I enjoyed the metaphor of walking simulators as “secret boxes,” or a Japanese toy whose beauty lies in the secret motions and movements to open it. There is nothing inside, and really not much of an ending to these games. Yet the narrative arises from the journey and interactions of the player.
While many of these exploratory games come up with amusing interactions, I feel that there are a lot of pitfalls. Point-and-click games with “pixel hunting” (searching for a specific pixel to click on) can often get tedious. Personally, I found Gone Home extremely repetitive: despite a brilliant story, rifling through drawers and cabinets for every single detail got old fast. Sure, the storytelling was solid. But the game itself was BORING.
I believe the key to secret boxes is novelty. Secrets are no longer secrets if they’re constantly repeated. Instead, beauty arises from new and creative ideas. Amanita Design’s Machinarium and Botanicula are good examples of secret boxes that always provide new areas to explore and new objects or creatures to interact with. By constantly designing things the player hasn’t seen before, one can build a great world. That, I think, is the key to a secret box.
