Blogcast: In Regards to Castlevania Judgment and Experimental Games

Had technical issues with the embedded player, but the link below will play my audio piece.
  Blogcast linked here

In Regards to Role-Playing and Mechanic Reinforcement

Mystic Empyrean and Role-Playing Games

Paper-and-pencil style role-playing games have been an important part of game design ever since its introduction with games such as Dungeons & Dragons, which was based off an even older game called Chainmail.  Their relevance to the game design field can be seen in many of their elements, but essentially paper-and-pencil games are notable for their mechanics-heavy systems, person-run simulations, and heavy amount of player investment and interaction within the playing group. And while the former two elements, intricate mechanics combined and utilized via personal interpretation and arbitration, are readily apparent usually from just glancing over the usually many-paged sourcebooks, deep player interactions along with mental and emotional involvement is a quality that has to be more played than read. However, mechanics usually do not enforce these role-playing elements, at least not in a fashion similar to how other behavior is usually enforced in videogames. 

While it is true that one of “the most fascinating [aspects] of the process of role-playing lies in the ability to shift personality characteristics within the parameters of the game environment” (Bowman, 2010, p. 127), this aspect is usually promoted but not necessarily worked into the mechanics, which is where Mystic Empyrean stands out. Character building in the game focuses around the selection of personality traits, with different traits contributing different abilities to one’s character. While similar concepts can be seen in other systems, the only way these abilities can be advanced is through the role-playing of those respective traits. At concluding points in the game, the other players at the table vote towards what trait your actions represented best, which then adds points to that trait. This enforces the player to play the character they have either built or have been dealt to the hilt, even if the personality trait being played is a negative one via positive reinforcement. While many role-playing games do involve role-playing aspects that players can really invest in, Mystic Empyrean is one of the few systems that build its rules around that concept.

Bowman, S. L. (2010). The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company.

In Regards to Fighting Games, Fairness, and Divekick

Divekick and Competitive Balance

Fighting games are a fairly prominent genre inside the video game industry, originating in the arcades of previous generations and eventually being ported to video game consoles as the technology involved evolved to be better suited to a home marketplace. As a genre, fighting games are one of the few that have always been centered around competition, whether it is between the computer, friends, or international competitors. Fighting games usually contain fairly complex systems that in turn create a somewhat steep learning curve, requiring a degree of skill to be built up before a player can truly play against other players of the game. However, this has a side effect of possibly turning away players who have an interest in a fighting game but aren’t skilled enough to get any enjoyment out of it, thus causing them to quickly lose interest in the game. As Salen and Zimmerman (2004) wrote,  "If your players feel that your game is unfair, that it lacks a level playing field, it is unlikely that they will want to play" (p. 263), and the gap between experienced players and interested newcomers tends to give the impression of unfairness to people encountering any particular fighting game for the first time. However, Divekick’s design works against this disparity.

Divekick’s mechanics build around the use of only two buttons (defined by the user), one for jumping and the other for kicking with the ultimate goal of hitting the opponent first without getting hit in turn. The incredibly simple controls make the barrier for entry almost non-existent; Divekick is one of the few fighting games that can simply be picked up and played by anyone. Despite its uncomplicated control scheme, Divekick also retains all of the tension of mainstream fighting games. Intense moments of what move to make and when, positioning, and how to counter an opponent’s moves are a constant during matches and aggressively pushed into existence by the limited time span and middle line mechanic (which awards victory of the match to the player closest to the center line, in the case no one has been hit when time is up). Divekick may be the fairest fighting game to ever exist, but as a result it innovates a new dimension in a debatably stale genre.

Salen, K., Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. The MIT Press.

Yume Nikki and Nihilism: Futility as a Game Mechanic

Guest Written by Claire Lewoczko

When Jesse Schell wrote his book The Art of Game Design, he listed 100 lenses, or facets, implemented in game design (Schell 2008). Each of these lens uses a different perspective to make a statement or drive the flow of a game. However, Schell neglected to include a very important lens; the lens of nihilism. Nihilism is a philosophy ascribed to Friedrich Nietzsche, which purports there is no meaning to anything in existence, even existence itself (Snyder 2013).

