My list of the best games played this year, and a small reflection for 2020

On the last post of this year, I decided to make a list of the best games I played during 2019. Curiously, during the process of this ranking, I found myself reflecting on the content of Jesper Juul’s new book “Handmade Pixels” (2019).

In his new book, Juul discusses how independent games became a historical movement that borrowed the term “independent” from film and music while finding its own kind of independence. The reading of Juul’s book makes me reflect about how truly independent games that I played this year are, and what makes an indie game a really independent product.



Well, I’m still reading the book and I’ll make some considerations about it soon. It’s a really interesting content for game design and game studies classes.

For now, I want to share the list with the best 10 games that I have experienced in 2019. Important: 1) some of them are a little bit old, but I only played them this year; 2) they aren’t listed in a scale “from best to worst”, I just put them together.

• Baba is you
• What remains of Edith Finch
• Blasphemous
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Cuphead
• Gris
• Gorogoa
• Katana Zero
• Hue
• Resident Evil 2 (remake)

Hope you enjoy it! See you next year!


#GoGamers

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Reference:

JUUL, Jesper. Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019

A short analysis about Gorogoa’s puzzle experience

Definitely, the most interesting and thought-provoking game I’ve played this year was Gorogoa. I experienced the awesome puzzles in the screen of Nintendo Switch and, wow, that was mesmerizing. I followed the whole gaming creative process in social media, but the gameplay surprised me in an epic level.



It’s hard to describe the game in few words, but according to the definition from the official site, Gorogoa is “an ingenious, perfectly crafted puzzler”. The game creator, Jason Roberts, developed thousands of meticulously detailed hand-drawn illustrations, encompassing the impressive scope of Gorogoa's personal narrative.



Essentially, in the gameplay, you control four quadrants where you must execute a series of zoom in and zoom outs in the images to recombine shapes and create new physical possibilities and structure new scenarios from the most improbable objects. The video below explains the game’s main idea:



The great gameplay experience makes me want to write a personal short analysis of Gorogoa (for further consulting in classes) following a model proposed by Tracy Fullerton (2008) in her book Game design workshop.

• Players: single player game; one player against the puzzles
• Objectives: combine patterns to create and recreate scenarios/objects
• General rules: you can point and click in four different quadrants using zoom in and zoom out to connect new possibilities of images
• Resources: colorful images (hand drawn) with a fantasy theme disposed in four quadrants
• Conflicts: how good is your vision and imagination to solve the puzzles
• Limits: four quadrants with limited amount of zoom in/out possibilities
• Results: when you complete a puzzle correctly, the game shows you an animation and a new part of the scenario/narrative to point out your progress

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Reference:

FULLERTON, Tracy, et al. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008.

#GoGamers

Two highlights from DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN

Right now, I am playing DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN, a new title by Quantic Dream studio. As its predecessors – Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, and Beyond: Two Souls – the game uses cinematographic language with its mechanics based on decision trees. During most part of the narrative, you must take significant decisions that will affect the course of the game and result in different ends for the story. The trailer below shows the gaming dynamics and main plot:



Besides the immersive narrative and beautiful graphics, I want to comment on two great features of this game.

1) The ending phase screens show the complete decision tree of each chapter. This is a very cool feature from DETROIT, you can observe in details what type of consequence your acts generated inside the gaming narrative. This visual aid helps players understand how each character works in the ambient. Below, there’s an example of this feature.



2) The opening screen always has an interesting content. Every time you start to play DETROIT, there’s one opening screen with a very sympathetic female android named Chloe giving you a technological trivia. I was playing it in June 7th and she told me that that day was Alan Turing’s (the British mathematical genius) date of death. Then, last Saturday morning she told me “this is a perfect way to start a good weekend”. The android also takes interesting surveys, asking players about the interface between human and machine. It is just a “content snack”, but it helps to contextualize the gaming experience in a more immersive way. Below, I’m sharing some of these moments:



Another great acquisition for my collection.

#GoGamers

More about iterative process

Iterative design for games is one of my favorites subjects.

