Lens #4: The Lens of Surprise

The next lens I want to look through on our game "All Fucked Up" is the lens of surprise from the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses written by Jesse Schell. I try to answer the following three questions:

  • What will surprise the players playing "All Fucked Up"?
  • Does the story have surprises? The mechanics? The artwork?
  • Does the mechanics give the player ways to surprise themselves?

Quite though to answer this for your own game. I give it a try and might be completely wrong. But at least it is documented. We placed cute funny animations that get played if you achieve a goal like kill two soldiers in a row which makes the character laugh. The artwork is not breathtaking to be honest, but what might be surprising is that every gun feels different. The gun itself is not visualized instead we focus on shell ejection, kickback on the characters (gun impacts the player, bullets provide kickback on the objects they hit).

I plan to have time limited levels as well, where everything explodes if you don’t make it in time. The time goes backward in those levels.

Improvements I can think of

  • Use the gun kickback to achieve something
  • Add a shootable grappling hook to climb up unreachable spots
  • Add defuse abilities
  • Compose weapons out of parts
  • Destroy locks or start a chain reaction on explosives

I think this is an important part and I will have to think more about it and collect more ideas.

Thanks for reading. I would appreciate your oppinion below in the comment section.


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 #3: The Lens of the Venue

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

I look through the third lens, the lens of the venue from the book [The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses](https://amzn.to/2EWvFk3) written by [Jesse Schell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Schell) at our game “All Fucked Up” and try to answer the following questions

* What kind of venue suits our game the best
* What kind of special properties does the venue have to support our game
* How do the elements of our game harmonize with the chosen venue

This is quite tricky for me and I hardly can get my head around it. My game is a single-player game so far as co-op isn’t something I was thinking about when I started the game. It might be fun to watch somebody playing this game similar to [Mario Bros Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario) which are both fun to play and fun to watch. The funny cute elements shall make it joyful to watch not only to play it.

This game might be playable as a console, PC, or mobile game. The levels are short and quickly played. The story is implicit.

Let me know in the comments what you think about this lens and if I interpreted it properly?

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*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

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