see also Slow-Paced Combat And Depth

control schemes: clicking on things, moving a cursor around to select things (i.e. clicking but in a console/handheld context), moving around a little platformer character

actually there are a surprising number of click/touch control scheme games. out of 16 games, how well is each control scheme represented?

platformers or top down controlled characters - 7 games
selecting options from menus or using an on screen cursor to poke the world - 7 games

so they're about equally represented here, and yet in my own game dev practice platformers and top down controlled characters are much more well represented.

i am keeping an eye on these things but features that stand out, which i've rejected now and then, for one reason or another.

art style / screen composition: a lot of 2d games. fair number of games with text, but never a full screen of text. maps are common. there is a sub-theme of games with black or white abstract backgrounds; in my opinion these are the less attractive games although i have selected multiple. i have a preference for the games with strong theme or sense of place, and which feel 'alive', full of grass and plants and living people and things. calm, bright colours are nice. (fire emblem, etrian odyssey, starseed pilgrim.) my penchant for 'ugly' colours is not really very nice or appealing to me at all from this perspective. (databug, uurnog.)

rote tasks: drawing a map, exploring, number go up (well of souls, crossing flowers)

interesting decisions: choosing when to break out of a loop and move forward (disgaea, secrets of asherah, etrian odyssey), thinking about where a secret might be hidden (etrian odyssey, la-mulana), selecting a route or path (roadwarden, slay the princess, kingdom of loathing, etrian odyssey - i am noticing many of these route/path selections take the form of interacting with characters, possibly my own character development but USUALLY interacting with NPCs)

roadwarden's still life scenes, next to text
la-mulana's still life rooms
slay the princess' rooms, scenes, tableaux
uurnog uurnlimited's save room...
starseed pilgrim's stillness when in the air. the blocks that grow, the time you spend just standing there, waiting. minimal action. strategy?
databug has no timer, no time pressure... it waits for you to act and then proceeds
geomoth. i'm not sure. something about the way the scene is set and made of blocks. something.
crossing flowers. the world goes on without you but in a non-destructive way. there is waiting, there is no waiting for the perfect timing.
tabletop roleplaying games are an enigma to me. you create a character. you wait between sessions... you see what unfolds... anticipation. storytelling. improvisation.
the quiet sleep has discrete rules, like starseed pilgrim, but with hidden implications. there is text. hmm. it tells a story... you interact with its parts.
kingdom of loathing... you have a limited number of actions, you take them, you take efficient actions (or try). limited resources with a cost.
in etrian odyssey you draw a map, you move turn by turn, measuring your steps. the combat is turn-based as well. there is a map that scrolls, but you control it, if you like. the scrolling is not smooth but tile-by-tile.
fire emblem and disgaea are both tactics-battle games. they are not like Into The Breach, where every turn is wildly different. the enemies move and do their thing. you know where they might end up -- and better yet it's usually pretty obvious where they will end up. there is chaos, but the chaos is tempered by almost boring spatial certainty.
secrets of asherah. an mmorpg, but divided into discrete scenes. i've always held a soft spot for it.
well of souls. well of souls, what a weird game. same as prev.

where there is a tiger in the garden,
i see a single creature among the flowers prowling
all alive but all calm
the petals in the wind moving more than the cat.

lost the thread! it's over :)

t's over! no more ambient.

resettled on godot for now.

------------------------------
I started writing this because I had come from playing Animal Well and felt particularly discouraged from making a platformer because I began not liking the game. But whenever this happens I should figure out... you know, it's not like I disliked it right away. I fell out of love with Animal Well at some point, and the controls were not to blame... hmm.

I still learned some things.

A 'good path' to be understood through the lens of Alexander's 'good shape' property; at first this was NON-FREE MOVEMENT THROUGH A SPACE, but it is not about freedom or a lack of freedom at all. Your movement through a space is a line of flow through a work, it is part of the composition. If you beeline through a garden then, no matter how beautiful or lush the garden, there is nothing interesting about that element of the composition.

what is the process of creating life?

Structures within structures. There are good and bad structures. If interacting with a thing feels bad, go up a level, look at it from above, ask, what is it doing there?

The fifteen properties give us some hints. Levels of scale, strong centers, boundaries, alternating repetition... so many of these are good hints. There is no one supreme structure. I went into this looking for a supreme structure. One does not exist.

QuoteI got a bit emotional over the final poem. I'm almost certainly reading some of my own recent experiences into it. (But that's a good way to be.)

Quotethis is so eerie
feeling strong emotions but cant name them
staring at characters longer than necessary since they might say more..

https://droqen.itch.io/a-polaroid-of-space

A Polaroid of Space is, like Starseed Pilgrim, a videogame with a videogame input scheme that does not really 'matter,' but it is there. You use that interaction scheme and its gameplay in order to interact with something else, the real thing, whatever that is.

Layers of interface.

My goal is recursive: a way of being in the world that allows creative collaboration between a player and some other object. The nature of the object is undefined: it may be a videogame, it may be another person, it may be a group of people accessed via some intermediary system, it may be some real world system interfaced via some intermediary system.

My act of game design is to create the context that provokes not a vague 'play' but a specific 'maker-healing creative action'.

Contrasted against "a series of interesting decisions" I would like to provoke "a series of healing decisions" (remember, given the above context) although I am looking as always for the union of two different things rather than the difference between two things that might have otherwise had something considerably important in common.

"the art form of thinking and doing"... But thinking what? Doing what? What are the epiphanies you will have? That is the question that I struggle with.

Goal: