Game Analysis: MapleStory

Posted on January 25, 2021 by HOE CHAN WEI DANIEL

Introduction

MapleStory is a free-to-play, 2D side-scrolling MMORPG that was developed by Wizet and released in 2003. In the game, players travel around the Maple World to hunt monsters for experience, gaining levels and improving their skills and abilities in the process. They also obtain need weapons and armour from a variety of sources such as quests, monsters and boss monsters in order to become stronger. Inside the game, they are also able to use cash, which is obtained using real life currency, to buy cosmetics and also items that will improve their gameplay.

Gameplay Demo

Official MapleStory (Southeast Asia) website: http://www.maplesea.com/

The Elemental Tetrad (Lens #9)

Mechanics

Movement — 2D side-scroller where characters have skills that aid in their movement as well
Class system — multiple characters with different classes (warrior, bowman, magician, thief, pirate)
Monsters — Players kill monsters to get experience and level up
Leveling system — each level provides the character with new skills and abilities to improve on
Gears — killing monsters and completing quests give the players new equipment to become stronger
Quests — In-game quests help introduce players into the world and give them rewards at the end
Cash Shop — real-life currency is used here to obtain cosmetics worn over in-game equipment, or various enhancements to improve gear
Trading — Players are able to trade with one another using the in-game currency (“mesos”)

Story

Main story — the main antagonist, the “Black Mage”, was sealed away years ago by six heroes, and the Empress Cygnus enlists the help of the heroes of the Maple World to join her Cygnus Knights in preventing his return
MapleStory is generally quite open world, with many areas having different themes and storylines tied to that area

Aesthetics

Characters are 2D sprites that can wear a variety of cosmetics
Monsters are cute 2D sprites as well that are drawn suited to the area that they are in
Background music for every map helps to immerse players in the environment
Skills are flashy and appealing to players when used on monsters, dealing massive amounts of damage

Technology

Primarily made for Windows PC
Broadband Internet connection needed
Coded in C++, with assets stored in their own “.wz” files

The Lens of Curiosity (Lens #6)

MapleStory provides players with a huge world filled with many differently themed for players to explore.

Each area consists of quests and monsters that are suited for different levels
This encourages players to go and explore these areas once they hit the minimum level requirements
Fosters the idea of a Maple “World” where players are able to go to incredibly different places and discover new things
Helps to keep players engaged, gives them the motivation to improve their character to access these new areas
Questlines and stories in these areas also immerses players in the world

I feel that the content provided by the game in terms of the game world is great, as it provides an area for players to explore and find out new things. It helps keep players engaged and also provides them motivation to unlock these areas to explore.

The Lens of Pleasure (Lens #20)

MapleStory involves players working together and training together to become stronger.

Working together with friends fosters a sense of community and makes the game fun for players
Becoming stronger together and taking down stronger monsters compared to before gives a sense of accomplishment and achievement
Dealing high damage to monsters and seeing high numbers of damage gives players pleasure as well

The way MapleStory has been designed in terms of providing pleasure is good, as players have a clear goal of improving themselves and getting stronger. However, some criticisms include the fact that in order to truly reach endgame content, there is a need to use real-life currency to buy items from the Cash Shop in order for players to improve their characters further (pay-to-win aspect).

The Lens of Motivation (Lens #23)

MapleStory involves improving your character’s gear and has a level progression system that encourages players to gain experience and get stronger.

Better equipment and higher levels is something that can be shown off to other players
Being stronger also allows your to have more damage on monsters, enabling you to fight stronger monsters
This sense of progression and “becoming stronger” encourages players to keep playing
However, at higher levels content starts to slow down and progression becomes slower, game becomes “grindy”

MapleStory has provided a clear and simple way for players to progress, which is the cycle of levelling up to wear better equipment to train faster to level up to get better equipment. This however can get stale after awhile, and as players reach higher levels the main issue is that levelling becomes a “grind” as it takes a very long period of time to progress to the next level.

The Lens of Freedom (Lens #79)

Players in the Maple World generally have the freedom to do what they like: they don’t necessarily have to train and improve themselves all the time.

Some players like to sit around and chat with other players
Other players may want to do merchanting in the “Free Market”
Players can go around the Maple World to complete quests
Players can gather to take down boss monsters

MapleStory has done well in this aspect as they have provided a world where players are free to do what they want. They do not necessarily have to keep training, and are able to take breaks to do as they please whenever they want. The openness of the game in this aspect has been a tremendous boon to the game’s success as players feel like they are in control of their story and their character.

In a nutshell, MapleStory is a game filled with many possibilities, where players have the freedom to create their own story. The Maple World is vast and filled with much content for players to explore together with friends, and there are

Game Design Analysis – Monster Hunter: World

Posted on January 24, 2021 by Ong Choon Han

Introduction

Figure 1. Hunter fighting a monster in game

Monster Hunter World is a Japanese Role-Playing Action Game by Capcom. The main mechanics involves hunting various types of monsters in the game using a decent variety of weapons. The player will progress through the story and complete hunts of increasing difficulty as they build their character up by making new equipment with materials obtained from hunts.