Yume Nikki is a 2D adventure game made by an unknown individual under the enigma Kikiyama, released to the internet back in 2004 (Read 2009). In Yume Nikki, the player takes the role of a reclusive young woman named Madotsuki. Madotsuki refuses to venture from her apartment, but has the ability to dream vivid, surrealistic dreams. It is in these dreams that the majority of gameplay takes place.

Unlike many games, where a player has an objective or a story to follow, Yume Nikki’s narrative is either nonexistent or cryptic. In the beginning, the game gives the player the instructions to find effect items in Madostuki’s dreams. The game never gives an explanation as to why they should find these effects, nor provides an exposition for the player’s context. Excluding the ending, the game features no dialogue, cutscenes, or narrative to follow. The only narrative that the player can hope to piece together relies on their interpretation of Madotsuki’s bizarre dream worlds, and the disturbing imagery found within. 

Yume Nikki’s absurdist imagery and questionably non-existent story are powerful nihilistic mechanics. In nihilist philosophy, there is no purpose in life (Snyder 2013), much like there is no purpose in Madotsuki’s bizarre, illogical dreams. Additionally, while all twenty four of the effect items are needed to unlock the game’s end, only a handful of the items the player collects serve an in-game purpose (Scutilla 2008). The rest of the items serve as merely as player costumes. Though costume items do have effects when their effect key is pressed, their effects do not interact with the rest of the world, further emphasizing pointlessness. Not only is there no story to drive the player, but the player’s struggles and interactions with the game are largely exercises in futility.

The element that captures the spirit of nihilism most in Yume Nikki however, is the ending. This is the one point in the game that features a brief cutscene. After the player has collected all twenty four effects, Madotsuki wakes up in her apartment everything the same as usual, except for one detail. Stepping stairs stand by the balcony of her apartment. The player can try to interact with the apartment’s door, video game system, and usual items, but Madotsuki refuses to use them. The only thing left for the player to do is to climb the stairs and fling themselves from the balcony. When the player chooses to jump, Madotsuki plunges off the balcony to her death. A black screen with a small, bright red spatter appears, and the credits roll indifferently to a chipper, repeating tune.

Yume Nikki cleverly demonstrates that there is no point in the player’s interaction, or Madotsuki’s life. The sole objective, the collection of the effect items, only brings Madotsuki’s purposeless death. Madotsuki’s death is equally pathetic, because the only objective that brings purpose to the game is while Madotsuki is alive. The futility of Madotsuki’s life and death, and the futility of the player’s actions show how the lens of futility is used to send a powerful message about the game.




Schell, J. (2008) The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufman.

Snyder, P. (2013, August 10) Something out of Nothing: Nihilism and the Humanist. Retrieved from http://www.ws5.com/nihilism/


Read, C. (2008, August 10). Madotsuki's Closet - About Yume Nikki FAQ. Retrieved from http://www.theneitherworld.com/yumenikki/faq.htm


Scutilla (2008, April 29). YUME NIKKI: Game Guide and Walkthrough. Retrieved from http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/580358-yume-nikki/faqs/52629

Space Funeral and Surreal Experiences

Weirdness in Regards to Space Funeral

Rogers (2010) describes what he refers to as the Triangle of Weirdness in his book Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design. Essentially, only one of three things can be weird without the risk of alienating one’s audience:  the characters, the setting, or the events that take place in the experience (p. 44).

The small, independently-made game Space Funeral defies this rule, with the entirety of the game consisting of events, places, and characters that could only be described as weird. 

