Research: How Games With Simple Controls Create Flow


I started looking into various smaller games, to see how the invoked flow, what I could take from these games and perhaps apply mechanically to my own.

LIM

 In the minamilistic LIM, you play as a cube with the arrow keys and have to navigate a maze, which houses other cubes who will attack you if you don't hold Z to "blend in"- you flash rainbow colours and one can easily label this as an LGBT game, struggling in a society that won't accept you and treats you with hostility, at varying degrees.

This game gives you no context to who you are or what you're doing, you simply discover which is the key play aesthetic here. The other being the challenge of getting through it unscathed; mechanic as metaphor is applied here as holding down Z slows you down and physically cumbersome to do, its like holding your breath. Getting to the end was a challenge and letting others play it was also interesting, how they reacted to the violent cubes and what they felt it meant. They all felt alone and isolated. Reflecting who the game is arguably about. Four directions and a blend mechanic, simple and very effective.



I Can Hold My Breath Forever

 Left, right, up and down. Only controls necessary. Here you explore an underwater cavern filled with glowing fish, gathering the letters of an old friend which are poignant to read, you traverse  the flooded caverns but can only be in the water for ten seconds before you die. Abnegation is key with artistic games like this as you're exploring with minimal pitfalls, you die but you respawn at the last letter you read. The music really adds emotive power to this games simplistic sprite visuals and the writing serves as narrative- you want to read all the letters and find your friend. Writing can be a powerful tool when it doesn't break the game's flow, it appears as you walk close to the letters and fades when you leave, something to consider.


Loved

 A platformer made difficult through its controls which must be mastered quite quickly, the jump is quite anchored as you leap over pits. A seemingly abusive narrator gives you instructions that you can choose to follow or not, ignoring and doing what is easier causes colour to feed into the world as little blocks the swarm and mask the area around you, following the demanding instruction adds detail to the black and white world that stays cold. Depending on your actions through the linear level depends on your ending, you either betray by doing what you want, masking the world, the truth, around you, or you compromise and follow out the seemingly harsh instructions you're told to do, out of love. You must blindly trust the instructions. Aesthetics lead this game, albeit simplistic ones, and a variety of simple but varied traps add some serious challenge which adds fun to a meaningful game.


Naked Man

A game with less symbolism now, found on the front page of Newgrounds, currently adored for its simple yet fun and engaging gameplay. Simple, blocky, pixel graphics work with a simple narrative-you're clothes have been stolen, get them back. You run and gun your way through levels, a fun mechanic being the float-jump umbrella that allows you to glide slowly through levels firing upon enemies below. Each level is linear with collectibles to find, enemies to kill and a boss to quell. The sounds and visuals compel you to play and the controls feel good to use. Mechanics and aesthics work cohesively to create a fun experience.


The Beginner's Guide

 A recent innovative example of the medium, this game is more like and interactive film than what we've come to expect from games as a whole. Abnegation and exploration play key roles in this games strange playscape, comparable to Middens here, that makes use of base textures and models as aesthetics. Labelled as pretentious, BG has you you navigate many different "games" as a narrator drip feeds you in a "mockumentary" like style the thoughts and feelings behind them, the plot is the driving force behind exploring these dreamlike scenes. There are many tropes at play ( the literal Chekov's Gun being a favorite) and the game employs many theatrical techniques- something to consider.

As I'm researching and analysing I'm starting to see what I'd like to achieve with my game, perhaps employing simple but effective mechanics to tell a story and drive a metaphor.
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Game Ideas

Through prompt websites like Seventh Sanctum and the video game name generator, I quickly amassed many ideas. Behold, brief summaries:

Astral- A game about astral projection, how far can you project yourself avoiding obstacles to reach the next plain of existence.

 Awkward App simulator- navigate your way through awkward app dating, can you avoid the creeps and find true love? Selection based text game.

 Cosmonaut- Play as a fledgling starchild, learning from an elder how to fly up and become a star. Option to remain groundless and become teacher, two different stories and playstyles.

 Barkeep- Working at a bar, getting all manner of strange locales, slimepunk hipsters to geriatric showgirls, upsell and earn tips, minigames of cocktail making. Get order right.

