Parallel Lives

Game elements that when individually lost do not interrupt gameplay, but do so when all are lost.

The loss of game elements

one of these elements may limit the players' possible actions or opportunities but does not have as severe consequences as the loss of a life of a player character, which typically signifies the end of a game session or forces the players to restart at an earlier point in the game.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Examples

Missile Command is an archetypical example of Parallel Lives: the player has six cities that all can be destroyed and the player can continue playing without losing a life as long as at least one city is intact.

Lemmings series

Space Hulk is an example of a Board Game that uses Parallel Lives. Here the player controlling the space marines at least has a theoretical chance of completing their mission as long as one space marine is still alive.

Using the pattern

The design choices associated with Parallel Lives are similar to those of Lives but the Penalties of losing a parallel life is usually small, typically only the loss of the actions the Units provided. However, not all Units need to be valued the same in order to create a hierarchy of importance; the lose of some may allow continued gameplay while others must be kept alive, at least until certain events have taken place,. The consequences of losing all Parallel Lives are typically the same as losing all Lives in an Avatar -based game of Player Elimination but Missile Command shows multi-layered option - that the Parallel Lives are not the actually Lives used in the game and losing all Parallel Lives only results in losing one of the 'proper' Lives of the game.

Consequences

Parallel Lives require players to make Risk/Reward calculations on which game elements to protect and which to risk. The pattern often requires the players to perform Attention Swapping, especially in games where players do not have a complete overview of the Game World. The use of Parallel Lives is problematic to combine with that of Avatars.

History

An updated version of the pattern Parallel Lives that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.