Category: Lenses

Lens #2: The Lens of Essential Experience

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Today I look through the second lens, the lens of essential experience at our game "All Fucked Up". Due to the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses written by Jesse Schell, we have to answer three questions

  • What experience do I want the player to have?
  • What is essential to that experience?
  • How can I capture this essence in our game?

I have some difficulties to see the real difference to Lens #1: The Lens of Emotion to be honest. Our game is all about guns and ammo. The emotion was feeling powerful with those weapons. The essential experience is all about guns and collecting ammo. Ammo is not limitless, you collect that and you have to take care that you do not waste ammo. This is a bit contradictory as firing a gun and feel powerful is all about lens #1.

  • Collecting ammo
  • Don’t waste ammo as it is not limitless
  • Add the possibility to switch between two weapons (handgun and rifle for example)

The smart handling of a handgun and a rifle could be interesting, but then I need the advantage of the handgun over the rifle, currently, there is none. One idea I have is when I’m too close to the opponent the rifle will not fire and you only can fire a handgun. The handgun on the other side should have only little effect on distance. That way I could improve the essential experience I think.

I get commissions for purchases made through the following links, I only put stuff in this section I also would buy or I already bought

Lens #1: The Lens of Emotion

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The first article of my game design diary, probably not daily. If you have recommendations or ideas you want to share let me know in the comments section below.

I look through the first lens of the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses written by Jesse Schell on our game, the emotion lens. There are three questions

  • What emotion shall my player experience?
  • What emotion do they have now?
  • How can I bridge the gap between these emotions?

The player should experience a powerful feeling using the guns, it’s a gun porn game and everything should be around these guns and ammo. The better the experience of these guns the better.
Cute characters should provide a playful experience.
As well it should have a badass experience with those badass comments.

When I play the game using the guns is already very nice, the kickback (camera and player), shell ejection, and also the sound is nicely put together and it feels really good to fire the weapons. As well the enemies are easy to kill which makes the feel of powerful guns even stronger. I have to be care full not to rush to the more powerful guns as this is the trophy of finishing levels. I probably need a lot of guns
I need to add more cuteness to it, the heart emoji is just one that needs to be improved. I like the minion’s way of speaking, so I want to add more of that to improve that "it is cute" emotion.

To improve it I have the following points on my list

  • Add more bass
  • Improve the flashlight
  • Add more weapons
  • Design the levels that I can use the weapons a lot
  • Add badass comments
  • Add more cute sound and animations if we accomplished something.

I get commissions for purchases made through the following links, I only put stuff in this section I also would buy or I already bought