‘Conceptual Opera’ After Us Breaks Recreation Design Guidelines By Introducing Feelings

We prefer to say that our groups at Piccolo Studio “craft” video games. We’re satisfied that video video games are essentially the most highly effective medium to inform a narrative – and as recreation administrators, Jordi Ministral and I take pleasure in telling them by way of what makes this medium particular: gameplay.

We launched Come up: A Easy Story three years in the past and, along with Personal Division, tomorrow on Might 23 we’re launching our latest recreation, After Us.

Come up: A Easy Story was a young lullaby, enjoying with time mechanics to discover the reminiscences of a not too long ago deceased aged man. Now, constructing on sensible expertise, After Us is nearer to a conceptual opera. It’s a narrative about legacy and hope, by way of epic and atmospheric landscapes. It narrates the story of Gaia, a small nymph. She explores a metaphorical, surrealistic model of our Earth – the place people have spoiled all life kinds – in a quest to avoid wasting the souls of extinct animals.

Due to our recreation design course of, it’s arduous to suit After Us in a specific style. It’s a mixture of platforming, puzzle-solving, and motion. However the person nature of those parts and the way they’re put collectively sit removed from style conventions.

“It’s intentional. The way in which we design video games, on the prime there are the emotions and feelings we need to painting. As we go down into execution, we discover recreation mechanics that emphasize them. Then we place them in an natural world designed from a creative perspective, and we spend hours and hours fine-tuning all of it till every little thing blends collectively effectively”, says Jordi.

Typically, and it occurs extra typically than we expect with video video games, the potion we’ve concocted doesn’t work and you have to begin over from scratch. However more often than not, it does, and right here at Piccolo we try to give you concepts that defy the normal guidelines of recreation design.

The Whale Hunt Case Examine

Let’s take an instance! Gaia’s objective is to avoid wasting the souls of the final extinct animals, amongst which is an imposing humpback whale. We would like gamers to really feel what this whale may need felt in her final moments. To really feel hunted. To take action, we place the motion on the seabed of a dried-up ocean. There are remnants of large, rusty oil ships scattered on the bottom and above, floating within the air. Gaia is surrounded by patches of poisonous oil corrupting the seabed. She begins working. Large harpoons then start to strike down from the sky, focusing on Gaia as she approaches them. A sheer sense of panic ensues.

Standard design would clearly outline when the harpoons are triggered, how they assault and what you are able to do to keep away from them. “That is what video games are primarily based on, however this isn’t how a whale feels when being hunted. She doesn’t perceive what’s occurring. Harpoons hold hurling themselves at her whereas Gaia runs and jumps. Hazard isn’t one thing she will management or predict!”, explains Jordi.

Certainly, we deliberately blurred the way in which harpoons are triggered, how they transfer and assault. There isn’t a transparent sample to keep away from them. Typically, you don’t see them coming. And sure, generally they kill the participant with out them absolutely understanding what occurred. We all know this raises a number of pink flags in conventional design, however for those who do it with care, it really works. When it does, it’s a lot extra highly effective than any conventional method. As a result of by way of the (obvious) lack of clear guidelines, gamers really feel what they’d possibly really feel in such a scenario.

We like to attract inspiration from different media, like motion pictures, novels, or comedian books. So, for this “scene”, we took as reference the well-known remaining scene from Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, the place a lonely character is being shot with arrows by an enormous military. We wished to recreate the identical somber sensation of unavoidable hazards, unpredictable impacts, and the nerve-wracking tempo of the assaults.

Emotional As a substitute of Mechanical Rewards

But it surely’s not solely about hazards, enemies, or particular scenes. We defy conventional recreation design in a broader sense: the sport doesn’t yield mechanical rewards to gamers, however emotional ones.

After Us options 8 important animal souls that you have to discover and rescue, however there are a further 100 “non-obligatory” souls which you can free. When rescuing an animal’s soul, cases of that species populate and brighten up the world. Liberating a soul entails exploring the mysterious world of After Us, singing to search out the place it’s hidden, or fixing environmental puzzles.

However releasing them offers you nothing from a mechanical standpoint. “No factors, no powers, no XP. The reward of releasing an animal soul is… releasing an animal soul! And experiencing a world filled with animals wandering round,” Jordi states with a smile.

To us, and hopefully for lots of gamers, this design works. In spite of everything, what higher sort of reward is there than an emotional one?

After Us is out there now for Xbox Collection X|S.