Gameplay gets easier for players

Looking at ways in which 2021’s games provide players with information

Hyderabad: Video games have always been about contestation, they are designed one way and played the other. For years, game designers have tried telling players how their games are meant to be played and players have been surprised with loopholes, exploits, and roundabouts. Speed runs, mods, alternate game modes are all examples of how players have subverted the games they play to make them their own. The developers have always got back though, finding new ways to inform and showcase ways their games are to be played.

This week, I examine two recent developments from this year’s games Maquette, Kena and Deathloop to see how the player’s screen/ view area has been transformed by designers to make the game seem more than just something to beat and overcome.

Games have provided players with requisite information or guidance over the years with implementations like directional pointers on the screen, live maps, or through minuscule head-up displays (HUDs).

Each of them often accessible through a simple button tap or overlaid on-screen in a corner but this trend seems to have changed with Maquette and Deathloop, as their designers fill the player’s entire viewing screen with text.

Maquette, a puzzle platformer, conveys its entire story and narrative through white overlaid text that you unlock by solving specific puzzles. In fact, the game uses the appearance of text to guide you to newer paths for progression.

For example, the text can warn you about what’s coming ahead, or to look at a beautiful view, or laud you for spotting something. In Maqutte’s execution, the text overlay drives in-game action, but in Deathloop its either about instructions or conveying the strong emotions that the protagonist is feeling.

These implementations are so much more than a heads-up display, they are designers’ ways to offer the player new ways to approach the game or the right way to play a game.
The next visual trend comes from Kena and the practice of taking in-game screenshots. Kena’s developers have algorithmically designed the ability to capture pictures such that the game knows when a player is framing a shot.

It not only allows the player to decide if they want Kena to pose for the shot, but also breaks the fourth wall by immersing the player with Kena through the act of taking selfies. This is not where the magic stops though, Kena’s body and face actually turn slightly to make sure they are generally in the frame when the frame is being set. This ability to animate in a freeze-frame is a computational marvel, potentially transforming in-game screenshots forever.

Both these developments can change the way we play games in the future, while the former is augmented reality in a virtual world, the latter is blurring the boundaries of the real. Complex contradictory stuff, mind you, but implemented with simplicity.

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