Traps in video games

[StaceyPowers]

@killamch89 mentioned traps as a positive in dungeons recently, which surprised me, cause they drive me crazy--especially as it is always my followers setting them off.

How do you all feel about traps?

[The Blackangel]

It depends on what kind of trap it is. There are lots of things that are technically traps, but are quite beneficial. For example wildlife biologists can use bait to lure out the animal. That's beneficial. The cops use traps to catch their prey. If you walk into a dungeon and fall through a trapdoor into a pit, check the bodies down there. One of them may have something that you desperately needed.

[Withywarlock]

Like many aspects of video game design, traps are only as good as FARTing. Which is to say, Finding and Removing Traps.

I'm currently playing We Happy Few, which has a few problems:

1. Scarcity. Encounters with tripwires are far and few between. This means that when they come up they feel like they're a cheap way of taking a liberal chunk of the player's health away. Now some of these are hidden by darkness and the player can be blamed for not having a torch, which, err, sees too little use to be considered than going in somewhere new fumbling in the dark.
2. "Disarmament". Disarming traps in We Happy Few almost always means either jumping over them (to surprising effectiveness), or sprinting through them thus activating them (an exploded bomb is technically disarmed) and either taking damage or.... not.
3. Disarmament. If you're unfortunate enough to have any content left over by the time you get the Multitool required to disarm traps properly, then you'll have to hold down the X button to do so like when you've got several lockers to use the lockpick on, or a few planks of wood boarding up an entrance to be broken with your jimmy bar. It's another pain for the player to deal with it on top of the misery of (what will probably be) an extra 40 hours of that.

Because of the nature of We Happy Few (a first person "immersive sim", or to use a less masturbatory name for the genre, a "0451" game) the player has the advantage of seeing traps for themselves. Compare this to something like Baldur's Gate, an isometric Computer Roleplaying Game (CRPG) based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (AD&D 2E) ruleset. In Baldur's Gate, the most capable member of the party should be FARTing at all times outside of combat, which will run a scan once every six seconds to find any traps within the vicinity. The more points they have in the skills that aid in their detection of traps, the more easily they will come up and can be attempted to be disarmed. Successful disarmament means it doesn't blow everyone to kingdom come; unsuccessful disarmament at best means the situation doesn't change, and at worst it means it's time to reload your last save because who wants to carry the remains and loot of your party member to the nearest temple? Not my Lv. 4 Dragon Disciple Sorcerer.

It's important to note that in D&D traps are essentially written as "you find it or you don't / you disarm it or you don't", and it takes great enginuity on the Game Master's (GM) part to make them better than that. Otherwise every single room in every single dungeon is going to begin with the Rogue saying "I look for traps", which is canonical (read: tiresome) a phrase as "I have Darkvision".

So, how do we build a better man trap?

1. Consistency. Ironically this is something of a trap itself, like a bomb that only arms itself upon going beyond a speed limit. Going below that speed limit means only one thing: kaboom. When a trap is introduced to a game, it must then either feature heavily (exclusively or almost exclusively) in that level, or traps have to appear every so many hours/dungeons. Think of it as the Start-to-Crate review system: forgetting you have traps and then add them later on to fill space shows a lack of imagination.
2. Senses. How does one FART? Do we see a tripwire? Does our character make a sniffing sound? Do we hear a ticking noise that's gradually speeding up? How we find a trap is just as important as the trap's effect itself.
3. The Dance of Death. It's important that players are equipped with the means to deal with traps the moment they encounter them, unless it's made clear before such lethalities that backtracking to get to goodies seen earlier is expected. Backtracking is a fundamental part of surviving We Happy Few, so the Multitool fits in to the mediocre interfacing that is one of the game's defining characteristics. However, it comes so late in the game that backtracking at that point is miserable. Don't make your backtracking miserable - give the player the tools early on enough that they can easily retrace their steps, but not so early that they feel they're just being yanked around for the Hell of it.
4. The Dance of Death (Again). Supposing you're not making a game with backtracking though. Disarming traps shouldn't be the only way to make it past something, especially if disarmament is a minigame. The minigame, like everything else in the game, should be fun. Not everyone else likes minigames like I do though, so it's important that if the player can't do it there's an alternative way that uses their character skills rather than player logic skills. Something like a crawlspace they need to uncover, or enemies they have to plough through. They should have to do something to progress, if indeed the trap is preventing progress.
5. Consequence. One problem with traps is they're just annoying. Health can be healed, and keeping me in place for several real time minutes because I continuously fail my dexterity saving throw (every CRPG with a web spell ever) causes irreversable damage to my opinion of the game going forward. You can go with stat losses and semi-permanent damage that can only be healed by something like an Injury Kit or a Surgery skill, but again that's a problem that goes away. What isn't as easily healed is pride. The trap might be harmless to the player, but not the safe they're trying to crack, which destroys the contents inside of it. Their perfect stealth run can be ruined by the crushing of glass beneath their feet, alerting the nearby enemies. An explosion doesn't have to harm the player, but an explosion usually means danger to all inside the dungeon, does it not?
6. Reward. Like what I'd said about dungeons in another post of yours, traps don't come from nowhere. They are built with purpose. Whether to catch food or trespassers, or simply for the sadistic pleasure of watching someone weep as their precious goodies end up being melted away in jar of acid, they are borne of someone's enginuity, time and resources. People typically don't trap something unless there's value, or they've had something of value taken from them. How many people buy security cameras after they've been burgled, for instance? I'd be surprised if there were that many, because they think it won't happen to them until it does. In order to be burgled though there has to be the idea there's something worth burgling. Think of it from the point of view of the trap maker, however (un)skilled they may be - what would make them defend their property to such a possibly lethal extent? When you put yourself in their shoes, you can end up making the player's reward as good for them as it is for you as a designer.

