DIG 3725 - FSU Game Design: October 2015

Game One - This War of Mine

This War of Mine - an indie adventure PC title

// The Tetrad

Story
This War of Mine is an Indie game developed for the PC. It is a adventure survival game that takes place in a war torn city (said to be based off the Bosnian War) in and you are controlling survivors who are left behind to fend for themselves. It requires the player to make decisions that will lead to either their survival or ultimate demise. The player during the day builds up their shelter with necessities the at night they scavenge the city for supplies. It is a game that challenges the player psychologically rather than putting any demand on "skills".

Technology
The technology is very modern, with modern weapons and equipment. Most of this stuff you would expect if you were in a survival situation such as the one this is based in.

Art
The art of this game is one of my favorite aspects about it. It has a very "indie" style that isn't very demanding on the player's computer, however while that may sound like a turnoff for some I feel that a "AAA" style of graphics wouldn't suit a game such as this one. The color palette is very dark which plays on it's very dark and distressing theme. It has an almost comic book feel to it as there are a lot of scratchy borders around the edges of most objects.

Mechanics
The game is played in environment that can only be traversed two dimensionally. The player controls the survivors by clicking on a specific action they want them to take such as walking, gathering, or even killing.

During the day the player takes control of the multiple survivors in the shelter to build everyday necessities like making food, clean water, ammunition, medicine, and other random supplies that they may need. It is a somewhat unique gameplay design that is much like a simulator.

During the night is when the player controls one of the survivors to go out and scavenge for supplies. During this time the combat system is opened up and it is performed the same way all other actions are performed, by clicking on the specific action.

In-game screenshot during the day period.

// Balance

One downfall of this game is the design of gameplay. While I feel mechanics of the game are great and make for a fun experience, however I think some of the RNG factors that you rely on to make the game difficult are not random enough, making it easy to predict and avoid difficulties while playing. This creates a low playability for a game who's inherit design is to let you replay it many times. While this game is very fun to to replay it is nothing like the first few playthroughs which makes for a disappointing lifespan of the game.

// Emergent Properties

This game was intended to be played how the player saw fit so one great thing is that you can do whatever you want during your playthrough. On my first play through I thought I should be cutthroat to survive, so I would steal and kill people for supplies because this tends to give you higher supply yields than just scavenging honestly and trading items. However this causes your characters to have emotional distress and all my characters ended up dying from depression (committing suicide or just leaving). Then I played a more docile playstyle the second way and it worked well, though boring at times.

// Interest Curves

Great thing about this game is that the Interest Curve will vary on each play through. The game will sometimes take some time for winter or the crime spree to start, both "hard" sections of the game", which create very tense situations that will never have valley's to allow the players to rest. The game can have a very large snowball effect if you can't control it early. However if played right the game can have many valley's and can actually get too flat at times, but there are ways to keep this from happening such as player challenges (challenges the player creates to make the game challenging).

// Game Design Issues

The main issue with this game is that it is basically a "solved" game. There are ways that the player can manipulate the game to work well in their favor without too much issue, basically mechanics are easily exploitable. On my first few play throughs I just played I believe the way the game was intended, and it was great. I felt the emotions the developers wanted to convey through their use of the Tetrad, and it was a great experience. However now, while I still find enjoyment in the game(for albeit different reasons) it is nothing like when I first played it because now I just play in a similar fashion to eventually beat it. It is still nonetheless a great experience for every gamer to try out and it has to be one of the most emotionally turbulent games I have played in some time.

Game Two - Bloodborne

// The Tetrad

Story
Bloodborne is an action RPG that takes place in a Gothic city in which you play as a hunter that awakes only to find out he is afflicted with a blood-borne disease during the night of "the hunt" in this city. The hunter then goes out and seeks out what can cure his ailment during this hunt and must fight many beasts throughout.

Technology
The game takes place in a Gothic era town so there are old style weapons such as scythes, axes, swords, and blunderbusses. The armor is also what you would expect in a Gothic theme.

Art
The art style is very similar to its predecessor Dark Souls. It has a very dark palette focusing on many red colors, since the game has a lot of blood in various forms. The overall style is very appealing and has always been a plus for this game series.

Mechanics
Again the game is very similar to its predecessor in that it is an action game with mainly melee sword play and some gun play though less focused on that. It is however different from others in this genre because it is much slower and methodical, this however make the game much more difficult than others of the same genre. It also is an RPG in which the player levels their hunter by collecting blood from beasts he has slain.

A screenshot from Bloodborne

// Balance

The game's balance is very good. The series is known for being notoriously difficult where even at a high level if you make a mistake fighting even peons located near the beginning of the game, they can still kill you. It makes players step back and thing of the actions they are about to take rather than blindly running in and swinging their sword. It is very unforgiving if you're a player who doesn't learn from their previous mistakes. Although I do feel this iteration of the series is not as difficult as the previous which is my biggest issue with the game.

// Emergent Properties

The game is very open ended for the most part, not providing any direct objectives that the player must accomplish but instead lets the player find out what needs to be done. This allows the player to take whatever route they desire and play the game how they deem efficient to a certain degree. Inherent in most RPGs is the ability to build your avatar as you wish so there is a wide playstyle variation present, however not as much as previous titles in the series which is somewhat surprising.

// Interest Curves

I think the interest curve is very well done in this game since at the beginning it's really good at leaving the player asking for more answers to the many ambiguous questions given at the beginning, like "what is this hunt?" "why all this talk about blood and beasts?" and many others. Then the player immediately gets thrown into difficult fights (which I admit I died at the first monster you fight) but there are good periods of valleys since you have to go and level your character or maybe talk to some NPCs.

// Game Design Issues

While I really enjoyed this game I felt the difficulty which is an important aspect to this game just wasn't on par with the previous titles and that was one of the major flaws for me. I played the previous titles numerous times through however I don't feel that I will with this title because it won't be as challenging. Overall however I think this title was very well designed.

Team work:
This week I plan on creating some music that might possibly be used in the game. I also would like to get the sudblast attack working or even just an animation for it.