Blog Archives
Characterization Through Mechanics
In this video, we’ll talk about the importance of mechanics in adding depth and personality to characters in games on example of Thomas Was Alone and few other games, and what things we need to take into account when adding or reusing mechanics in the games we make.
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Relationship Between the Player and the Game Through Controls
In this video, I look at Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, The Last Guardian and Tearaway Unfolded to talk about how they use controls to elicit feelings and create strong emotional bonds.
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The Hero’s Journey of Brothers
Welcome back to this 2-part post series about the Hero’s Journey. In this post, I’m going to talk about the game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and how Vogler’s rework of Campbell’s structure is applied to it. Please note that I’ll reference the previous post about Journey a lot, so please read it beforehand 🙂 That said, let’s continue.
Cohesive open-world experience of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
I firmly believe that what we as game developers do is create experiences for our players. And all the different areas of the game, – cool gameplay, technology, narrative, audio – feeds into those experiences. How the wooshing sound of Hearthstone cards when you move them helps with that feeling of a physical card game. How the different sound cues of Left 4 Dead depending on the special zombie nearby influence the teamwork aspect of the game. How controls themselves are used as a narrative tool in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. And a game is valued best when it all works as a whole.
Creating Emotional Arcs With Weapon Progression
There are many tools we can use to create emotional arcs for the player, as well as the character(s) of the game. The list consists of, but is not limited to, narrative structure, visual design, level design, gameplay mechanics, and many other things. In this particular post, though, I want to explore how weapon progression can play a big role in providing a certain emotional experience, on the example of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Be warned, there will be spoilers.
Stanislav Costiuc 