Hiro face a bunch of evil samurai warriors in Mini Ninjas
I recently finished working on Mini Ninjas, IO Interactive’s new game for Xbox360, Ps3, Wii, PC & DS, due for release September 2009. If you haven’t heard about the game yet, there’s a ton of previews to be found around the web.
During work on Mini Ninjas I had some experiences in dealing with complex feature interactions, that led me to create a simple tool for designing gameplay features.
It’s a tool which can be used during pre-production, when you plan out the feature set you want to include in your game.
It can also be used as a “change management” tool, when you need to get an idea of the implications of adding, changing or removing a specific feature from a game that’s already in development.
I call this “The Feature Matrix” and I’d like to share some of the ideas behind it.