Escalating Tension


A big part of the success of Centipede is how it escalates tension over the length of the game. The game actually creates peaks and valleys in which tension escalates to an apex and, with the killing of the last centipede segment, relaxes for a moment as the game switches over to the next wave. One small way in which the game escalates tension over a few seconds is through the flea, which is the only enemy in the game players must shoot twice. When it is shot just once, its speed increases dramatically and players must quickly shoot it again to avoid being hit. For that brief speed burst, tension escalates. In terms of the centipede itself, the game escalates the tension by splitting the centipede each time it is shot. If players shoot the middle segment of an eleven-segment centipede, it will split into two five-segment centipedes that head in opposite directions. Sure, the players have decreased the total number of segments on the screen by one, but now they have two adversaries to worry about at once. As a result, skilled players will end up going for the head or tail of the centipede to avoid splitting it.

Most of the game s escalating tension over the course of a wave is derived from the centipede s approach toward the bottom of the screen and players often frantic efforts to kill it before it gets there. Once a centipede head reaches the bottom of the screen, a special centipede head generator is activated, which spits out additional centipede heads into the player s area. If players are unable to kill the centipede before it reaches the bottom of the screen, which has already increased tension by its very approach, that tension is further escalated by the arrival of these extra heads. And those extra heads keep arriving until players have managed to kill all of the remaining centipede segments on the screen. The rate at which those extra heads come out increases over time, such that if players takes their time in killing them, additional centipedes will arrive all the faster, making players still more frantic.

Once players kill the last segment, the game goes to its next wave, and the centipede is regenerated from the top of the screen. This provides a crucial reprieve for players, a moment of rest. Players will feel a great rush at having finally defeated the centipede, especially if the extra centipede head generator had been activated. In addition, the newly generated centipede at first appears easier to kill, since it is generated so far from the player s area.

Over the course of the entire game, the mushrooms inevitably become more and more packed on the play-field. Once there are more mushrooms toward the bottom of the screen, players feel lucky if they can just clear all of the mushrooms in the lower half of the play-field. They have no chance of destroying the mushrooms toward the top, since the lower mushrooms block their shots. Similarly, if the scorpion has left any poisoned mushrooms toward the top of the screen, players have no chance whatsoever of destroying them, and as a result the centipede dive- bombs the bottom of the screen on every single wave. Far into a game, the top of the play-field becomes a solid wall of mushrooms. As the mushrooms become more and more dense, the centipede gets to the bottom of the screen faster. When the centipede can get to the bottom of the screen extremely quickly, the game is that much faster paced, and players are that much more panicked about destroying the centipede before it reaches the bottom of the screen. This increased mushroom density has the effect of escalating tension not just within a wave as the extra centipede head generator did, but also from wave to wave, since the mushrooms never go away unless players shoot them.


Over the course of a game of Centipede , mushrooms become more and more tightly packed on the play-field.

Centipede also balances its monsters to become harder and harder as players scores increase. And since the score can never decrease, the tension escalates over the course of the game. Most obvious is the spider, whose speed approximately doubles once the score reaches 5000 (1000 if the game s operator has set the game to hard ). The spider also maneuvers in a smaller and smaller area of the bottom of the screen as the score gets really high, eventually moving only one row out of the player s six-row area. With the spider thus constrained, it is both more likely to hit players and less likely for players to be able to shoot it. Recall that the flea drops from the top of the screen based on the quantity of mushrooms in the bottom half of the screen. When players start the game, if there are less than five mushrooms in that area, the flea will come down, dropping more as it does so. As the score increases, however, so does the quantity of mushrooms needed to prevent the flea s appearance. Now players must leave more and more mushrooms in that space to prevent the flea from coming out and cluttering the top of the screen with mushrooms.

At the start of each wave, the game always generates a total of twelve centipede segments and heads at the top of the screen. This means that if a twelve-segment centipede appears at the top of the screen, it will be the only centipede. If a seven-segment centipede appears, then five other centipede heads will appear as well, thus totaling the magic number of twelve. The more centipedes that appear, the more challenging it is for players to shoot them all, and the more likely one will sneak to the bottom of the screen. The game starts by releasing a single twelve-segment centipede. In the next wave, a slow eleven-segment centipede appears along with one head. In the following wave, a fast eleven-segment and one head combination arrive. Then a slow ten-segment and two heads appear. With each wave there are a greater number of individual centipedes for players to keep track of and a greater escalation of tension. The game cycles around once twelve individual heads are spawned, and then becomes harder by only spawning fast centipedes.

The player s death also provides a brief respite from the tension. When the player s ship is destroyed, the wave starts over and hence the centipede returns to the top of the screen. Before this, however, all of the mushrooms on the screen are reset. This means that all the partially destroyed mushrooms are returned to their undamaged state and all of the mushrooms poisoned by the scorpion are returned to their unpoisoned state. Many waves into the game, the increased mushroom density makes shooting poisoned mushrooms all but impossible , and with those poisoned mushrooms in place, players are bombarded by centipedes hurtling toward them in every single wave. Thus, players are almost relieved when their shooter is destroyed and all those poisoned mushrooms are removed from the top of the screen. This causes the game to be much more relaxed , at least for a time.


Centipede s frantic gameplay keeps the player tense most of the time, though it provides some breaks in the action during which the player can relax.

Centipede is marvelous at creating and maintaining a tense situation for players, while still providing brief breathing periods within the action. Designers of modern games , who are always concerned with ramping up difficulty for players, could learn much by analyzing how Centipede keeps players constantly on their toes without ever unfairly overwhelming them.




Game Design Theory and Practice
Game Design: Theory and Practice (2nd Edition) (Wordware Game Developers Library)
ISBN: 1556229127
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 189

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