#Video Game Design

[infinitymythos]

Feeding Chaos🪽🦋🌌

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[cursed-iris]

"and i can't stand a mess. you know me, neat and orderly. that's how i like things. everything in its proper place."

charlie o'hare/hatter my beloved. ❤ y'all gotta get into habromania fr fr. all the lore and character design can be found on insta @/symphony_sonata.

bonus doodle of charlie trying to kiss the queen w̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶m̶p̶l̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶c̶h̶o̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ below the cut

[garrettglaser]

My 13 year old and his two friends made this game in the last week for the Pixel Game Jam on Itch. I could not be more amazed at how far his skills as a coder and game designer have come in the last year. I was such a slug compared to him at his age. Heck, I might be a slug compared to him now, I mean, look at that punch list!

If you have an Itch account and want to really boost a 13 year-old’s mood, please play the game and give it a rating!

[kronosveritas]

Boyfriends

Not a very serious post just some silly little sprite designs (without armor) for an 8bit RVB video game I started making and will probably never finish

Blerghhhhhshhgshsj I know I finished the design I did of Church’s sprite too but I cannot for the life of me seem to find it rn

[legendaryvermin]

I've been thinking about the different kinds of difficulty in video games (and games generally), as well how to control how difficult situations are with the tools available. here are some categories of difficulty that I've identified: Execution Difficulty

Execution Difficulty is a measure that applies exclusively to the "thumbskill" involved in performing the actions needed to succeed. How tight is the timing involved? How many mistakes can a player make before they reach a fail state?

Strategic/Puzzle Difficulty

Strategic and Puzzle difficulty are tied to challenges where you have many options for how to execute, but not all executions provide equal resultant success. There might be more than one "right" answer (which marks the difference between a puzzle and a strategic situation, to me), but if there are, some answers are better, some tactics more effective, than others.

Commitment Difficulty

If you were inclined to be poetic about it, you might call this the "ironman factor". Commitment difficulty is about how long your choices can affect you, and how easy or hard it is either mitigate the effects of mistakes, or redo a scenario entirely. How long do I have to wait before making another attempt? How many attempts do I get? How quickly are my choices locked in? How much time do I have to decide?

Social Difficulty

Not all games have a social element, but any that do can introduce social difficulty. This isn't strictly about player actions that can harm another player's resources or goals, though it does cover that; it also encompasses clarity of communication, efficiency of team coordination and shared executional responsibility. How much do I have to rely on other players behavior to succeed? Do I need to communicate asymmetric information? what tools do I have to communicate with potential allies, enemies, or actors unknown?

This isn't a complete list, but it's my first foray into identifying where challenge lies in games. I think there is also measurable difficulty when it comes to navigation, but I'm not sure where to categorize it helpfully.

Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts about this I'd love to hear them.

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

More should read Jason Schreier's books to understand how impossible and chaotic the video games industry is. Especially 'Play Nice' which is a great piece of journalism that monitors the rise and fall of Blizzard. EA, especially, is infamously a nightmare to be a subsidiary of. It's surprising to me that DATV happened at all. It's not all that surprising it has prioritised entertainment value over engaging with Thedas' more controversial elements. Supporting the storytelling means very little to the people who make the final call on game decisions. Often the buck stops at a lot of financiers who know nothing about video games or storytelling, and who make short-sighted business decisions using conventional wisdoms about what will make their company the most money.

Game designers have to work within the restricted framework they're given, and are also expected to work nonstop and live up to impossible standards. Which is like being between a rock and a hard place if you are managing both corporate and fan expectations of a beloved series. The lead designer of Diablo 3, for example, had a severe breakdown after receiving constant death threats from fans after release. He left the team feeling like he'd ruined a beloved franchise when, really, the expectations were impossible, he was in the firing line, and fan spaces can be cruel and extremely uncompromising.

[faecaptainofdreams]

You know what I don’t understand…? I don’t understand how the Pirate Fleet from TLoS: The Eternal Night is so under appreciated and shit on. It’s so beautiful, so unique, so artistic and has such ingenious visual designs and audio designs. Like… why can’t we appreciate the gorgeous style?

Gorgeous. And this?

The canons are flintlock revolvers. HOW CLEVER IS THAT?! Please, SOMEONE agree with me!! 😭😭😭

[iridescent-solstice]

Another amazingly game that references tarot card . . . I sense a pattern in my tastes haha. Jokes aside do check out this creator's work cause not only is their art style so charming, but the story has so many interesting details in it. If you like Alice madness returns you will definitely enjoy this game as well. (It's currently in development but the creator is posting sneakpeaks)

[elliott-the-creature]

decided to take some fun pictures of all the rooms in my house!

from left to right/up to down, we have the centre room (just a basic living room), left room (kitchen), back room (ocean themed space), right room (bathroom/laundry room (also don’t mind the fact that I have 2 dryers… I have no deluxe washer 😭)), upstairs room (bedroom), basement (nature themed hangout room), and the front of the house :)

I had so much fun making and remodeling these rooms throughout my time playing this amazing game, and it’s a great way to express my interests

also including what the ocean room used to be, plus a lovely photo I took when my bsf visited my island, shoutout to @pippeppeppin ur the best <33

[k-wame]

lol

[infinitymythos]

Overflowing With Aether🌈🤖

By:

[hemlockapothecarystudio]

Im making a video game!

[garrettglaser]

I love everything about this little game James and his friend made. I still can’t get over how much more he accomplishes than I ever did at his age.

[littlethingwithfeathers]

I'm grumpy about Silent Hill again...