 Wedding smasher- tower defence game where you deply units like overbearing aunts, wrecking balls and a few plagues to ruin a wedding.

 Tarot- Side scrolling adventure following the characters of the tarot, the fool following the tower,star, moon and sun cycles. One way platformer.

 Moth king- As the moth king, lead other moths with wax candle through level, candle depletes and is dangerous, avoid crows and lamplight that steal your moths.

 Cyclic- Trapped in same 4 rooms, point and click, guests come and go, solve puzzles to activate scenarios.

 Cute Octopus trader- Barter and sell the most kawaii of sea creatures to appease the aging dame of the seven seas.

 Extreme dance family- rhythm action game where you solve family disputes and domestic scenarios with jazz hands and upbeat ballads.

 Narcissus- Platformer where you guide narcissus through levels, avoiding mirrors and topping up on creams to keep withering beauty, stop father time from aging you.

 Pact- After an intense party, house is wrecked. Summon demons and negotiate with them through puzzle mechanics to win them over and clean. Unit management,

 Exorcist- Purge houses depending on spectres, with loving hymns or condemning chants, did you deliver justice or did what you want? Divine choices give you different angelic skills, Infernal choices give you different skills for crowd control.

 Gloomator- The most apathetic, nihilistic matador of all time, you must keep him alive through all manner of miracle so he may continue his job and not be killed by bulls.

 Spectacular Lizard Gang - Dress up your lizard and hit the town, earn points for style and become the most renown iguana of all time. 

 Sissy That War- A tactical turn based RPG where you play as war-hardened drag queens, building your army slowly as shade is thrown in many a fair land.
Ingenious Cardboard- As quickly as possible, you must box up nets to ship and package all manner of object, earn money to furnish small apartment and feed your pugs.

 Interior Deathsigner- Interior designer for the dead, arrange furniture within the time limit to appease feng shui loving spooks, get it wrong, you'll be joining them.

 Satans Art Collector- Travel Earth and all 9 circles of hell to catalogue and collect all manner of item to exhibit to an angelic and demonic host.

 Wanderlust- As a tiny mushroom picking nomad, collect herbs and shrooms to travel to the city and sell to dope dealers, earn money for commodities or an apartment, player can choose to risk it and forage and live in the woods instead.

 Lamplight- a ghostly woman with a gaslamp leads you through dark levels, but can you always trust her? 

 Whale Ship- Weaponise your whale and make it stylish, with turrets and sophisticated weaponry, to siren songs and Poseidon's trident.

 Dante's Bistro- Manage a restaurant by employing demons or humans, demons give a cheaper service but cause trouble, humans are slow and expensive but increase your restaurant's rating. 

 Cookie in the Dark- Phantom theif and baker, you must distract guards with a warm baker's dozen to steal artifacts and raise your little stand to a global brand.

 Bardsong- Wonder the land, collecting notes to combine and achieve different songs which give you different skills and let you explore more of the land.

 Satan's Amish Dancers- Abduct and trap sacrifices to dance away to satan, gaining prestige, upgrades, and silly hats.

 Sun and Moon - Guided by two opposing forces, navigate a tower by using the different puzzle solving skills each offer.

 Spider Aerobics- Prove your arachnid prowess through flawless routines, navigating beams and trapeize.

 Final Burger Fiasco- Last day of being a frycook, cooking and dealing with customers, levels go from hour to hour, rude customers to the rapture.

 Ouija Lie to Me- As either some form of malevolent wight, convince a family you are indeed friendly so they can invite you in. Or as the family, decide if they are trustworthy or not.

 Crownless- A king whose crown has been taken away, use your charm to convince ants, later crows and bears to sentient trees to join your army and regain your crown.

 Now to decide what to develop...
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UE4 Practice

Having already had a briefing on Unreal Engine, being introduced to the UI and the various aspects of it we'll be using, I decided to explore, play and practice on my own, before I delve into the world of blueprinting properly.

I through around some materials on some props from the basic file provided.




