So, What Really Makes a Good Game?

[Tomo2000 60]

Lately, I've been trying to work on, I guess, a formula, for what would make a good game? Of course, you'd think the most obvious would be gameplay, replayability, graphics, game mechanics, etc.. However, this isn't always the case. There's plenty of games out there that are still really fun and really interesting, but that completely ignore any pre-set formula and, that said, completely dodge some aspects of said formula. Weird, right? I'm going to just point out a few games like this. The main purpose of this thread is to show off a few cool games that go against most of the game design metas while still being very enjoyable to play through, and to show the reader that they don't have to invest lots of time and money into having their own custom scripts, graphics or music to still have a good game.

 

 

"Knock-knock" is an Indie horror game made by a Russian group called Ice Pick Lodge. Knock-knock centralizes around the paranoid delusion of the main, nameless character, as he fights to keep his sanity in a world in which reality and nightmares seem to have merged together. Knock-knock has beautiful graphics, and an absolutely amazing atmosphere, however, its most interesting point comes from its storyline and gameplay mechanics.

 

Of course, the main mechanics of this game is moving around, turning on lights, and hiding from monsters. This is all good and well, but there are so many unexplained things about the more advanced gameplay mechanics that are never explained throughout the entire game. Sooner or later, you'll come across eyes in rooms, and which, turning on lights will make them disappear, however, if you press up in front of an eye, or better known as breaches, you enter one of these breaches, and enter a strange system of never ending hallways and doors. The doors have a random chance of taking you to another hallway, or restarting the entire mission. Some doors show you glimpses of strange, surreal art, and others take you to the next level.

 

The levels function in pairs, of which it is unknown which of these pairs is reality and which is a dream. In one pair, time moves slowly, and you must wait until 'dawn' before the monsters go away. In the other, time doesn't move at all, and the only seeming purpose to this part is to venture out into the forest and find a little girl, who shows you glimpses of 'reality'. With each passing pair, the house gets bigger, and a new type of creature will appear in the house. After a while, it becomes present that a 'doppelganger' is in the house. You find notes, which your character tells you 'looks like my handwriting, but something's off', and that 'Whatever it is - it is flesh and blood. Someone else is inside my house'. These notes are strange, at best, and are either just a scrawl, telling the player that these dreams are killing him, and that has to wake up, or are instructions for strange games, which centre around these beings known as 'guests'. In general, none of these notes seem to make any sense.

 

However, back onto lack of explained mechanics and storyline. The storyline is very fractured, at best. You come across a diary and pages, which explains that the kids are going missing, but the story itself is very cryptic, and most likely doesn't relate to your character at all. New monsters appear every cycle, but there's no area in which these monsters are explained; their origins, their mechanics, so on. Some move through walls, some don't. Some have to climb ladders to get to other floors, whereas others can just appear through an inaccessible wall. Some of the monsters are completely invisible, or can spawn more monsters. Some monsters stand still, which blocks off your access to other areas, and could sandwich you between two of them. Some can bust lights when they enter a lit room, some mightn't, and can't enter the room. On top of this, there's a system with the lights and time that is never really explained in its entirety, either. Leaving lights on in rooms with windows could potentially increase the chance of monsters moving to that position. The more lights you have on, the more likely monsters may spawn, but the quicker time goes. If you're hiding, time will go backwards, and, if a monster catches you or sees you, if you have too little time, it'll restart the level, however, if you have over half, it'll remove approximately half of your time, and force you to start over.

 

So, after all that, what really makes the game so enjoyable to play? Not only does it lack a fathomable storyline, and strange mechanics with little-to-no attemps to explain them. Most triple-A games are full of explainations, and tutorials that covers every method in which the game mechanics work. Is it the self-exploration that makes Knock-knock so enjoyable? Maybe it's because the player can make theories about the monsters and the mechanics themselves that completely seperates it from other such games. Triple-A games do have a  tendancy of feeding the player mostly useless and assumed information, and treat players like idiots, and that they can't notice simple patterns in their heads like normal people can. Maybe the lack of storyline puts the player in the same place as the character; alone, scared and confused in a strange world, and this confused nature adds to the atmosphere of the game. Overall, Knock-knock is a very fun game and is very interesting to play, especially since it goes against certain metas of game design, and still makes the game enjoyable. I'll most likely also write a proper review on the game, and link it here at a later date.

