided or defeated for so long, so the game now becomes turn limited.

Often there isn’t a hard limit in a game, but the game design makes it inevitable that the player can only remain in the level for a limited time period, regardless of their choices.

Point and click adventure games

I know of a couple of point and click adventures from the 90s that have timed sections. Beware, on the small chance you haven’t played these almost 30 year old games yet, there are spoilers below!

Blade runner has a situation when pursuing a character where if you click to the next scene fast enough and catch them it affects gameplay. This game is also interesting because it has a branching storyline where the player’s actions alter the ending, and this timed section will alter the ending.

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars has two scenes where you have to click two objects in quick succession to achieve the goal. One with a goat to trap it’s rope so it can’t headbutt you, and another to hide in a sarcophagus.

Timed events are unusual in point and click adventures. I don’t know of any examples since then. It’s interesting to me that they made it in to this genre though.

How I’d like to use time and turn limits

Turn based strategy games are a big interest, I love playing them and I plan to try making some projects based on them. Most of all, I’d like to make a game where as the turns advance the gameplay changes. Progression is engaging. Unexpected changes are interesting. I like how these prompt players to adjust their strategy, so I would enjoy making a game where unplanned random events might occur during a mission. This also makes a game world feel more alive and tense. I like it when games surprise me, and I have already written a bit about randomisation in games.

I’m also curious about making a puzzle game where players hunt for treasure on an island, and one way to prompt players to use a strategy and engage with the game rules is to limit the number of turns.

The more flexible time limits in some games are interesting too, I like how they’re not entirely known and that keeps the pressure and tension up during the gameplay. Should you do one more thing, or should you exit the level?