Things are simple to place and changing materials is very simple, good to know if and when I'll be importing my own models and textures. There were effects such as dust clouds and fires which you could drag and drop in for further ease of use, it was good to experiment to get more comfortable with the interface before more is introduced to me.

I also learned about making breakable meshes, that I may have gotten a tad carried away with. Its very simple but offers some wonderful effects on props you may have, I felt like a kid the way I kept playing with how things could break from what distance when physics were applied to a breakable mesh! 



A simple object like a texture sphere was quick to render and break up, something a bit more complicated took a little longer to crack. I soon decided to follow a tutorial to learn about modelling in UE4, despite inevitably importing things from Maya, and learned about setting lights and what certain hotkeys were, like snapping and object to the floor cleanly.



Textures were soon applied, more models were added in as I learned about subtractive brushes that made the oppenings in my meshes and "building" light that renders the scenes shadows in a realistic way.



Lighting was further explored, I feel slightly more comfortable with the interface now. Looking forward to learning about blueprinting very soon!
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Game Analysis- Undertale


Around the time of playing and discovering the eerie Middens, I also heard of the currently popular Undertale, that in many ways, carries the same themes as Middens. More cute, less existential.

From the outset, the game seemed warm and inviting, this mood set by the chirpy chiptune soundtrack that felt nostalgic, remembering when I would play LoZ on my Gameboy color. The games has a LoZ vibe in puzzle solving and an Earthbound way of battling. The game opens with what is described in the instructions and intro as a friendly flower who wants to help you, however in a grim sucker punch reveals its actually trying to kill you- setting the theme for the game- who can you trust?

Undertale is filled with some truly charming moments, that oppose these grim plot twists.


A lamb women makes you a pie...I mean...


Where Middens can be in any way comparable is during combat, where you can kill all that oppose you or "spare" them. All mechanics are interactive and have the player actively take part, pressing a button at the right time at the right sweet spot to do the most damage. Choosing from the "Act" menu  lets you interact with the enemy, complimenting, flirting, talking or consoling among many other actions that will let you defeat the enemy passively by "sparing" them. To be successful, you must navigate a tiny heart through a sort of obstacle course, each enemy having a set of unique ones, to win them over and spare them. In this way, each enemy is a puzzle in their own right and its actually more fun and rewarding to be kind, comment on normal behavior?


Writing and humor play a key role in this game, most puzzles are somewhat comical. A key moment is a boss fight with a depressed ghost, who if you persist in cheering on, will gain confidence in itself, show you some tricks, and leave happy that its made a friend. Outright brutality is also an option.


The little box in which you must guide your heart isn't always a puzzle, sometimes an enemy will simply provide you with a little animation. Like Middens, this game features pixel art yet is highly emotive and often adorable. Play aesthetics here are Narrative, Challenge and Sense Pleasure, its musical score key for broadening the emotional power of the game in both tragic and sweeter moments. The Act mechanic lead to some memorable dynamics and interactions with other monsters, feeding the soft overall aesthetic of the game, what makes a monster? Why must you kill them? Its a simple but excellently executed mechanic, perhaps something I could take inspiration from.
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Game Analysis-Middens

Recently, I stumbled upon Middens, a peculiar game with a rather large cult following, free to play and made with RPGMaker.


From the outset the whole thing seemed strange visually, intrigue was furthered by how little info I could glean about it was available and looking into the creator, John Clowder, only raised more questions. His own mysterious presence and writing, a narrative driving force within Middens, made it all the more beguiling.

Clowder uses pixel art and collage to weave this entrancing, surreal aesthetic that has obvious roots in Dadaism. When a game's enclosed instructions end with the vaguely threatening "take care", you know you're delving into something a tad different. The game begins with the player meeting a sentient revolver, the dialogue for which was equal measure enchanting and unnerving:

"Know that when your finger is on the trigger my tongue will be within reach to lick your nails… and my gaze will always meet the eyes of those you slay even if yours do not. …knowing this do you still wish to persist?"