One first view about this methodological process comes from Zimmerman (2003, p.176), who says, “Iterative design is a design methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a work in progress”.



Source: http://goo.gl/i1wTfu

Complementing the previous idea, the process of iterative design for games, according to Fullerton, Swain and Hoffman (2008 p. 249) can be divided into few stages: A) conceptual phase: consists of generating ideas, formalizing and testing them; B) pre-production: here the ideas are reviewed to evolve and be tested again; C) the production stage: the game is tested and revised with different groups of play testers to locate errors*; D) phase of quality assurance: where the game is tested to be launched without errors.

*It's essential in this process to revise the game with different groups of play testers to locate problems and searching a free-error product (Holopainen et al., 2010, p.1).

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References:

Fullerton, T., Swain., C., Hoffman, S. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Burlington, 2008.

Holopainen, J., Nummenmaa, T., & Kuittinen, J. (2010). Modelling experimental game design. Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players (click here for download)

Zimmerman, E. (2003). Play as research: the iterative design process. Design Research: methods and perspectives, 176-184 (click here for download).

Three levels of player enjoyment

Good visual idea from the author Stewart Woods.



Source: WOODS, Stewart. Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. McFarland, 2012.

Slender

I'm a big fan of indie games like Braid and Limbo. The latest (free) addition to my collection is SLENDER.

SLENDER is a short experimental horror game based on the Slender Man mythos. The Slender Man is a faceless creature with long arms in a black suit. A living nightmare from horror tales for children.



SLENDER is a first person horror game created by independent studio Parsec Productions, where your only goal is to find 8 manuscripts about the paranormal creature.

The more directly you come in contact with the Slender Man, the faster your sanity drains away. You can’t look directly at the Slender Man, or your game is over. So it’s a kind of horror hide and seek game.

The game has a lot of good features:

1) Simple first person mechanics: you only need to walk and aim your flashlight at the scenery. Perfect gameplay;

2) Very fast: you can play the whole game in fifteen minutes, and each time you play it the manuscripts (the goal) are in different places;

3) Disturbing graphics and good horror atmosphere: it’s the perfect combination for a dark environment experience;

4) A good narrative: as Dille (2007, p.16) wrote, it is important to remember that the history is working in unison with gameplay. The more your story can be told through gameplay, the better. SLENDER has a good balance between horror narrative and the gameplay, you can feel really scared playing this game.

I’m very happy with indie initiatives like SLENDER. Let's support this cause!

Check the creepy trailer below:



And to download it for free from the official website, click here.

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REFERENCE:

DILLE, Flint; PLATTEN, John Zuur. The ultimate guide to vídeo game writing and design. New York: Skip Press, 2007

Common elements between games

By Vince

In this present post I want to discuss a wide notion of essential elements that we can find in any kind of game. Take a few seconds to make a brief reflection: Which are the similarities between “Quake” and “Poker”?



Quake is a classic first person shooter with a deep story about a massive alien war in a high technological future. Poker is a traditional and abstract card game about creating card sequences to earn points.

Both games are very unique but – in a first moment – have nothing in common. But I think it’s possible to establish a list of common elements amongst two games. Let’s check some possibilities:

1) First of all, both games have a purpose. In Quake You need to destroy aliens and in Poker You have to make the best card sequences.

2) Both games have players and rules. In Quake You can play against the computer alone or in a multiplayer session; Poker needs at least two players and gets better with five or six people playing. But essentially all the players need to follow the rules that define boundaries. If You are not following the rules You are cheating and this is not fair play.

3) Both games have limited resources. In Quake are life, stamina and ammunition. In Poker is the deck of cards with four cards of each kind.

4) Game mechanics: in Quake your character aims and shoots to kill aliens stage by stage with a wide range of weapons. In Poker you pick cards trying to create the best combos and eliminate opponents.

5) We have conflicts and possibility of fun in both cases.

I think it’s possible to generate a wide list with a lot of similarities, but instead of it I want to purpose an exercise to You: search your memory and try to find two games of very different categories; in the next step, try to create a list of common elements as You saw above.

Good work!

Szia!