TW for discussions of suicide, self harm, abuse (both parent to child and amongst peers) and general spookiness. Y'know... the usual Silent Hill rigmarole of trauma and despair. Also be warned that I'm going to spoil a lot of the Silent Hill series, in particular Silent Hill 2 and the Short Message game that just came out. ***

So... one of my most popular posts out there is this one. It's about Pyramid head and the loss of subtlety in media. And I couldn't help but feel like we hadn't moved an inch from when I posted that back in... *checks date on post* hrrk. my bones... 2017. I'm going to die soon. Anyway. Today I watched Second Wind do a run of the short, free-to-play Silent Hill: Short Message. I admittedly had a good bit of trepidation going in just because of the marketing. Which, for all of you marketing majors out there, that is called "Not a good sign." Marketing should make you want to play a game... especially if you're a fan of the series already. But this... it was a bit of a wet blanket, largely due to the fact that it spoiled a lot of the focus of the game. It basically said "this is a game about how bullying and being chronically online is real bad. We're gonna be spooky about it now." And... straining to push aside how incredibly reductive that is... why give it away? Why say it out loud? Why did you tell us what you are doing? Can you imagine Silent Hill 2 if we'd known it was about James killing his wife from the jump? We didn't. We hadn't the first clue. We knew nothing other than that he was looking for her and she was maybe dead? But we didn't know how... possibly lung cancer or TB given that she had the most pointed coughing sequence since the movie Tombstone. And hey... the last game had someone looking for a loved one too. Maybe that's the deal with Silent Hill. Who knows? No one did at that point. It was still a big old mystery for the most part. And then the E3 trailer... like there's the weird pretty lady in jail? But what's she talking about? Who the fuck is Mary? Is that... his wife? Well then who the hell is Ms. Miniskirt? No wait... is that his wife in the VHS tape? What the hell is going on? Oh look gameplay! And... a little girl? And a weird guy with a gun... This soundtrack slaps. I'm gonna go see if it's up on Napster yet. (this was 2001... again... my bones etc) I remember combing over low-res copies of that video for HOURS when it came out. Why are the nurses different? It's not snowing? Who are all these people... And why do they all sound like they put ketamine in their coffee. It was like a great big puzzle to work out and we had a ball theorizing and researching so when it came out we were HYPE. And that was largely because in short... we knew SOME things at release. Fog. Nurses. Big stick. Weird people. Banger soundtrack. Dead (but probably not) wife. And we presumed or supposed more... cult activity? New beasties? Radio maybe? But we effectively knew nothing about the plot. And the best part was, while they had a solid hook (Find dead lady who we love so huggy buggy much) and instant intrigue (Angela in the cemetery being weirder than a film by David Lynch), and a very familiar setting (we may have improved draw distance on the PS2, but we don't have to use it!), we still didn't really know what was going on. The plot was essentially unfolding out of a black box. Silent Hill 2 was quite content to be a slower burn than trying to boil the Lake Superior with a signal flare. You don't even see the main "villain" Pyramid Head until a few hours in and, as I pointed out in that other post, there's no flashy cut scene to introduce him and go WOOOOOO SCARYYYYY. He's just chillin' behind some prison bars (which that totes is normal in an apartment complex) and staring at you like I stare at the inside of my fridge when I really would like some cheese to materialize.

And then... like we're not even really sure what the hell is going on for the longest time. We meet our wife's hot twin with the key to a strip club and she keeps getting killed over and over... and things keep getting increasingly rapey and lewd in a way that's just uncomfortable more than anything... But even at the end. Even with the big reveal of "You killed your wife." they still don't ever explicitly state "And you killed her because you couldn't have sex with her anymore." It wasn't until you finished the game, and talked to someone else about it, or let your brain cook on it for a bit that you went... heyyyy... he's a horndog! (In fact... if I'm going to chide SH2 for anything it's that right at the very VERY end they tried to frame James's actions as understandable because the woman who was dying and frightened and in pain was mean to him. Yes, being a caretaker is hard. But Christ... pick a topic for discussion.) But contrast all that with Short Message. The marketing and such all said out loud "THIS IS ABOUT BULLYING" so even going in... I was already like "yep. The bully is probably us, but we had reasons because we have to be complicated and you aren't allowed to make the player feel bad" And lo was I correct. There was no... intrigue. I was never curious about the character or the people around her because I knew this story. They already told me what story they were telling so I could practically sing along, especially as a millennial that had to grow up watching little videos and skits in school about the evils of bullying. And when you are going to tell a trope-ish story, and you tell the audience what the trope is, it becomes "say the line" writ large. This isn't me advocating for super twisty unexpected plot arcs (looking at you, Supernatural). Far from it. You absolutely should tell a story in such a way that the audience understands how you got from point A to point Z, even if there are some surprises along the way (See Sixth Sense for that masterclass). Rather, what I'm missing from this (and frankly a lot of the Silent Hill games and honestly... media in general these days) is a sense of restraint. A sense of trust in their audience to "get it." They can't just plonk us in the fog with a radio and a stick and say "You're here to find your best friend/dog/cousin/wife/business partner. Good luck. Here's a weirdo to prattle cryptically at you in order to unsettle you immediately. Bye!" No! They have to tell us what kind of story they're telling and what themes are important. They can't just... give us a Silent Hill Game and trust that we know what to do with it. It's... insulting frankly. Especially as a longtime fan of the franchise who remembers when they did trust us and they did have faith in their work. I will say this in compliment to Short Message. The environment design was pretty cool. Especially the sticky-note hallways... they looked like leaves... and sometimes teeth... and like tightly packed bones in an ossuary. It didn't... say anything really. But it looked cool. And you can't go wrong with Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack. But... while I'm on the subject of design. Y'all. An animate sakura tree in an oversized hoodie is not scary. But bless you for at least having the restraint to not make her Pyramid Head.