5 Game Design Innovations from 2016

Hi! I'm Mark Brown and this is Game Maker's Toolkit, a series on video game design. 2016 has been a great year... well, for video games I mean. From the frenetic battles in Doom to the mysterious puzzles of The Witness. From the moody atmosphere of Inside to the intricate level design of Dishonored 2. This has been a packed year. But in this video, I want to celebrate the games that tried something a bit different. The concepts that we've never seen before, and the ideas that other developers will be pinching in a few years time.

They might not be perfect, but we should reward their courage and their dedication to moving the industry forward. These, then, are five of the most innovative ideas I saw this year. Video games have done replays before. But they've got nothing on Overwatch's Play of the Game. At the end of each match, the game manages to pick out the single most important moment and show it to all the players. And being the star of Play of the Game is more satisfying, sometimes, than actually getting the most points.

The reason why this system is so impressive, though, is because we're asking a computer to do, essentially, the one thing it can't do: be subjective. We're asking a dumb robot to pick out something interesting. So, basically, Blizzard has to set up a whole bunch of rules that tell the computer what is worth highlighting. And it's doubly impressive to see such a system debut in a game like Overwatch, because this game is filled with characters who can all be instrumental in the fight - but in very different ways.

How do you weigh a big kill streak by Genji, against an all-important barrier by Mei, against a resurrection by Mercy, against Roadhog, who just pulled a nuisance opponent out of their hiding place? Well, behind the scenes, Overwatch is actually finding highlights that fit four different criteria. High Score tracks big kill streaks and Mercy resurrections. Lifesaver is for players who save a teammate from imminent death. Sharpshooter picks up on shots that were particularly tough to land. And Shutdown awards players who interrupt an enemy, just as they were about to do something big.

PHARAH: Justice rains from abo-urk! Different factors - like the velocity of the enemy you shot, or the potential impact of the player you shutdown, as well as extra modifiers like proximity to the objective - help Overwatch pick one of the four highlights and show that moment as the play of the game. It's still not perfect, and Blizzard will surely continue to tweak and improve the system in future patches. But as an extra way to reward players, in a game where a scoreboard wouldn't tell the full story, Play of the Game will almost certainly be influential in future multiplayer games.

When you play a character-based game, you expect the hero to react to your input immediately, as if they are an extension of your body. But when you're playing the role of a commander, you can't always rely on your troops to do exactly what you want. Simple systems like units panicking in XCOM, or overpowered monsters disobeying your orders in Pokemon, remind you that you're never fully in charge. But one game in 2016 put this idea front and centre, by really focusing on the psychological wellbeing of your team. It's Darkest Dungeon, and its affliction system.

So how does it work? Well, many actions in the game will increase the stress level of your heroes. Taking damage, travelling in the dark, watching a team mate die, or witnessing some nightmare monster will all sincerely bum your warriors out. This is represented as a number, as developer Red Hook Studios realised that it needed to make this part of the system clear and predictable for the player. But if an adventurer's meter hits 100, they'll take on some terrible affliction - and you have no idea what that will entail. They might turn selfish, and steal treasure for themselves.

Or they might become hopeless, and skip their turn. If you're especially lucky, the terrible situation might just be what your warrior needs to become an overpowered hero. But either way - affliction or virtue - these moments can lead to some of the best narrative beats in the story. By having your team act more like humans, rather than pawns in a chess game, Darkest Dungeon conjures up some incredible emergent stories.

And, it forces you to consider things that most games do not. You need to give your team members a break between battles, just to calm their nerves and stop psychological quirks from piling up. Plus, this plays into the game's organic morality system - will you look after your team's emotional wellbeing? Or will you ignore their plight, crush their spirits, and toss them away when they've become too harrowed to do the job anymore.

So, in most games, conversations take place in these static scenes. The camera flips back and forth between participants until it's finally your turn to talk. You then pick a response, sometimes under a time limit, and wait for your chance to speak again. Here's a game that chucks all of that, like, right in the ocean - the indie game Oxenfree. For one, you're almost never trapped in a conversation. Instead, you can just respond to questions while you're doing something else. Three buttons on the controller are dedicated to talking, leaving the others free so you can walk around, perform actions, and fiddle with your radio.

And secondly, you're free to interrupt other people... all the time. You might want to interject to save a friend who is struggling to answer a tough question. Or you might just want to butt in to point out something interesting you spotted. Best of all, the game handles your interruptions really well. Here, Ren is yabbering away... REN: The town is shut down and we, the Camena High junior class..." and you interject to say ALEX: Uhhh, if nobody lives here and the stores are all closed, whose car is this?

