APD Week 11 - Play & Stillness

Theme: Play & Stillness

Context:

Before I start this project, I have thought about what role that “stillness” plays in game. Recently I have played few games which have similar ideas related to “stillness”. I will talk these in reflection part. Finally I made this simple game as experimental of my idea. In this week, I will reverse the Response part and Reflection part. Since I have considered a lot then made the game. The reflection is one of the reason why I made this game.

Reflection:

Stillness in game have many usages. One of those usages is providing player chance to think and plan. In this way, Stillness is only important if there’s something to contrast against.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is very popular recently. The battle system is very great example of Stillness. FF7 original is a turn-based game although the ATB system makes it a little bit different with traditional turn-based game like Pokemon. As its remake version, although FF7 Re looks like a real-time action game, it keeps the core of turn-based game because the ATB system. It is very creative that combine 2 opposite types of game.

Real-time action means no Stillness, everything happening instant, player have to decide their action/movement instant.

Turn-based means Stillness, time is still before player make an order. Player can use this time to think, plan and evaluate situation.

FF7 Re mixed these 2 game types. Player can do basic attack, guard and avoid action in Real-time. Those action will increase ATB and player can use ATB to cast spells or skills. What the important is when you select skills/spells, time will slow down to nearly still. This “Still” time gives player time to think and plan. The real-time part is very tense, so it gives very strong feeling of relax when player selecting skills since the time is still.

This feeling provides by stillness but won’t happened if we play turn-based game since there’s no contrast.  

Response:

It is easy to create this game, but the level design costed few times. It is very important to test the level include adjust the position of guards, their action mode, the size of their view and the path they monitor. All these works are used to make “Stillness” necessary and important.

In this game I have explore my thinking that mentioned in reflection. It is nervous when character is moving and player will feel relax when the character hidden in box and while player hiding in box, they will get chance to watch guard’s action and plan their path.