Core Studio Environments

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What are Game Mechanics?

 

Doki Doki Literature Club

● What are the game mechanics?

Because DDLC is a text based game, the core mechanics are just clicking and pressing space in order to read through dialogue between characters and make your personal choices to affect the outcome of the game.

● List 3 examples of feedback loops. Describe them.

  1. A main component of the game is the creation of poems, where the player is simply asked to choose words from multiple lists. The player then finds that each choice is favored by a specific character and can use that knowledge in the future to cater toward their favorite player(s) when creating more poems. This ultimately affects your player’s interaction with said characters in the end.
  2. The player can choose who to talk to and show their poems at many points throughout the game, and as the game progresses they will realize that their choices on which characters to favor in this sense affects their interactions with surrounding characters. This can also be used to influence the direction of the game and the tones of interactions with each character.
  3. The player can also choose at a few points in the game which character(s) they wish to interact with outside of the main story setting (the literature club at school) and are often asked to choose between two specific characters. These decisions are just as important and again, will affect future character interactions.

● Discuss the relation between narrative and feedback loops.

The feedback loops are directly related to and directly affect the narrative and the direction that the story is headed in. This particular game has more than one ending, and the player finds throughout the gameplay that their decision making can affect character interactions and eventually the overall narrative itself. The way that the feedback loops are set up allows the player to create their own story to an extent and directly affect the narrative while playing, if they are aware and deliberate with their decision making.

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Game Production Cycles and What Makes a “Good” Game

Game Production and Development Cycles:

How does this process relate to smaller, indie productions? The work you’re doing?

No matter what the scale of a game, following the production/development process is crucial to creating a good game. All game developers need to plan properly and playtest early on in order to catch bad decisions and bugs at the beginning of the process, rather than later on when they are affecting multiple elements of the game. Having a clear plan of what needs to be done, mapping out major decisions and creating deadlines for yourself is an important part of any developer’s process and will do nothing but help them in the long run, even if they don’t have a large team to communicate with.

What Makes”Good” Writing?

Discuss the difference between knowing a good game when you play it vs having the insight to describe WHY a game works:

Anyone who has played many games can go through a particular game and pick our parts that don’t work and tell you if the game is good based on what they liked or disliked about the experience. However, it is still very important to develop the skills necessary to know why certain choices are good or bad, rather than just going with a gut reaction, even if your gut reaction is correct. Not only does this knowledge allow you to communicate with people who may not be able to tell as easily what makes a game good or bad, but you will be able to make important decisions in the planning process rather than having to reiterate and tweak ideas later on down the production process when they don’t work quite right.

How can Anna Anthropy’s analysis of Mario Bro’s influence the game you’re working on now?

Because we are currently working on 2D games with limited screen movement, many of the design decisions Anthropy discusses can serve as inspiration for the creation of more game components. For example, having two states for a player, each with different abilities and being called in different situations, can add an interesting dynamic to a player’s gameplay and keep a game from getting too static with repetitive abilities and play patterns. Anthropy also brings up the simplification of ideas and how they can give players the ability to infer what is going to happen in the game. She uses the example of creating a simple pyramid shape within a game in order to get the player to think about pyramids and the possibility of treasure being located inside. Creating game components like this can also create more dynamic play and lets the reader think about their decisions and what might be coming more carefully.

 

 

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Dark Forest Shmup – Character Rankings

The Protagonist: A young adult who somehow has ended up in a dark creepy forest and needs to find their way out past oncoming monsters.

Their competence ~ 5/10

Their likability ~ 7/10

Their commitment to the cause ~ 10/10

The Antagonists: Enemies and boss enemies that are variations of mutated plants taking on a monstrous form.

Their competence: Small Enemies ~ 4/10 vs Boss Enemies ~ 8/10

Their likability: Small Enemies ~ 6/10 vs Boss Enemies ~ 3/10

Their commitment to the cause: Small Enemies ~ 8/10 vs Boss Enemies ~ 5/10

How Does this Affect the Game?

Because the smaller enemies are cuter and more likable with a lower competence level, the player may sympathize with them and underestimate their abilities. However they are very committed and can possibly band together which will make them more powerful. The boss enemies are very powerful but don’t seem to care very much about the cause, so they could be easily distracted or avoided instead of facing such a challenge. The player is being thrown into an unknown environment for unknown reasons, so it will be hard for them to figure things out at first, but their commitment will help them to persevere.