It reinforced the brutal nature of the world you were in. It reinforced the urgency and pressure of saving your Vault. In Fallout 1, it was appropriate because: If you don't recall that, then chances are you played it with the patch that removed that design element, as the mutant-hunting-your-Vault-down-time-limit was patched out of the game in 1.1 because of the outcry. In Fallout 1, the skill system and the plot was built around the design that you only had a certain number of days to find the water chip for your vault and then defeat the mutant army or game over. It creates pressure, and it creates an urgency for the player that's hard to beat. This blog post stems from a question from the AMA Brian Fargo and I did on Reddit (long ago) concerning the issues with this in regards to one infamous piece of game design: time limits, and how two different games dealt with the challenge.įrom a gamemaster/game designer perspective, the idea of time limits is appealing. So a designer's job is to make jumping through hoops fun, and calibrating the challenge/frustration ratio of jumping through said hoops.
