Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

minutes to complete this dungeon, where the
guardian, having been defeated, reveals with
his last dying breath the way to enter the castle
seen previously. Using the crossbow, Jimmy
needs to shoot a certain four bricks on the wall
of the castle, thereby lowering the drawbridge.
The defeated guardian also explains some of the
narrative. I like to think of the player as being
in a cursed land, where everyone is forced,
Groundhog Day style, to relive the same things
over and over.
At this point, Jimmy retires downstairs for
his daily gin and crumpets. But oh no you cry!
What about saving the game? Worry not, faithful
Action RPG veteran - for you see, Jimmy now
knows how to enter the castle. It would take
little more than 200 seconds to get his sword
and the crossbow and return to the castle if he
were playing right from the beginning. Since he
knows the trick to entering the castle he can
bypass the cave dungeon entirely. Completion
of the castle by scaling the ruined citadel at its
centre (roughly 30 minutes for capable players),
will reveal further clues and information.
The next task is to head west from the
shrine, using the sword to cut down three
bushes in a nearby clearing. The order is im-
portant, since cutting the 3rd, 6th and then first
bush will reveal the entrance to an underground
river of blood, replete with ferryman of the
damned ninja cats. The player may of course be
tempted to again retrieve the crossbow, but it is
unnecessary - the player can only hold a single
item at a time and the ferryman will hand him a
shield that cancels out any other item.
Here is where the clever design must come
into play. Since the player can only ever carry
their sword and one additional item at any time,
they must not feel chained by their equipment,
and as such, are limited in what they can carry.
The aim of this limitation is to achieve the purity
of titles such as Sony’s Ico, or Delphi’s Another
World (1). Of course, of the presumed 15 or
so key items found throughout the game, only
(1) – Released in the US as Out of this World.
one is ever needed for any goal. With each
goal completed, clear information for complet-
ing the next is given. The entire game needs to
be structured in such a way, so that the player
never has to backtrack a great deal or feel an-
noyed with the item they are carrying.
In this way, knowledge - and to a lesser
degree skill - becomes the key assets in com-
pleting the game. Of course, the player is free
to explore at their will, but without knowing
precisely how to achieve certain affects, their
progress will in theory be fairly linear. How are
they to know that they must drown themselves
in the uppermost mountain to acquire the wings
of Narog unless they had previously been told
by the Harpies of Narog? Alternatively, they
may have been told to do so by real-world
friends, and a key element to enjoying the game
is discussing strategies with friends who are
playing at the same time. If a certain section
proves too difficult for one person, a friend can
simply reveal the information won by complet-
ing that task. Imagine the possibilities of school
chums, or even work colleagues, discussing the
previous night’s questing and their theories on
how to progress next. They’ve all discovered the
sleeping Dragon of Jade, but will they manage
to sequence-break the game and work out its
secret a little early? Most goals would need to
either be cryptic (tree cutting), or counter intui-
tive (drowning oneself at a key area).
The entire game features your standard
towns and villages, lost civilisations, and other
strange characters to meet and talk with. Most
RPGs have NPCs repeating the same dialogue,
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