Game Website: https://www.monsterhunterworld.com/

A cool speed run on one of the monsters in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjRvh7NxX6Q

Feelings/Experiences

I will now talk about some of the feelings/experiences in the game through various lenses.

Lens 9 – Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics

Hunts
- During a hunt, there is always an objective and sometimes a timer. Failing the objective or having the timer run out will lead to an unsuccessful hunt. Succeeding or failing the hunt brings the feeling of joy or frustrations respectively to me.
Combat
- The player can pick between various weapons. Every one of the weapons allow the player to perform a set of smooth and flashy moves. This allows me to feel powerful.
- There are also moves that require the player to have precise timing to execute to either dodge attacks or counter them. I feel a sense of achievement when mastering some of these mechanics.
Loot system
- The player must acquire loots from monsters in a hunt to upgrade their equipment. The loots are often random. When I get a rare loot that I need from a hunt, I feel a lot of excitement and joy.
Event monsters
- Some of the monsters or monster variants only appear in events. This is where players can take on some of the most powerful monsters in the game. It can be frustrating for me when I must keep retrying the tough monsters.

Story

The game’s story does not add much to my experience in my opinion. This is because the story only takes up a small portion of my playtime. Most of the playtime will be the farming in between the story quests and in the post story mode where the player fights monsters of various difficulty to upgrade their gear to the fullest and take on various tougher monsters that comes out during events.

Aesthetics

The aesthetics is amazing on consoles. It is even more so on the PC with the high-resolution texture packs. The area aesthetics often follows the theme of the monsters that the player will be fighting the first time. This level of detail makes all the player actions look and feel cooler and allows for nice screenshots.

Technology

With the advancement of technologies, we now have very fast processors. This allows for the combat mechanics to include precisely timed actions and responsive inputs. If the processor is slow, the combat can feel sluggish, making the player feel slow and weak. In addition, with the current graphic processors, the current high-resolution aesthetics can be achieved.

Lens 8 – Problem Solving

While the game looks like a simple hack and slash game, I experienced some form of problem solving like building a suitable set of equipment and figuring out a fighting strategy for a hunt. Being able to conquer a hunt with my build gives me a sense of achievement.

Lens 32 – Goals

Initially in the game, the obvious goal would be to complete the story. in between that, I will see that each hunt or equipment upgrade will be a smaller goal to achieve before the end of the story. After the story missions are completed, the player is free to set their own goals as the game will simply provide more hunts for the player to play and continue upgrading. For me, I started setting small goals on farming various equipment pieces with the bigger goals of clearing the tougher hunts. This kept the game fresh for me as I always feel a sense of achievement and pride whenever I manage to clear the goals and I always have something to look forward to.

Lens 34 – Skill

When fighting the toughest monster in the game, equipment is not the only thing that is needed. It requires some degree of mastery of the combat mechanics. With the progressive mastery of combat, I can feel the excitement of being able to defeat the tough monsters and can challenge myself to kill it faster.

Lens 38 – Challenge

The game provides challenges appropriate for any level. This allowed me to feel more encouraged to clear the challenge as I did not ever feel stuck or hopeless. At the start, the player can clear challenges by being very mechanically skilled or being hardworking and farming for better equipment to clear the challenging hunt. Only when going into the toughest of monsters where the player will have to start relying more on their skills.

Game design analysis: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Posted on January 24, 2021 by e0309266

Trailer for Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Switch

Description

Animal Crossing: New Horizons(ACNH) is a life simulation game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch in March 2020. This is the fifth main Animal Crossing game and also the best-selling one in the series. Not only that, ACNH also won many awards, including Game of the Year at the Japan Game Awards as well as Best Family Game at The Game Awards 2020.

The gameplay is very simple. You control a human on a deserted island, design and develop it into a thriving community of anthropomorphic animals. ACNH supports both local and online gameplay, which allows a player to visit and interact with other players very conveniently.

Analysis

Lens 7: Elemental Tetra

Aesthetics

One of the main reasons for the popularity of this game is it’s breathtaking aesthetics. The main goal of a life simulation game is to provide a relaxing gateway, an alternate reality where life is simple and perfect. ACNH gives players the perfect user experience, immersing us in a captivating world where you grow to be a part of. The vibrant colors and limitless choices makes this beautiful world exclusively yours. You can hear the wind blowing and the trees swaying, the waves crashing onto the beach as you pick up sea shells. Every detail of the game tingles your senses and transports you in this utopia.

Mechanics

The mechanics of the game are very simple. Equip an axe to chop trees down, carry a net to catch insects. The gameplay was meant to be as basic as possible to make the game relaxing.

Story

The beauty of ACNH is in how endless the opportunities. The story line is simple as well, decorate and develop your island from scratch, make new friends and enjoy the simplicity of this alternate reality.

Technology

The graphics are a much needed improvement from the previous edition back in 2013. This helped to increase the sensory experience of the game. In addition, this is the first time there is a multiplayer option, where you can mingle with friends and explore each other’s islands.