 The game largely focuses on using this revolver at your own will, the strange void dwelling denizens of the game can all be killed or avoided, you can go the entire game not harming anyone. The game features many endings and can be played anyway you wish, firing your pistol engages a typical RPG fight, albeit featuring one of over 200 unique, one of a kind creatures that you must summon incarnations of your own chakras to fight.


The games core mechanic revolves around cause and affect, as the Nomad you can choose to instigate these battles, level up and gain new skills in a traditional rpg manner, or not engage at all with this part of the game and simply wonder its obscure yet beautiful world, you carry an instrument which you can play to solve certain puzzles, underlining the differences in play approaches. Something I did find interesting whilst exploring, was how certain creatures were made from certain famous paintings, Gustav Kilmt's work made a cameo...

The game seems to focus around strange encounters and interactions, be it like this one which was peaceful, or engaging with a more fearsome form through a battle, in which most involve dialogue "excised from occult tomes and the last words of executed convicts". I defeated one such creature and it dropped a book of poetry, a simple, yet mystifying interaction which is telling of the game as a whole.

 I found myself, whilst enjoying the battling, more entertained with simple exploration, the sights and sounds were highly varied, all mystifying and beautiful in their own ways.


 You can speak and interact with all the creatures you can also kill, they all spout existential nonsense of phrases devoid of any real content, of course all rather post-modern and you can draw your own meanings. I don't think any two players will have quite the same experience of Middens, as you can explore as much or as little at your own pace and in your own order. The composition of some rooms, coupled with equally strange and ambient music, left me feeling similar ways to how one would in a physical installation at a high-brow contemporary art gallery, feeling almost challenged or in some form of danger. This game is a battle on the senses.





The play aesthetics here are of discovery, sense pleasure and depending on how you play, challenge or abnegation. There is a narrative, but its more something you experience in a visceral sense than something drip fed to you. I looked into this game as I'm trying to see what avenues I could possibly venture down. I've never played anything quite like Middens and I think at the very least, I'd like to make something that can evoke feelings much like Clowder's work has in me.
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Flow and Meaningful Design

The theme for our games, flow, was lectured upon today. We soon learned what Flow meant from a games design perspective, seeing it as more than just a thematic stimuli.

Many other concepts came up from today, most stemming from the Extra Credits youtube videos, the first emphasised the idea of "failing faster" as a games designer, that ideas are meaningless and its all about creating, failing and improving- to not be precious but to be thick skinned and resilient in the quest to make a game the best it can be.

So Flow.

Flow is immersion, when you're so engaged and focused on something that everything else becomes meaningless, a form of sensory deprivation. It's extreme focus on a task, a sense of active control, the merging of action and awareness with which fades self-awareness, a distortion of the experience of time and the experience of the task itself being the reason for doing it. Games should be rewarding experiences. Flow can come from many things: painting, drawing, reading, gaming etc. This could be comparable to Johan Huizinga's "Circle of Play" idea.

Now, putting this in a games perspective...

If A1 is the start of a game, you'll want the player to go from A1 to A4, if a game is too easy, simple or monotonous a player will enter A2, if a game is too hard, or punishing a player will enter A3, both ample places for a player to disengage with the game. However, if the game is the right level of challenging for the player, they'll get to A4 and be in flow. Players must start in A1 to find their bearings to enter A4, Mario Kart must start off quite easy with tame AI before the difficulty is ramped up.


Flow is achieved with peaks and dips, building and releasing tension, to keep a player engaged on their road to A4, flow, complete immersion. Leaving it to players to decide difficulty is common in games, some of them, such as The World Ends With You, allows players to ramp up od drastically decrease the games difficulty at any given moment, implementing a risk reward scheme that allows players to always be in control, interaction in this regard aiding immersion and therefore flow.

Creating flow is all about setting concrete goals with manageable rules, demanding actions from a player to reach these goals within the players capabilities, giving clear and timely feedback on performance and progress as well as diminishing distractions to aid focus.

Meaningful Design

 As with the flow curve, pacing in curves must follow a similar pattern of rise and fall, heres a chart used in an Extra Credits video using Star Wars as an example.

