still life games, haiku games

[droqen]

I ought give the system NO REGARD. It was loose supporting structure that I tried to fill rather than... well, rather than what? Make an interaction with your generals without a hard system to back it up? That doesn't sound so bad. I should have simply designed the bridge without the war.

[droqen]

emotion, vision. why still life games, why haiku games? right, because this is war.

[droqen]

"inhabiting someone else's unique artistic vision." i want that. it's rare for me to play a game that draws me in that way these days. how many experiences have i had that creak under the weight of their ssssystems? hm. i will read a bit of game poems again.

something that comes to mind for me, in the meantime, is the question of what is the nature of the container which holds games in it? i have been making websites... websites... these remind me of flash portals, once home to good small games. suppose i am tired of games bearing the brunt of having to support smaller things within them. what would it look like for a larger structure to support the smaller games within it? what is that structure? is it a website?

if there is a format that can buoy a hundred haiku games, let me make that form, whether it is a mainstream videogame, or a website, or a publication, or a patreon, or anything else. this is the battle. i'll start a new thread for this...

[droqen]

my god, is it nfts? surely not

[droqen]

STRUCTURE AND FORMAT.

I have a moment of focus. Let's use it. What structures have I found good? What structures have individual games used, what has caused them to tire me or to not tire me?

[droqen]

See the list of games from A NEW SET OF VERBS:

- Roadwarden
- Slay the Princess
- La-Mulana
- Uurnog Uurnlimited
- Starseed Pilgrim
- Databug (droqever.com)
- GEOMOTH: Boot Sequence (unreleased)
- Crossing Flowers (droqen.itch.io)
- tabletop roleplaying games, esp. Grandline (one-off year-long campaign, unreleased)
- The Quiet Sleep
- Kingdom of Loathing
- Etrian Odyssey (series)
- Fire Emblem (series)
- Disgaea (series)
- Secrets of Asherah (decades old. defunct.)

[droqen]

Structure breakdown.

Roadwarden. Play through the game once. Many plot threads overlap, separated by distance. Some events happen very late in the game, unavoidably. They all occupy the same space in my memory. I played Roadwarden once and quite enjoyed myself across multiple sessions. I could not play it again. I regard this as a negative, to some degree; I cannot say whether I would enjoy it upon replay. (Similar issue with Fallout 3, and Disco Elysium.)

Slay the Princess. I can open this game up and play it again and still enjoy it, even experiencing nothing new. This is an unambiguous positive, I love it. The structure is a highly branching narrative. There is another deeper aspect that comes out after multiple replays; I think it is 'inaccessible' to me in the way late-game Roadwarden is inaccessible to me. Mixed feelings but I have experienced it more than once as a result of enjoying the replaying of the core branching game so very much and wanting to see more branches. Love. Games with similar structure: Save the Date (Paperdino); interestingly, Cobalt Core and other roguelites; however I will make a separate point (below); I do not generally play many games of this sort... ah, Detroit: Become Human. I enjoyed exploring the branches of that game as well but I would not play it again. Slay the Princess is quite unique in this respect. It is well-crafted and inexpensive, portable. Powerful, high emotions. It would wear on me still if I were to review the same branch a few times. Roguelites do not afford me the ability to  . . . I digress. See next point. Oh, The Stanley Parable fits here too! I loved that game.

BREAKOUT TOPIC: Roguelites - say: Spelunky, Cobalt Core, Noita, Into the Breach. Similar in structure to a branching story game-- however, as a player my ability to control which branch I end up on is significantly diminished. There are three factors to this diminishment;

1. The branches are less distinct. Rather than specific story branches, the 'branch' I end up on is in fact a collection of many different variables, such that control over 'which branch' as well as the difference between branches (these are related topics) are more complex and therefore I have, in practice, less agency. (There is an argument to be made that 'more variables' means I may have reduced agency but more 'power' in some sense as a result of being able to affect more things, however, I do not see it that way; this is the same argument made by proponents of AI, who suggest that democratizing creativity involves granting a person more 'power' rather than more specific personal expression. I could speak more on this at some point, I'll call it creative precision versus creative excellence.)

2. Switching branches requires replay to overcome randomness. Randomness is a defining feature of roguelites and roguelikes. Although I may always be able to choose certain branches or variables according to good play (see 3) or even from a menu (e.g. selecting a starting character, which I do so love), some branches/variables will always be subject to random results. In practice, randomness amounts to coming back for another pull at the slot machine, assuming that I have some particular desired result.

3. Switching branches requires me to perform a task well. I don't think I mind this. Actually, upon further inspection, this is no different a category than one finds in Slay the Princess or other branching narratives, it is only that in a branching narrative game the 'task' is usually 'knowing what leads to what' (a puzzle of sorts), while in a roguelite the 'task' generally involves more systemic gameplay; perhaps mastery over platformer combat, or manipulation of items, or understanding of problem-solving techniques.

[droqen]

Uurnog Uurnlimited. A straightforward metroidvania structure. What's my relationship to it? I suppose I have some enjoyment of 'sequence breaking' and UU is particularly 'breakable,' but I am not too interested as an individual in learning about a 'second language' in order to transform a metroidvania into an open world. I struggle with this too in Hollow Knight, for instance; it may be the case that I can reach "Area Z" in 10 minutes from "Area A" rather than running through the entire alphabet, but practically speaking this is secret knowledge not made available to me or even asked of me except opposite my own impatience. I would like a game to work with me, and this is not working with me.

Oh, how could I skip La-Mulana?

