In a little town called Amsterdam, in the heart of Holland, just outside of the busybody-ism of its downtown by Amsterdam Centraal Train Station is a building with many floors. On the top of those floors there are many rooms. But of these rooms, there was one in particular designed for people to find solutions to get themselves out of the room. You’ve found the Room of Riddles.
Continue reading “The Room of Riddles (Escape the Room and being present in a game)”
Oculus game again. You and your Oculus are in a small room, 10 x 10, or the standard living space in downtown San Francisco for your month’s paycheck. But the room is set up with hundreds of tiny jets, like the ones from Jacuzzis and jets are laced throughout all planes of the room. The floor, the walls, the room. Maybe there are obstacles around the room, with air jets on them as well. But here’s the fun part, it’s a chase game, e.g. SlenderMan or If Only.
I talked about different controller types lending itself to the birth of different gameplay mechanics here, well the new interactive medium will be the room itself. Suspense/thriller games get you to jump by two main means, jump scares and creep-factor. But now you have a new set of mediums in the room to mess with your adrenal-glands.
Continue reading “Game Idea: Suspense with Oculus + A Rentable Room”
Game Idea: Star Wars via Oculus Rift and Wii mote
The Game: Star Wars Jedis mutha-fucka. Do I have to keep typin’
The Mechanic:
The combo mechanic I had is kinda simple, but can add a bit of depth to the game. The idea is we’re going no HUD for the game, much like how Metal Gear Solid 5 is changing their approach to keep the focus on the visuals around you rather than the patrol map and vision cones from its previous games.
Remember when the Powerglove was supposed to be revolutionary? A kids imagination running wild with fantasies about moving Link or Mario around with just a flick of the wrist , an attack with a finger twitch, and a jump with a twist it. But this was still not as intuitive partly because the Powerglove was an elephant’s turd, but also because the games weren’t built for controls other than the native controller. This is also why the gimmicks of the Wii and all of its peripherals seemed like gimmicks, because they felt like after-thoughts to the game instead of being involved in the initial inspiration of the game.
Arcade games had a better potential with these kinds of non-directional pad controllers because they had a game in mind where non-d-pad interaction was part of the core design. Light-gun games where you shoot the screen, punching games where you hit a physical pad, dancing games where you mash buttons on the floor. Having the space for peripherals outside of the d-pad helped inspire completely different genres of games or, at the very least, re-interpret the genre in a different way to help spawn different types of games.
Continue reading “New Controllers Brings New Interactions in Games”
GameIntrospection 