Infinite Properties

Idan Rooze | February 2023

Totem Assets can support an infinite number of asset properties, to provide ultimate freedom for game creators when interpreting player Assets. What is the potential of this system?

Imagine you're working on a fighting game, and you want your players to use different combat styles. This property should affect player Avatars, so that when a player enters the game, they'll see their familiar Avatar, but now with their distinct set of moves. You can create a new "Combat Style" filter, and decide how each combat style works and how rare each of them is.

https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMTg2NTA3MC8xMTAxMzc3OC5wbmc=/original/LpfmkH.png

Player Fighter Jets in Nephenthesys are using four filters to create a distinct look.

Now your game is popular, and everyone enjoys being able to combat with their Avatars using the different combat styles. One of the combat styles becomes more effective than the others, so Avatars in the market with this combat style become more sought after. Other developers decided to use your filter - implementing the different combat styles into their own games, but giving them fresh new takes. A new fighting card game comes out where Avatars are represented as decks, where combat styles affect card distributions.

With an infinite number of potential properties, Shared Assets are a flexible tool that helps deepen players' sense of identity, furthering their connection with your games.

Some Real-World Examples

The Horror bullet-heaven game Nightshift Survival is utilizing a filter to determine a player's items' attack style to help them against hordes of animatronics.

The Nephenthesys team created four new filters to determine the look of player's jet fighters in their sci-fi shoot 'em up.

Music Rush Is a one-tap casual game that features a unique Musical Genre filter, to allow players to own Avatars that can play  through some unique musical tracks!

Belzeburger is a deckbuilder about serving burgers in hell. The team wanted to use some of the canonical Avatar properties but quickly realized natural human skin and hair colors don't work too well, so they've created their own infernal palettes for demons!

This series of five mobile games are all using the same unique Hat filter that gets your Avatar a cool headwear that remains persistent across all of them!

Totem Game Development Network 2022