[droqen]

La-Mulana. A large world to explore. Also kind of a metroidvania... except it has something unique, a lot of the game-time is spent wandering around gathering information, rather than in-game items. Sequence breaks are not hidden non-core knowledge; the nature of the game is to find knowledge that allows one to progress past a 'knowledge obstacle'. In this sense La-Mulana is unlike a metroidvania. (Others have coined the term 'metroidbrainia'... I don't like it. I understand where it's coming from but I don't like it.) Similar games: None come to mind immediately.

Starseed Pilgrim. Cannot report on this well, but it may be similar to the above described La-Mulana structure. It was inspired by it. The player must undertake actions to access new branches, but perhaps ninety percent of the player's time is spent figuring out what those actions are and why, and only ten percent is spent performing said actions. Again, contrast with metroidvanias, where I would say the ratio is generally at best fifty-fifty. In an even more modern metroidvania, the ratio leans even further away from figuring things out.

* On FIGURING THINGS OUT. The thing that I like about a game where you must "figure things out," i.e. you spend a fair amount of time bumbling around being lost before settling on the thing you were actually supposed to do all along, is the ratio! A game that takes, say, nine hours the first time around, nearly inevitably, mathematically, takes much less time when played again. If the ratio of "figuring out what I'm supposed to do" to "doing it" is 9:1, then on an immediate second playthrough I can accomplish everything I have already accomplished in one-tenth the time. So long as my memory holds, which is another interesting topic that i will restrain myself from getting into -- 'how easy is the knowledge retained?' Not all knowledge is made equally memorable. (Consider rhyming poems. Mnemonics woven in to the knowledge.)

[droqen]

Databug. An arcade game, roguelite-lite. If I wish to re-experience a particular configuration of the game elements, I must spin the roulette wheel. It is fun and rewarding to do so, but... it is the same old structure which wastes my time or has the aesthetic of doing so. Similar games: Probability 0.

[droqen]

GEOMOTH: Boot Sequence. Unfinished.

Crossing Flowers. Unfinished, but worth commenting on... I think the ratio of 'knowledge' to 'execution,' in terms of time, is not high enough for me. Knowledge does not enable me to hop and skip through CF, there is a considerable amount of waiting. I still like CF as a game. Perhaps I need only tune the numbers differently; let me move on at $10 instead of 100. This notion of ratio is very powerful.

[droqen]

tabletop roleplaying games. Tabletop roleplaying games do not neatly fit into this paradigm of 'how to structure content' as, strictly speaking, ttrpgs are less about the content than they are about actively actually creating something with others. Additionally you only go through a ttrpg scenario once, without the option to replay, which is also incompatible with the nature of what videogames are.

The Quiet Sleep. There is a menu with unique scenarios. The scenarios themselves seem to have mildly different paths, but mostly I would say I had the feeling of learning 'the right way to do things'. Not quite the same, I'd like to bring up Rooftop Cop.

Rooftop Cop. I love love love love love this game, let me say that first. OK, so there are multiple playable scenarios, and you can pick them from a menu. There are five different scenarios. (Ha ha, scenarios. I will call them 'games' from now on. Five games.) Rooftop Cop's five games have only thematic links to one another... there is no real notion of ending. Why is it different from something like Slay the Princess, considering that when StP ends it 'only' has a thematic/narrative link to what has happened? It's a puzzle to me, perhaps part of why I love it so much.

Kingdom of Loathing. When I played it actively, it was very much a 'branching' thing, albeit a slow one. There was a goal, and achieving it and starting over was very fun, because I wanted to experience a new branch to the end. (Different character classes abound!) Actually, I may have lost touch with the game for other reasons (maybe?), but I distinctly remember when that loop (from start of life to end) got longer, I became less interested in the game.

Etrian Odyssey. Ostensibly a big long adventure quest type of game, I do always enjoy the start of an EO game more than going all the way to the end... I like the loop of developing a new type of character a lot. Partway through every EO game (that I'm aware of), you unlock a new character class and I felt a strong impulse to create a new character, despite them being very low-levelled; in a sense this allowed me to re-experience the beginning of the game... Hmm... character selection... I'm starting to notice some real patterns in game structure! Wowow! This is actually working? Crazy.

[droqen]

Fire Emblem.
Disgaea.
I have a very similar relationship to these games as to EO. I like starting them. I like messing around with new builds, even if it means I'm temporarily 'worse'; I've always thought of this as an "in spite of" type thing, but I am beginning to think that re-experiencing the climb from clueless to competent is a very integral part of the joy of "starting over different."

Secrets of Asherah. I never got to the point of starting over... not that I can remember anyway. I was never at the peak of the community, not even close. Other players were significantly more powerful and experienced than I was. I enjoyed learning.

[droqen]

STRUCTURE AND FORMAT CONCLUSIONS.

I like replaying games, especially parts of games that with knowledge I can shorten. A significant part of the time commitment should be learning to play; the act of actually playing should be sweet and enjoyable, not prolonged, but just the right length.

Returning to Rooftop Cop. Perhaps what I like about RC, structurally, is that I do not even have to play the games anymore. When opening each of its five chapters I would ask myself "What is going on here?" and then I came to a conclusion about what was going on there. Now, when I open up a game of Rooftop Cop, I think . . . ah, this is what is going on here, of course. And I can play it a little to feel what I already know, or I can close it right away, or not even open it again in the first place. I like this feeling too, but it's nicer to have something that I can repeat. A mantra, a habit. Something short, much shorter than the first time. I want to play the game again and get to the end and feel a completedness within myself.

Branching. Why branching? I think . . . it's an overlap of [enjoyable to play] and [has a lot of content]. It is what I wanted to figure out . . . How can I take a simple sweet singular game and add content without succumbing to other structural problems?

Player makes choices and entire different games result.

[droqen]

Now, I need to figure out... mnemonics... this is the role of narrative. It is what makes the choices and their consequences rhyme.