In a sense, it’s the opposite of instructing the player, while expecting the same result. There are many ways of doing this, from visual cues to music to limiting the number of options for a player choice. Indirect control is a technique used by game designers to guide players to do what the game requires without explicitly telling the player. For in the day that you do, you shall surely die. But the great tower, there, you may not go. These worlds are yours and you are free to walk amongst them and subdue them. The Witness’ open-world design also causes players who end up in more challenging areas first to struggle to solve the puzzles without any directions. Doing this reduces confusion and frustration at the outset of the game, which could be a big hurdle for new players to the genre.Ĭonversely, Myst struggles with capturing anyone outside of the puzzler demographic because it leaves the player without any information at the beginning of the game. In The Talos Principle, Elohim’s clearly worded tutorial weaves in elements of the story and the world, while telling the player what to do and where to go. The most obvious use of a narrator in a game is to provide the player with instructions. InstructionĪll across this land I have created trials for you to overcome, and within each I have hidden a sigil. In this post, I will discuss several purposes that this voice fulfills in the game design of a puzzle game like Talos. Throughout the game, Talos includes narration by a voice called Elohim. The Talos Principle does something different. They provide no narration or hints and leave the player to their own devices, something that can be effective for puzzle solvers, but also lead to isolation and frustration. In these single-player games, players have to tackle puzzle after puzzle on their own, which can be a daunting task, especially when the puzzles become tougher.īoth Myst and The Witness lean into the players’ immersion and concentration to create a sense of zen around the puzzles. Playing any puzzle game requires a level of disconnect from the real world. Though it can get lost in the shuffle between the legacy of Myst (1993) and the star power of Jonathan Blow’s The Witness (2016), Talos does manage to stand on its own. When I played The Talos Principle, the puzzle game by Croteam released in 2014, it brought to mind other great puzzle games.
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