Starting off exciting will hype a player or viewer setting the scene and engagement for the peice, it should then simmer down as it marks out a baseline and introduces characters, plotpoints etc. This should all lead and build to the ending where tension is at its highest before things are resolved. Gameplay mechanics, like loading and preparing a gun in an FPS follow a macro, but similar curve. If you split up a game into three parts, the Arc being the peice as a whole, the Scene being a subsection like a level, a dungeon or a boss fight, and the Action being the mechanic and how it feels, like the FPS example above, we can see how this curve must be applied to all aspects of a game, in a broad and granular sense.

Difficulty spikes in games and the idea of shorter games with brilliant content opposed to padded mediocre games were also covered, the latter serving perhaps as a critique to much produced in the AAA sector. Difficult games should be fun yet fair, not punishing, a game like Dark Souls which is horrendously hard is highly playable because it follows its own rules and is consistent, it doesn't turn around and throw new things at you that can be conceived as unfair. A game that gives you many tools to overcome obstacles can also be hard yet rewarding, leaving players feeling that they can do better next time by taking a different approach, my personal example being any form of JRPG- what if I used this spell or equipped these items?

The Aesthetics of Play were also covered in an Extra Credits video, talking...

Mechanics- The rules and systems in place
Dynamics- The experiences the mechanics come to create
Aesthetics- Emotive reasons we go to play game, playing as a God for example in Black and White, that the dynamics come to form.

Designers build their way up from mechanics whilst players experience vice-versa. The genres we have in place for games often aren't too telling of the experience of the game, the FPS Portal is widely agreed to be a puzzle game for example. A different way of looking at games is in play aesthetics, for which there are 8, games often taking a combination,,,

Sense pleasure- a game that appeals to our senses, aesthetically, feels physically good to play (BlazBlue has really satisfying combos that just feel good) or even for the soundtrack.

Fantasy- to live out a fantasy, I love RPGs because I want nothing more than to be a fire-slinging mage.

Narrative- the story, the human drama, the affect on our emotions

Challenge- overcoming obstacles, surmounting that which is hard

Fellowship- working together, biological camaraderie

Competition is unofficial but games like LoL help express our evolutionary need to feel dominant

Discovery- Uncovering new things, new treasures- finding new skills, techniques, secrets in games

Expression- Class, Customisation- express an aspect of oneself

Abnegation- way of unwinding or disengaging, bejewled is an example or level grinding in a game, zoning out.

Meaningful play can also come from mechanics, Jordan Magnuson's  Lonliness uses mechanic as metaphor as little squares fade from you as you try to approach them, different people play it in different ways, some people keep trying, some people stop caring and ignore them. A mechanic that can be quite telling of a player.


Brenda Brathwaith is a games designer who makes many bourd games, her game Train has led this already awarded designer higher acclaim. She wanted to see if the medium of games could portray pain, like many other mediums can, it was based on the holocaust and was really quite moving. Goes to show that games can truly take many forms and be many different things!
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Design Jam

This workshop was focused on moving past trite, overdone concepts and realising just how cheap and easy ideas are, execution being key. We were each given a little prompt on paper, to which we had to flesh out in ten minutes into a game, underlining our audience, the platform its on, how its played and its unique selling point. This was actually much harder than I thought, as whilst you'll be wanting to elucidate core mechanics and controls you're also wanting to think of what platform this could fit into and audience, all in ten minutes- it was a fun challenge! 

 My prompts were Macho Dinosaur Showdown, which obviously became a 2D fighting tablet game, aimed at kids, that had T Rex tussle Anklosaurus; my other prompt was Sofa Treasure Hunter, in which you obviously used a mystical item bought off Ebay to delve deep into the fathomless depths of your couch, finding change to upgrade said item and finding treasure to fill up your broom cupboard, and ultimately win your father's approval.

Ideas were easy to stumble upon and these prompts could also lead to other games, Sofa Treasure Hunter could just as easily be a game in which you travel the world, selling sofas of enrapture to customers plain and mystical (Cthulhu could well have a thing for jaunty animal print) earning money to build up your own sweet pad.

Already, I can see these games being made and working in my head, but I'll drum up far more ideas to start whittling down using prompt generators to create the game I want for this project. More soon!
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