Posted by Ross

Thu, 17th Jan 2013

Musings on Trophies

Hi everyone.   Welcome back to the Laughing Jackal blog. :)

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the past week testing the Trophy system for one of our upcoming Vita games, causing me to take some time to think about Trophies and Achievements. 

I must admit, when they were first introduced I was dubious as to the value of Trophies. After all, shouldn’t your sense of achievement come via the game itself?

However, since those early days I must admit I’ve come to enjoy trophy hunting and while I don’t base my gameplay or purchasing decisions around them (unlike one of our former producers!) I do find myself checking my Trophy score every so often and smiling when I see a message pop up telling me I’ve earned a Trophy.

Having spoken to a few of you over on Twitter and Facebook it seems like most of you enjoy them too, with only one person telling me that they weren’t really interested in Trophies.

As a developer we fall firmly on the ‘Pro Trophy’ side of the fence and many of our minis such as Hungry Giraffe include in-game achievements for you to unlock (Hungry Giraffe also featured in-game achievements in the iOS and PSM versions.) We also really enjoyed setting up the Trophies and Challenges in Cubixx HD.

Of course, the decision of whether to include Trophies is somewhat dependent on the platform chosen. Indeed they are required on some platforms.

A more interesting question is how hard Trophies should be to unlock and this question is why I took to Twitter. Most people who replied seemed to want either a mix of difficulties, with a few for the more casual player but some harder ones allowing pros to show off their skills. Lots of you wanted us to concentrate on the harder Trophies and there were a few comments asking us to avoid grinding.

But what do you all think?  Were Cubixx HD’s Trophies too hard or just about right?  Do you prefer a larger amount of lower value Trophies, or fewer big-scoring ones?  Why not let us know in the comments or you can vote in these handy Facebook polls?

That’s all for now.  I’ll be back next week but until then you can join us on our Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google+  pages where we will be posting all the news from Laughing Jackal.