dev.log Bronze

Dev.log Bronze

option 2A

   For this weeks dev.log, I  spiced up my Halloween with a horror game. I decided to play Carrion. It is a horror game made by Phobia Games Studio, and very lovingly  and bombastically marketed by Devolver Digital. You play as an amorphous monster breaking out of the lab, not at all pleased to have been chopped up and separated from it's DNA clusters for study. Players slaughter and assimilate everything in their path to escape. It is perversely voyeuristic and is must must play for anyone who likes horror and gore. 

   Carrions mechanics allow you to use the monsters tentacles. I can use the tentacles to interact and manipulate anything in the game. It is extremely versatile, allowing me to tear enemies limb from limb, remove spinal columns and bisect humans in various gruesome ways, including decapitation. I can use it can pull levers, activate switches, throw objects with lethal forces or to set off traps. As the player I can acquire new powers from assimilating their DNA clusters in various facilities, giving them new mechanics based on their size. I can gain the ability to shoot gooey, acidic webs, grow spikes and armor from my monsters body, and puppet my  victims around. They can also throw off portions of their body mass into stasis, returning to a smaller size in the process and retrieve them later. Finally as the monster,  I can roar.

   Dynamically, Carrion is very impressive. Tentacles can be used to hurl enemies around, drag them into one another and knock down gun toting foes, open vents, rip off doors. It also allows the player to pull enemies into their monsters jaws, assimilating them and growing bigger/ healing in one swoop. The spider web projectile can activate switches and stick enemies to walls/ ceilings and send them into lethal falls as well as scrape away armor from enemies. are based on size, so I have to ditch my body mass or grow a bit to use certain powers. At a bigger size it is a bit hard to fit into vents and elevators, and hiding in the corner is not possible. I can only shatter brick walls with a level 2 body mass, using a ramming attack, but to make it past infrared sensors that close doors, I must get smaller and use invisibility. the game shines at forcing me to make myself vulnerable my getting smaller to use different powers. I can leap into the bodies of victims and puppet them, to open doors, or to turn their weapons on their friends. Roaring terrifies and alerts enemies, but also causes an 'echolocation' UI to play on screen, showing the player where nearby save points are, color indicating their usage. I can use the armor to simply charge enemies with reckless abandon or, more inventive, purposefully harpoon my self with an explosive trap and turn myself into a walking bomb that can shatter reinforced doors and drones. 

   Carrions aesthetic is that of a rich horror movie. It's mechanics literally embody "the mechanic as a message". The player is forced to hide just out sight in dark corners and vanish enemies with glowing tentacles; engaging in a perverse, inhuman feast as a gameplay loop, crawl and slither through vents, sewers, and dank, dark chasms. The very act of saving the game has players crawl into tight, dark spaces and root themselves into walls, spreading their tentacles into solid structures for survival, ejecting their bodily segments for safe keeping. The tentacles uncanny slingshot motions make players into the angry movie monster. It communicates the theme of inhumanity well, better than any game I've played. Even players who might not normally find violence appealing can find themselves immersed in this rampage. It strongly appeals to Challenge as players must contend with armed humans and lethal machinery, as well as Fantasy. 

   Narrative is a strong taxonomy here, because of one mechanic I've not mentioned yet; the ability to absorb electrical currents and interface with machinery. The monster can crawl inside of machines at certain points, and essentially experience a flash back, seeing it's past, and learning. These flashbacks serve to contextualize the monster as a thinking creature, and how that it is intelligent in ways we cannot imagine, making the game much more frightening and exciting since we are the creature.
   One of the most disturbing mechanics, I have yet to mention is the most surprising and seemingly innocuous, launching the game into a truly frightening tone, bordering cosmic horror. When the player has absorbed enough DNA, they can imitate human form without a host. They can fool even advanced machinery. It turns this gore slaughter fest into an ambiguous horror masterpiece. The player, as monster, is now quite capable of being anyone, anywhere. Even you, even I. 

===============================================================

option 1

    While reading chapter 10 of Fullerton's Game Design I found the section where Rob Pardo discusses balancing Warcraft 3 particularly interesting. He talks about a name being important to presenting something to players.  He describes 'Upkeep costs' for in game units as being controversial, but changing it's name from 'Tax' caused players to be more accepting of it. The name with which something is presented carries harsh connotations. players didn't want to think about taxes while playing a game. This reminds me of the ongoing attempts by Electronic Arts to normalize microtransactions and excessive elements of chance through digital casinos and  loot boxes. They attempt to soften the blow by referring to loot boxes during litigation as 'surprise mechanics' but it fails and comes off as further insulting to the intelligence of consumers and older gamers. 

   Another point Rob Pardo brings up is cutting content for balance purposes. Warcraft fans became livid when human ranger units were cut. They made the mistake of promising something and not delivering. It would have been better not to show it all. This happens every year with Triple A game releases. Things that are shown off never arrive in the final game. A particularly egregious example was Bioshock Infinite (2013), which cut too much because of budget problems, and wound up bankrupting the developer. Early on developer diaries and interviews and demos featured hours of things that weren't in the final game, leaving many feeling conned, even as the game found a  more casual audience to praise it all the while. (yes I was one who felt ripped off :) Oddly enough, this incident is what pushed me towards the game industry, and researching design and development problems and history.

   Heather Kelley speaks about using high level design documents, but not getting too focused on it as, your vision for a game should guide you as long as you can effectively communicate. The design documents I've done for my personal projects are all lengthy and messy things. I often don't look back, because so much in regards will change after moving on. Some of it can seem absurd and irrelevant looking back. What she says about something seeming good on paper but becoming impractical rings true each time.  I can still have a decent laugh and wonder what I was thinking.