Part of a series: 20 Game Designs

A little while ago, I sent out this challenge to my friends: “Inspired by Kate Beaton. I’m not so much with the comics. But I will write for you a short game design pitch for the first 20 concepts that you throw at me.”

Every now and then, I’m putting together a pitch based on the concepts. Will there be executive summaries and lists of unique selling points? Oh yes, there will! Then after the excitement has died down, I write up some notes about what I was thinking.

PANTS! Executive Summary

PANTS! is a fast paced web-based casual game in the spirit of Burger Time or Diner Dash. Set in a garment factory, the player takes control of a team of pants makers, in a desperate dash to make the most, best, pants in the shortest amount of time. With a unique team-play coop mode and well as nail biting head-to-head pants making, PANTS! is sure to bring players back to the table for just one more stitch, again and again.

Unique Selling Points

• Fast paced pants making action!
• Unique team-based actions invites players to bring their friends!
• Mouse-based pants interaction asks players to balance speed with accuracy
• Fashion theme appeals to wide range of demographics and casual players

Setting

PANTS! is set in a garment factory (but the nice kind). Run by uFash a boutique company that specializes in “custom one of a kind fashions at factory prices”, the factory requires an ever changing inventory of pants, always up to date with the fashions of the minute. As a result, the designs are in constant flux with the only constant being the NEED FOR MORE PANTS. The player plays the shift leader of a team of pants makers. The team consists of a Cutter, a Stitcher, a Detailer and a Folder. Together, these workers must make pants that pass quality inspection, while also keeping the pants making to a brisk pace in order to earn the highest wages possible (teams are paid per pair of pants).

Gameplay

The core game loop of PANTS! is the act of making a pair of pants. The 4 NPC workers sit at a long table, left to right. Fabric arrives on the left side of the screen. The Cutter cuts it into the assigned pattern and passes it to the Stitcher who sews the pieces together before passing it to the Detailer who ads labels, fashionable rips, etc. before passing it to the Folder who folds and packages the garment. Left to their own devices, these workers will work at a certain speed, happily making pants but not necessarily as efficiently as they could. Maybe the stitcher is much slower at sewing than the cutter is at cutting, resulting in a pile of unsewn pieces of cloth. Maybe it’s the Detailer that’s taking too long to add rivets. And definitely, everyone could be working faster (the bums)! This is where the player comes in.

Coaching

At any time, the player can step in and take over for an especially slow workmate to show them how it’s done. This opens up one of 4 mini-games (one for each task). The player plays the mini game for a set period of time (10-30 seconds) and then depending on how well they do, their lazy subordinate will receive a boost in efficiency, which over time will drain away until they return to lazy equilibrium.

By jumping between mini-games, the players can keep cajoling each of the workers towards their peak efficiency. The more you coach an individual worker, the slower their efficiency creeps back down. Playing the mini-games well and choosing which mini-game to focus on will be the key to keeping the production lines humming.

The Mini-Games

Cutting

The player’s mouse becomes a pair of scissors and, as quickly as possible, they must trace the outline of the garment pieces, according to the displayed design. Points are awarded for both speed and accuracy, with bonuses for the number of cuts required to make the pieces. Later levels require increasingly complex patterns.

Sewing

Using the mouse button to start and stop the machine, the player uses the mouse to turn and rotates the pieces of cloth to stitch them together in the right way. Points are awarded for both speed and accuracy, with bonuses for never stopping the sewing machine. Later levels require increasingly complex patterns.

Detailing

Given a desired final pattern and several boxes of tags, rives, sequins and whatnot the player must quickly recreate the look by affixing the right things in the right places. Points are awarded for both speed and accuracy, with bonuses for never having to remove a placed piece. Later levels require increasingly complex patterns.

Folding

Folding plays out as a kind of rhythm action game, where the player clicks on the right parts of the pants in the right order to fold them properly, then place them in the box and seal it properly. Points are awarded for both speed and accuracy, with bonuses for never having to remove a placed piece. Later levels require increasingly complex packaging for an ever more sophisticated clientele.

Managing the Line

Even if each of the workers is running at 100% efficiency, there is plenty more for the player to do. New design patterns are constantly streaming in, different ones with different degrees of difficulty for each task. By swapping them forwards and backwards on the queue, the player can smooth out the bottlenecks. Too many easy-cut hard-sews in a row will result in a big pileup of pieces of fabric, but this can be easily handled by pushing a few hard-to-cut patterns to the front of the queue.

In addition the workers also suffer from fatigue. By swapping them with fresh workers you can keep the assembly line running at peak efficiency. Careful though, new workers while they are more fresh are also less trained. So they’ll need more coaching at first, and bringing on new hires ain’t cheap! So choose carefully (but quickly!).

Multi-player

Perhaps the killer app of PANTS! co-op multi-player allows more than one person to team up on the same shift. Teams of 1-5 (called ’shifts’) compete head to head against other shifts for prestige and prizes on the PANTS! website. With 1-3 players on a team, jobs will shift and change depending on the moment to moment needs of the assembly line. With a full complement of 5, everyone can buckle down and focus on specializing on his or her favourite mini-game with the 5th player managing the queue.

The PANTS! website encourages community by allowing players to form sub-divisions of uFash made of up groups of players who team up against the others. sub-divisions can customize their group’s logo and other information about their web page, participate in tournaments and other larger events and of course, compete for the annual prize of top uFash pants makers.

PANTS! players can unlock achievements and awards form reaching milestones in the game such as 100% efficiency on an assembly line or logging 10 hours of sewing or any other aspects of the game, encouraging bragging rights and repeat visits.

Some Notes

Ever since Lucy tried to handle life in the Candy Factory assembly lines have been inherently hilarious to the people who don’t have to work on them. After match-3 games like Bejeweled or spacial games like Tetris time management games are one of the most popular casual games genres. So for PANTS! this was a pretty natural choice.

Compared to the core gaming market, the casual gaming market is dominated by women who tend to be in their 30’s and 40’s, a far cry from the traditional core gaming marker of males 18-35. As a result, game makers for the casual scene look for topics that stray from the traditional violence, explosions and car crashes that make up a lot of the core market. Again, PANTS! shines in this area.

The most unique thing about the PANTS! pitch is the multi-player co-op mode. Most casual games don’t have anything like this (they are straight up single player games) but I think that there is definitely room for a community for people who wanted some light player interaction. Puzzle Pirates which is a massively multi-player casual online game is quite successful and working along the same lines though PANTS! has more in common with games like Halo 3, Battlefield 2142 or Team Fortress 2 in that the games are quick one-off competitions with match-making and leaderboards.

The idea for multi-player, which I think may be the best part, came by accident out of my desire to have an assembly line game where you played more than one part of the line. When I started writing the pitch it didn’t exist yet and it wasn’t until I’d worked out the consequences of letting players jump in and out of roles (couldn’t more than one person do this?) that I decided to include it.

I really like the coaching mechanic. Time management games are all about deciding where to throw your attention at any given moment, and by offering the player a perpetual choice between playing one mini-game or another or just managing the assembly line at a macro level, there is a lot of potential depth in the game.

All of: 20 Game Designs