When I was playing HerStory for this class, one idea stuck with me – the fact that the sole reward for playing was also the sole mechanic by which you played the game (watching videos and uncovering the story.) There was nothing beyond watching and searching for videos. The entire game was literally nothing more than the backstory – but the interactivity that dictated how this backstory was presented made a massive impact on how the game felt. I strongly agreed with a lot of the tenets of “notgames,” most of all this idea that videogames are defined by their interactivity, and that by utilizing that interactivity, a videogame can become much more than any old ‘game’ or other art medium.
I made a post for the last discussion about how the tactile interactivity of the original version of Sword & Sworcery influenced how I perceived the game – I felt that having to touch the screen made me immerse myself in the game’s environment more than merely clicking would. Another aspect of S&S that I loved was the reversal of the standard ‘growth with progression’ trope found in games like the Legend of Zelda series, where you gain items and health capacity after each boss. In S&S, your max health decreases after each ‘boss’ instead. This reinforces the theme of self-sacrifice that is core to the story of S&S, and further immerses me as a player in the game. The player character is getting weaker as their quest takes a toll on their body – it makes sense that the difficulty should increase proportionally.
Overall these design choices added so much to S&S and allowed me to experience the story and themes in a way I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. S&S was the first game to make me think about how these small design choices could decide whether a game is amazing or awful, which got me interested in game design. The GDC presentation on Environmental Storytelling put a lot of my thoughts on game design into words, and I’m glad to have it as a resource to refer to from this point forward.