Starting Space Funeral for the first time, the player is greeted by the start menu which has three options: blood, blood, and blood. This bizarre opening scene sets the mood for the remaining experience. The player begins the game by being unceremoniously dumped into Scum Village, the entirety of which is immediately recognized as foreign to the player’s mind. The grass and water are far off-color. The houses are all large, bleeding heads, and everyone there to talk to usually serve to just make one more confused, with the exception of clarifying which direction to proceed in. Over time, the events that take place around the player have the strange effect of making the whole situation less understandable and yet oddly more directed. Your only ally, Leg Horse (a horse made out of legs), is the sole emotional anchor one builds over the course of the game and serves to get the player more involved in the plot beyond the vague advice that two of you are destined to take on the same quest. As the climax of the epic comes to a close, everything makes sense in a fashion, though not in a traditional sense. 

Playing through the game, thinking of it more as an experience instead of as a normal video game lets one see where the game shines. The simple aesthetics are far from the high-quality graphics we see today, and even the sprites from back during the SNES’s time span. Yet their ability to unsettle and build a world, no matter how strange, contributes to the experience presented to the player. The writing adds to this feeling, building a feeling of unease yet being totally functional . The licensed music and somewhat outdated pop culture references create familiarity and yet a surreal detachment. The overall experience reaches a point of clarity in the end, hinting at the overall theme that ties the entirety of itself together. Despite thoroughly defying the notion of building on anything normal and known, Space Funeral shows that interesting new experiences can come from departing from that which is familiar.

Rogers, S. (2010) Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design. U.K: Wiley & Sons.

Thirty Flights of Loving and Environmental Storytelling

On Narrative Architecture

Environmental storytelling is a powerful tool that video games can use to create powerful experiences that draw the player into the game. In reality, we naturally pick up information from the details in the spaces around us, and use them to make deductions about other people and our surroundings, and it is natural that good narrative design takes this element and implements it in the virtual space of the game. Jenkins (2004) states in his article Game Design as Narrative Architecture:
        Environmental storytelling creates the preconditions

        for an immersive narrative experience in at least one of

        four ways: spatial stories can evoke pre-existing

        narrative associations; they can provide a staging

        ground where narrative events are enacted; they may

        embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene;

        or they provide resources for emergent narratives. (p. 123)

These principles are essential to the designing of narrative, and many of them are prevalent in Thirty Flights of Loving.

Regarding Thirty Flights of Loving

Thirty Flights of Loving is more of a story or experience than a game; though there are mechanics present they serve to add more towards the narrative than the gameplay that is present. Regardless, it still uses the principles described above and it is easy to claim these core elements make up the entirety of the experience.

The only principle not used is regarding the creation of emergent narratives; Thirty Flights is intended as a guided experience, and gameplay is minimal which restricts the possibility for emergent stories crafted by the player's individual experience.

Pre-existing Narrative Associations

Immediately after being dropped into the game, the player's environment and its details call upon some presumed associations in the mind of the player to help establish the overarching mood. The newspapers report of unrest and prohibition, and it is quickly learned by the player that they are a large part in some rather underground activities. The environmental touches, in both the action-packed scenes and the somber, melancholic apartment segments evoke the ideas of crime dramas and noir detective stories.

Staging Ground

It is difficult to divorce this principle from spacial narratives, since it is difficult to thing of events taking place without any form of stage. Thirty Flights only uses a small amount of locations, but hints that these environments are much larger than what is initially seen, and everything from passports to looking out at a quiet city suggests that there is a real and breathing world outside of the player's guided experience.

Embedded Narrative Information

Most of the details of this experience that truly make it special are in its details. The bottles at the bar clearly specify its drinks are non-alcoholic and a sign affixed near the entrance states the government's policy in regards to what is stocked. In hidden places, the beverages are of a illegal variety. Government signs warning the player that it is illegal to access the roof are quickly forgotten when you walk past them. The meager arrangements of the player's apartment speaks to either their modesty or how often they are on the move. The missing leg of one of your companions is also very telling, serving as a detail that marks the sequential order of the game's disjointed events.

Jenkins, H. (2004). Game design as narrative architecture. Computer, 44, s3.