What makes Doritos Crash Course so playable?

Our next task as IMPs is to rebrand a stereotypically old school product by giving it a new web presence. Ultimately, this means a game needs making, but also a website to go along with it.

Now the item our group is rebranding is Spangles – little fruit sweets that time forgot. We've been tasked to make a viral game that advertises the product and ultimately is fun to play. We've got an idea, and it stems from good old Sonic.

In Sonic (and we're more talking old-school Sonic here, too) the basic aim of the game is to get to the end of the level in the fastest time, collecting rings as you go. These factors build up into what your final score turns out to be and hence a rank.

There's so many different paths you can take there's quite a lot of replay value in there (finding the fastest route, one with most coins etc.) and really it's the most basic game everyone knows how to play. You run, you jump, you occasionally turn into a ball. Simple. It's the sort of thing people would want to play.

So that's the angle we're going for with this Spangles rebrand. I'm sure there's going to be more detail on what's what later on, but for now let's just see what makes a simple game stick. That's why we're bringing in Doritos Crash Course on the Xbox Live Arcade.

In Doritos Crash Course, you play as your Avatar navigating a course of Total Wipeout Proportions trying to reach the end in the fastest time… kind of like what we're doing. And it's also a promo game… kind of like what we're doing. So it's only fitting to take some tips from the masters as to what elements make it fun.

Why is it fun?

Firstly, and most obviously, there's a massive emphasis on time. Your time is always visible and counting up right next to the time you need to get a silver medal (or to beat your friends, if playing on Xbox Live) and, coupled with the HUD (of sorts) showing you how far through you are, it's constantly pressuring the player to get through the course ASAP, which often means they're going to end up crashing out. A lot.

Just running off of that, having friend's scores there makes it a bit more meaningful than just any random time as it gives you someone to beat. That's always good. I mean, we could have the fastest time just chilling in the corner being all "Beat this yeah?" and hopefully spur some people on to play some more.

If you die in this game (well, plummet several feet until you belly flop the water) you just start again from a nearby checkpoint pretty sharpish. There's no messing around. It just puts you back on your feet again ready to run. If that delay lasts long enough for the player to hit the big red X in the corner, then they will do just that.

Lastly, it's just a bit of fun. They could have made this a tonne more realistic than it ended up being, but they didn't. Mainly because of time (It was a competition of who could make the best game – that being the ad more than anything) but mainly because something ultra-realistic then becomes a simulator, and simulators are only fun if it's something thrilling to be simulated. I know what it's like to jump on a trampoline, cheers.

Where to go from here?

Well, a bunch of prototypes of game mechanics have been made and we're just refining some of the basics like jump height and speed, but we're getting there. Taking into account the good elements of Sonic and Doritos Crash Course, we can make an awesome game people will want to play again and again, right?