Not having any combat can be really helpful to horror games and crucial in delivering the desired experience. This article presents the top 6 reasons for this and also explains how it ties into narrative games in general.
Story – What is it good for?
Do videogames really have to try to tell stories? Are they not just better off focusing on interactive systems and gameplay? In this post I argue that stories are fundamental to the play experience by supplying context. This story context is crucial in order for videogames to engage and make the gameplay easy to grasp.
Mental Models
The reality that we sense in front of us is a fiction created by our brains. A host of modules process information in various ways and the end result is a mental model of the outside world. Knowing how this works is crucial to game development as the shape of these mental simulations has a huge effect on how a game feels and plays.
Creations inspired by Frictional Games
Last week we announced a competition on Facebook and Twitter, asking our community to share their creations inspired by our games. We knew that there was a whole load of art, mods and just plain crazy stuff out there, and we’re really happy to have seen many of them which we might otherwise have missed.
Evoking Presence
Playing a videogame can put you in a state where the borders between your self and the character gets blurry. This is one of the major differences that sets games apart from other mediums such as films and literature. When creating games, evoking this feeling of presence is worth trying to achieve.
Navigating the Space of Game Design
Designing a game spawns an endless set of ideas – ideas that need to be sorted. In order to do this, you need a method of evaluating them. The following discusses five different gameplay models – ways of thinking about game design – that can be helpful in choosing between ideas, and how they affect the final game.
Resident Evil and the power of narrative context
By putting the player in a situation where’s there not enough space to move or to aim at the enemy, gameplay can quickly grow boring. But when combining gameplay with narrative and context, you can turn this into an even more immersive experience
Videogames – too much fun for their own good?
As a medium videogames have been kidnapped by their easily-achieved engagement. Simple gameplay is so much fun on its own that storytelling has never been needed in order to draw an audience. Compared to films, the element of storytelling is seldom elevated in videogames. Is it time for a walk down that lesser-known path, leading to better narratives in videogames?
Traversal and the Problem With Walking Simulators
To keep the player focused on the game’s world is crucial to every game creator. While the player is traversing a space this is even more important, but at the same time harder to achieve. So how do you keep your game interesting and avoid turning it into a walking simulator?
Meet Fredrik, our executive producer!
I like to think of myself as a fun-loving and easy-going guy who strives towards creativity on an exceptional level. Over the course of my career I’ve learnt, about myself, that I am not truly happy unless I am involved in something that sets out to break boundaries and creates something truly unique.
