How is Minimalist Design Applied in Digital Games, and Why Do Developers Choose to Use It?
March 2023
The games industry is frequently at the forefront of new technological advancements. Year on year, developers utilise emerging technologies to create titles that feature deeper systems, higher graphical fidelity, and ever-increasing amounts of content (Amenabar 2022). Barriers to production are no longer determined by technological capabilities, rather by more tangible restrictions pertaining to time, budget, and labour.
It is these inherent constraints that often lead indie teams to carve niches outside of the maximalist approach taken by most AAA studios (Lowry 2017). By setting self-imposed constraints to development and adopting a more minimal approach to design, these developers can avoid becoming overwhelmed with possibility and create unique, focused experiences. Although uncommon, larger studios have been known to employ minimalism in select areas of a game’s design to create more accessible experiences that have greater market potential.
Heuristic Analysis: How do principles of level design help players to effectively navigate a 3D space? [essay]
December 2021
When crafting levels, it is important that designers keep the player’s subjective experience in mind. This essay will explore how principles of level design are used in Cycle, with a focus on how they help to effectively guide players toward their goals. Cycle is a first-person exploration and adventure game centred around the traversal of hand-crafted 3D spaces and light puzzle solving, with a minimal HUD. Because of this, effective use of level design becomes crucial to the player experience, particularly when they are moving towards an objective. Heuristic analysis will be used to evaluate how effectively the game is able to achieve this. To inform this playtesting, research will be conducted into the fields of visual attention, lighting psychology, and theories of architecture. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) and Gone Home (2013) will also be used as case studies, being examined to assess how they utilize and arrange their spaces in order to lead players.
Analysis : Exploring the Emotional Landscape of The Last of Us [essay]
December 2020
The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) is a narrative-centred game that treads a vast emotional landscape, rich in deep and complex themes to unpack. Of all of these, it could be argued that the central driving theme is that of companionship. Via investigation of narrative, representation and gameplay techniques, this analysis will discuss how The Last of Us game is able to convey this theme through its core relationships with stark, emotive power...