The curious experience of SOMETIMES YOU DIE

Created by the developer Philipp Stollenmayer, SOMETIMES YOU DIE has become the surprise hit of 2014, despite (or perhaps because of) its unusual take on life, death and the meaning of video games.

In this game you control a simple square and the challenge is to reach the exit of each stage. But there’s a important detail: you need to die to achieve your missions; by dying you leave a previous “corpse” to use as a ladder or to block some spikes, saws and other dangerous artifacts. You can understand the main idea of the game in the image below:



It’s possible to die many times to create solutions for the puzzles. The game still uses some interaction with your smartphone, like rotating the device to change gravity rules and some special elements like the very clever advertising box below.



With a minimal design and a disturbing soundtrack, SOMETIMES YOU DIE is an awesome gaming experience for mobile devices. Check the trailer with the gameplay and mechanics:



This kind of game explains the procedural rhetoric idea proposed by Bogost (2007, p.3). This author says that procedural rhetoric is the practice of using processes persuasively.

And, finally, this kind of ludic experiment gives us clues as how the gaming market is increasingly diverse and full of possibilities.

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Reference:

BOGOST, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. MIT Press, 2007.

Talking about my new mobile game DOMINAEDRO

Last week my new game, DOMINAEDRO, landed at the App Store. The game is a strategic puzzle that mixes dominoes and tic-tac-toe. It’s is an abstract battle between two players that uses pieces of domino as weapons.

The game, originally, was analogic and was launched as an independent title in the beginning of this year. After lots of positive reviews from Brazilian (and even European) sites I decided to transform the analogic version into a digital game.

The game is very simple and I will share the main idea of the rules below. The game’s grid is arranged with nine numbers randomly selected by the system. In a decreasing order: the highest number will be allocated in the center, intermediate values will be around the highest one, and lower values will be on the corners.



Your starting hand has 3 domino pieces. The player with the lowest sum of numbers in a single piece starts the game. On your turn, you must try to put a single piece in the grid respecting the following rules:

1) A number in a domino can only touch a piece with the same number, or lower, in the grid.
2) Like in a domino game, pieces connected on the grid must have the same numbers.
3) Every time you choose a piece, the system will point out the spaces allowed for allocating on the table.



You earn points by dominating a sum on the grid. For that, you should be the player with the highest sum of numbers around a value. In case of a tie, the sum of the second values of dominoes sets the winner. In case of a tie in both sides of the dominoes, the winner will be the player with more pieces.

The game ends when you cannot allocate more pieces on the grid. Each piece not allocated is worth -1 point. Values of the grid that were not completely surrounded by pieces are scored normally.

If a player has dominated all values in a row, column or diagonal, they win 4 extra points for each line. The player with the most points wins the game. Check a short video demo with the game mechanics below:



You can download DOMINAEDRO for free. Click here for more information. I’m waiting for your suggestions, critics and improvements.

Go gamers!

From the past: ICO

Ico is a 3D adventure game developed by Team Ico (2001) and published by Sony for PlayStation 2. I played this game many years ago and am, at this moment, playing the HD version for Playstation 3.

I really like to replay some games years later to observe things that I didn’t notice the first time. From 2001 to today, I have read many books and studied a lot about gaming concepts and game design, so this is a singular opportunity to discuss some important features of this game with an updated view.



The story of the game is about Ico, a boy who was born with horns, which among his people is considered bad omen. Ico is locked in an abandoned dark fortress, where he must explore and run out from. During the exploration, Ico encounters Yorda, the daughter of the castle's queen. The queen has an evil plan to possess the body of Yorda for eternal life and Ico needs to take the girl out of the fortress. The main mechanics of the game is created with puzzle-solving and some combats against demoniac shadow creatures (it’s truly creepy).

You can check the gameplay and game’s intro below:



The game breaks a paradigm of the gaming industry by presenting an interface devoid of tutorials. By controlling the character, the player must try the buttons and add knowledge from other games he/she played for solving puzzles and traversing the scenarios.

Sometimes it is quite difficult to visualize how to solve a puzzle or what sequence of commands must be clicked. However, this is not a defect, it is a gaming feature. Ico works with the idea that we must explore the environment and learn from it. The game operates on a very strong procedural logic/rhetoric inside its interface.

As Bogost says (2007, p.3) “just as verbal rhetoric is useful for both the orator and the audience, and just as written rhetoric is useful for both the writer and the reader, procedural rhetoric is useful for both the programmer and the user, the game designer and the player”.

So, it’s good to have a chance to discuss old games with new observations. I’ll try to do this more frequently from now on.

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Reference:

BOGOST,Ian. Persuasive Games. The MIT Press, 2010 (paperback) http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/persuasive-games

A little bit about THE UNFINISHED SWAN

The Unfinished Swan (Giant Sparrow, 2012) was a great game launched for Playstation 3 platform last year. Hands off, one of my favorites from 2012 and a game from which we can learn many things.

The Unfinished Swan is about exploring the unknown. The player is a young boy chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space where players can throw paint to splatter their surroundings and reveal the world around them (you can visit the official site here).

The game has many positive features and I believe it is possible to extract valuable lessons from its interface. First of all: like Portal (Valve, 2007) it's a first-person puzzle-platform, but here you shoot paintballs around the scenery to solve enigmas. A great part of the game is made of a completely white screen and the challenge is to discover the paths to move along. The video below shows the basic dynamics of the game:



Another important point about the game is a good balance between storytelling and gameplay. You are an orphan trying to find the painting of an unfinished swan made by your mother. The swan gained life and escaped from the frame to a mysterious world of fantasy, and it's your mission find it and bring it back with you. Inside this narrative the game offers a very clever dynamics of puzzle solving using ink to paint parts of the ambient.

The game has good procedural rhetoric embedded in its interface. You learn gradually how to interact with the interface and how to use different kinds of special powers.

Finally, The Unfinished Swan is an indie game that managed to draw attention of a large producer (Santa Monica) and was launched with support and good advertising.

Undoubtedly, The Unfinished Swan is a living example of another kind of configuration of the gaming industry. A creative independent game launched by a small studio, supported by a great publisher, with many mechanics/storytelling innovations and focused on a casual player. I'm happy that the gaming market today has also room for this kind of initiative (it's a great incentive for game designers all around the world).

Quote of the day

“The problems of puzzles are very near the problems of life, our whole life is solving puzzles. If you are hungry, you have to find something to eat. But everyday problems are very mixed - they're not clear. The Cube's problem depends just on you. You can solve it independently. But to find happiness in life, you're not independent. That's the only big difference.” - Ernő Rubik (Hungarian, Architect and creator of the Magic Cube)