 

 

 

 

Now, let's hit somewhere a little closer to home. Pretty much the moment I got home, I was told that I should play this game. I've only just started, but it's made quite an impressive first impression on me. The game is called "Off", it was made by Mortis Ghost using RPGmaker 2003. In Off, you take control of an entity known only as 'The Batter', on a sacred mission to purify the these strange zones from phantoms and other ectoplasmic entities alike. As you can see from the very first screenshot, the art style of the game is very simplist, but don't let that fool you; the game itself has a very interesting storyline, and a plethora of strange characters to meet along the way.

 

Now, the battle system is very basic, as is the menu system. It's all pretty standard RPGmaker 2003, with a few exceptions here and there. The art style is all black and white, in terms of battlers, with the exception of the battleback changing based on the zone you are in, and whether it's a boss fight or not. The zones, and areas in the zones, also have their own colours. It's a rather interesting style, almost similar to the colour focus seen in the Deus Ex games. Overall, the graphics style is very basic, at best, but this adds a nice sense of order to the mix. The black and white graphics allows for the battlebacks to be bright and vibrant without taking focus off the battlers themselves and without straining the eyes. On top of this, imagine how much easier it would be to make purely greyscale sprites, without the need to colour them. I remember, for one Game Maker project a while back, the sprites were mostly greyscale, with their highlights here and there, and it made the job of spriting them much easier and faster.

 

So, with a basic graphic style, mostly default RPG Maker menus and scripts, and few unique gameplay features, what makes this game enjoyable to play? Again, it's set in a very mysterious universe. Everybody acts strangely, and the existance of strange creatures and ghosts isn't really questioned. It appears to be in a post-apocalyptic world, as shown later in the game, and that beings can easily become corrupted. This new world, and its zones, born from the ashes of a dead and dying world, seems to be centralized around four elements; plastic, metal, smoke and sugar. This adds a very strange system to battling, as some creatures may be weak against metal, or resistant plastic, and so on. The game also has a lot of puzzles, and lots of mystery around the basic storyline; such as where you came from, what happened to the world, and why you're on a mission to purify it.

 

So, let's look back and make a quick comparison between Knock-knock and off. Firstly, let's look at the characters. Both of the characters are very mysterious, and hardly ever, if at all, reveal anything about themselves. They will reveal traits about themselves, such as the character of Knock-knock says that he is the third generation of "world-ologists" to stay in the lodge he is cursed in. However, the characters lack a proper name, and stick with a simple title, such as 'the Batter'. We know the characters objectives and goals, but we do not know anything else about them, personally; we don't know their favourite colour, favourite meal, their opinion on politics, and so on. Why is this? Maybe it's so that there is nothing to disagree with over the characters personality, and that it lets you bond more with the character you are playing.

 

Another thing to note is the mystery that revolves around the two games. The curiosity of the player is what really drives the game along, more-so than its gameplay and its puzzles. The player will always strive to solve mysteries that the game has specifically tried to hide from their prying eyes. It should also be noted how a powerful the atmosphere can really engross a player. In Knock-knock, for example, the gameplay is very repetative, but the atmosphere, along with its horror aspects and mystery, is what keeps a player not only playing, but enjoying themselves. Off has a lot of exploration, in terms of the world you find yourself in, and, again, its the strange atmosphere and mystery which keeps the game enjoyable.

 

So, what did we learn from comparing these two games? Quite a lot, actually. We can learn that the main aspect of a game is a mysterious and strange storyline, as well as an atmosphere that will mesh with this storyline and add flavour to it. That alone can help make up for a lack of a custom scrips and really eye-popping graphics. Players like mystery, whether in the form of a storyline, or in the raw gameplay mechanics themselves, and they feel rewarded when they achieve something, or find something rare or hidden, when they aren't instructed to do so. We've also learnt that players can connect with characters or entities on a good level without having to make characters overly complicated, or without writing and providing a whole character bio. Having these rather neutral characters with very few opinions of their own naturally makes the player have no real reason to hate them, which only leaves room for the character to grow on them as the game progresses. With Off, specifically, and I would really like to hammer this point in, it's nice to know that you can make a very enjoyable game without spending money and time on custom scripts and graphics. This is a fantastic point that, I believe, people new to RPG Maker should be aware of. Lots of the community has some rather impressive games, but maybe this scares new users away, as they may not be able to compete with the quality of other games being made by older and wiser members. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little comparison, and look into some of the more popular and quirky games out there, and how their intention to go against game making metas make them interesting and enjoyable in some very different ways. I hope you all take away something to think about, and maybe something to add to your own games from this. Take it easy everyone.

Edited October 15, 2013 by Tomo2000