Jonas responds, and then Ren returns to his topic by saying... REN: Anyways, the town's youths keep the whole slink over and camp thing alive and well. With some creative scripting, and tiny phrases like "anyway", "as i was saying", and "so, yeah", the game lets you cut off other characters - but then can return to the useful information or character building stuff that you just talked over. The result of all this is more natural conversations, with the pacing and flow of a real chat - rather than the rigid turn-based debate you get in other games. It works especially well in an a story about excitable teens but these ideas would suit just about any game with a focus on dialogue.

Now, while the ideas in Oxenfree are largely new, the execution isn't perfect. It's inconsistent whether Alex is going to butt in... REN: Really? Just... ALEX: Jonas, come on. I vouched for you sight unseen and you're already acting super weird. ... or wait for her turn to deliver her next line... JONAS: You can bum one off me if you're empty. ALEX: Oh, ah, no thanks. I don't smoke. And sometimes you know what you want to say but you're waiting for your chance to speak - and you're more concerned by the fading speech bubbles than what the other characters are saying.

A potential fix might be that you can press the button to immediately deliver the line, or hold the button down to queue the line up and then automatically deliver it when there's a gap in the conversation. I dunno. The point is: we're seeing a bunch of games at the moment that are focused on dialogue, and they could do well to look to Oxenfree and see the smart stuff it's doing to make more free-flowing conversations.

You can't have a list of innovative games without mentioning Superhot - the inventive first-person shooter where time moves only when you move. Stand still, and the game's practically frozen. But take a step forward and time flows normally. You can use this supernatural ability to dodge bullets, to consider what to do next - and also to pull off the sort of bombastic action sequences only seen in a tightly-choreographed movie.

The premise allows for close-quarter battles, including a gunfight in an elevator and a classic bar room brawl. You can also do more than just shoot - you can punch a enemy, grab their gun from mid-air, and then throw it halfway across the room. And you can trick enemies into shooting each other, or line them up for an chain kill. You might think this would all make the game too easy - but that's not the case. Because time doesn't completely freeze, you've got to keep moving. And firing a gun will make time jerk forward, which can get you killed. Plus, you need to wait between shots, and judge where enemies will be. Enemies, might I point out, who swarm in from every angle.

It makes for a surprisingly exhausting experience. Despite having time to plan and to breathe, Superhot's intoxicating battles are often more intense than shooters played in real time. The game's designers say they removed everything that didn't speak to this core idea - including exploration and realistic textures. And so where two major games this year toyed with time manipulation for a single level each, Superhot went all in - and came up with, yes, the most innovative shooter I've played in years.

Hitman thrives on repetition. You'll know that if you saw my video earlier this year. The game encourages you to replay each mission, over and over again, until you have enough experience to pull off the perfect hit. But this obsessive level of rehearsal does have some drawbacks. For one, there's no longer any spontaneity. When you can predict the events of each level like a well choreographed dance, you don't need to cleverly adapt to the circumstances.

And there ain't much tension either. If you make a mistake you can just start again, or load an earlier save. And this is why you need to play the elusive targets. Every couple weeks, io Interactive gives you a new assassination target, and they only stick around for a couple days. They'll be somewhere in a level that you've already played, and likely mastered, so you'll have a huge advantage. But the targets themselves are unpredictable, as they bring extra guards and have unknown schedules.

And, of course, you only get one attempt to kill your man. Or woman. Or Gary Busey. You can restart the mission anytime before you engage, which is a bit of a bummer. But once you begin your assassination attempt it's either a success or a failure. And there's no second chance. Playing Hitman's regular missions feels you're like planning and training. And then the elusive targets feel like the real deal: you have to be creative and adaptable. And you only get one shot, so you better make it count.

As lead online designer Torben Ellert puts it, they offer the "purest possible experience of being the assassin". So where other devs offer cheeky time-limited events just to get you back in the game, like double XP weekends and Halloween-themed skins, Hitman uses the disposable nature of its elusive targets to offer a style of gameplay that's just not possible in the base game. So there we have it. Five innovations from five impressive games.

But, actually, there's one more. Just like last year, with my video on Her Story, the next episode of Game Maker's Toolkit will be a deep dive on the most innovative game I played in 2016. Put your best guess in the comments below. Until then, please subscribe to the channel to get new videos every few weeks. Here's a special shoutout to GMTK Patrons who all suggested ideas for this episode. And here, as ever, are my top tier supporters.