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#video games

also: #videogame, #videogames
LukeBeeman
@LukeBeeman
Device 6 Review
★★★★★
★★★★★

on

again

Wanted to revisit this after playing Simogo's latest game, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, and yeah, Device 6 is still one of the best mobile games ever made, and an experience uniquely suited to its platform.

Device 6 is a game that's difficult to describe, but I'll do my best: it's basically a playable ebook with embedded puzzles. What that description fails to capture, however, is that reading it isn't a straightforward act of swiping or scrolling through pages of consistently formatted text. Rather, Device 6 feels more like a digital version of House of Leaves, with the text shooting off at different angles, doubling back on itself, or splitting off into multiple directions at once, often mimicking the twists, turns, ascents, and descents taken by the protagonist Anna, and Anna's first-person thoughts occasionally show up in the margins of the third-person narration, as do mysterious notes and diagrams about various numbered devices. It's an approach that treats text as a visual medium in its own right, one where form is every bit as important as content. It's also just incredibly cool; I think this game rules and there's really nothing else like it out there.

Also, I love how sinister Device 6 gets; more games should make me feel like I'm in danger in real life.

Reviewed on Jun 20, 2024

airakose
@airakose
airakose
@airakose
airakose
@airakose

Just Wrote A Paper and a Half of a Post About Games and Creativity

Saved it to drafts, never to see the light of day.

TL;DR of That Post

Game devs have a habit of doing things "just because", without real intent behind them. And I'm a sucker for when creatives are inventive with their given artistic medium to get the most out of it under their constraints.

There are totally understandable reasons for some of these decisions, like time / resource restrictions (a game has to release).

That said, it often seems to be more a lack of consideration, lack of unifying direction (or inversely a unifying direction without purpose), or a cultural tendency to lean into dogma like the pursuit of high-fidelity, "rule of cool", or "other games did it this way".

airakose
@airakose

Level Design

This thought has affixed itself in my mind because I've been remembering late nights having long conversations with someone about this, especially in regards to level design.

Too many games lack level design with clear visual lines, contrast, or lighting to guide players. You can do some really cool, subtle things like having the path back to your base be wide and clear, in contrast to the side-paths being narrow and cluttered. Combine that with lights, ensuring maximum sight lines on the main path back, and maybe a visual breadcrumb like a torch - and you have a navigable level.

Instead, video game levels are frequently laid out with equal weight given to each path, and the visual clutter is uniformly "high fidelity" across them all (full of visual noise). This makes it hard for players to backtrack and causes them to get turned around easily; there isn't a distinct, intentional visual landmark.

Many games have a problem with putting too much detail into everything in their levels in general, pursuing extravagance in every corner. This oversaturates the world, dampening the impact of key visual vista moments. Worlds should be allowed to have plain areas and dull moments to highlight the punch of those exceptional moments. On purpose.

Tutorials, Too Toriel