So there's my long-winded thoughts as ever. I should be reading Lovecraft, but I couldn't resist talking about another topic I do so enjoy. For further reading I recommend The Angry GM's "Traps Suck" article, which focusses on tabletop RPG traps but nonetheless begins with how Super Mario World help him appreciate - and deteste - traps, good and bad.

[StaceyPowers]

3 minutes ago, Withywarlock said:

So there's my long-winded thoughts as ever. I should be reading Lovecraft, but I couldn't resist talking about another topic I do so enjoy.

Amazing post as always, thank you so much for sharing such detailed thoughts.

And kudos on reading Lovecraft. Are there any Lovecraft-themed games you recommend as a fan of his writing?

[Withywarlock]

9 minutes ago, StaceyPowers said:

Are there any Lovecraft-themed games you recommend as a fan of his writing?

It's because I'm not a fan (yet, I hope) that I'm reading his work. I've had this Commemorative Edition of Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, unread for so many years (about 11 now) that I'm giving it another chance. I'd finished Call of Cthulu (2018) a few days back, so impressed was I that I wanted to see how it was compared to the book. I had intended to read the eponymous story but was so glued to the game that I couldn't make time for the original work.

So that, and quite possibly Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth if you've the stomach for a slightly older FPS. And if you're into the tabletop I've heard many good and frightful things about the Call of Cthulu RPG by Chaosium Inc., as well as Achtung! Cthulu. What I'd give for Cthulu Invictus, the Ancient Roman Cthulu RPG book.... Ahem. The Dark Conspiracy tabletop RPG would also support Lovecraftian stuff well I think, being Near-Future and containing supernatural phenomenon and the like.

We Happy Few sort of has Lovecraftian vibes to it, but is more steeped in an Orwellian, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol/Jubilee influence than Cthulu as such.

Edited January 2, 2021 by Withywarlock

[StaceyPowers]

1 minute ago, Withywarlock said:

It's because I'm not a fan (yet, I hope) that I'm reading his work.

I am glad you are discovering his weird and wonderful prose and stories! I was really into his work a couple decades back when no one knew who I was talking about (his works were classics even then, but they seemed to appeal to a narrow niche), and now he is a household name =D All it took was his works entering public domain.

[Reality vs Adventure]

RE7 did an interesting take on traps. Usually the Resident Evil games have quite a few puzzles to solve, and I don't really like puzzles. But in RE7 there is a trap that is a scary little puzzle he has to figure out. That sort of puzzle really took the series to new heights. There were other traps that were set you usually could see, and it brought a more cautious approach as I continued on. I thought it did well at first, but got a little carried away with all the traps which made me as a player sort of 'numb' to my surroundings and said screw it, I'm going through it. But not wise to do with limited resources to find. 

I like the movie series SAW where the approach to a trap is to torture yourself and others in order to get out. I haven't played SAW on ps3 because I read there were too many puzzles. But I like traps where you are caught and have to solve a not so hard gory puzzle to get out. Then of course there is always a pit you can fall into with all kinds of nasty shit only a madman can think of. And being pinned with your back against the wall and forced to pulverize a still kicking body over and over till you as a player becomes breathless and you say "God Damn Die already!!! Geez! What just happened?" RE7 had a decent take on that. 

The typical trap where you walk and set something off, to me is best reserved for military, spy, crime boss games. And magic traps for that genre. 

Want to hear an epic trap? Wolfestein II The New Colossus, the protagonist was caught in a house and lifted by a freakin helicopter where you had to do battle! Yummy

 

[killamch89]

Traps really add to the experience in a dungeon or spooky setting because you have to watch your every step but on the other hand, you can also use it as a tool to get rid of some of the monsters in that same setting. If anything, knowing that there are traps around tends to let me really focus when I'm playing because one wrong move and I'll be in a very precarious situation.

[Heatman]

On 1/6/2021 at 5:47 AM, killamch89 said:

Traps really add to the experience in a dungeon or spooky setting because you have to watch your every step but on the other hand, you can also use it as a tool to get rid of some of the monsters in that same setting. If anything, knowing that there are traps around tends to let me really focus when I'm playing because one wrong move and I'll be in a very precarious situation.

If you are ever the one to be in a rush to complete a task, when it comes to those traps you will end up getting caught in it which is definitely going to be a very frustrating experience for you.