Lens 2: Lens of Essential Experience

The essential element of ACNH is transporting the player into a different reality, one free from worries and stress of the real world. The point is to create a relaxing gateway for the player to enjoy mindless fun, without a goal unlike in most traditional games. This gives the player to do anything he wants whenever he wants, giving him the freedom of choice to create his perfect world for his character to live in.

Lens 51: Lens of Imagination

The possibilities are endless in ACNH. Having a big imagination and the willingness to try new things will turn your deserted island into a lively paradise. By taking in inspirations from your daily lives, you can create the perfect world for you and your character to live in. Change the colors of your room to match your favorite palettes or grow a garden of your favorite flowers outside your house. Your world can only be as creative as you can be.

Lens 55: Lens of Visible Progress

The feeling of satisfaction of building up an empty, weed-filled deserted island into a perfect, vibrant paradise filled with bustling activities and adorable neighbors in ACNH is amazing. Knowing that the daily grind of collecting materials and intricate planning eventually led to your dream house and an island worthy of praise from your friends feels good. However, there is not much to do after that. ACNH tries to come up with fresh novel updates every now and then but I feel that it is inadequate to keep my attention.

Lens 75: Lens of Simplicity and Transcendence

The rules and gameplay of ACNH is as simple as it gets. This is to put the focus of the game on creating the perfect world without any stress. Add in the right amount of control for the player and the world can be anything he wants. This makes the experience much more joyful as more time is spent thinking what can be done instead of how to do it.

Game Design Analysis: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

Posted on January 24, 2021 by gordonfgz

Gameplay Reveal @ E3 2014

Description:
Rainbow Six Siege is an online tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Gamers who want to play the game can purchase it on various gaming platforms like EpicGames, Steam or UPlay. The game is available for purchase at various tiers, and the difference between various tiers are determined by the operators that are unlocked immediately upon purchase. The game is available on PC and Console, and cross platform is not available; separating the console and PC players.

Find out more at: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/rainbow-six/siege

Analysis through Lens #7: Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics:

Match Procedure:
Team-based 5v5, where each team takes turns to play both Attack and Defence on the same map.

Goals:
First to reach the required amount of rounds won wins the Match.

Game Modes:
Multiple game modes to choose from, eg. Hostage, Diffuse the bomb, etc.

Environment:
Unlike mainstream competitive FPS games like CS:GO, Rainbow Six Siege enables a more dimensional approach to outplay through its environment.

5 Tips to Rank Up in Rainbow Six Siege - Articles - Dignitas — Figure above shows the breakable walls in the game.

By giving players the ability to change the environment, players will have to be quick on their feet and adapt to these changes that can happen anytime during a match.

Physics/Player Actions:
Players are able to choose from a wide plethora of Operators dependent on which side they are currently playing on (Attack or Defence). Operators are divided into these 2 types as they come with abilities specialised in these 2 mentioned areas.

Overall, I feel that Rainbow Six is one of the most mechanically challenging games I have ever played. The developers definitely were successful in making it not just a first person shooter, but a tactical shooter game.

Aesthetics:
Since the game’s concept revolves around the idea of an attacking team infiltrating an area to secure their objective and a defending team trying to prevent the attackers from reaching their objective, all of the playable maps are of buildings of some sort.

Rainbow Six Siege Villa map: how to defend and how to attack | Rock Paper Shotgun — Figure above shows a player playing on the defence and choosing his spawn location within the Villa Map.

Technology:
Powered by AnvilNext2.0, the game also utilizes Ubisoft’s RealBlast technology to create destructible environments.
Due to the game heavily revolving around destructible environments, a graphics card is required to run the game at its minimum. This is a very different case compared to other competitive games like CS:GO and League of Legends where they are way less intensive in terms of graphics processing.

Analysis through Lens #21: The lens of flow

– Players can choose between Casual and Competitive modes.
– Casual allows for different game modes while there’s only one game mode for Competitive play
– Competitive games are matched by the player’s individual Match Making Ratings (MMR)
– The quality of play increases throughout the ranking system. Since we have established that Rainbow Six Siege is way more than a point and click shooter, more experienced players are able to outplay their opponents without even aiming their guns at them.

Like every other competitive game, I do agree with the way they made their ranking system. However as this game is on a whole new level of mechanically intensive games, the problem of smurfing is prevalent as 1 insanely experienced player on a team can easily pull of a 1v5 due to having superior map knowledge and awareness.

Video above shows professional players outplaying their opponents by changing the environment.

Analysis through Lens #21: The lens of skill

– Skill in the form of Operator Mastery: Knowing how to use your operator’s abilities allow you to perform optimally in a game
– Skill in the form of Map Knowledge: Knowing which walls are soft (not bullet proof) / hard (requires a hard breaching device to breach) allows for better rotations and surprise kills on opponents.
– As players rise up in ranks, the possibility of getting outplayed by a more experienced player becomes higher. This presents and opportunity for players to learn new tricks from their kill cams after getting outplayed.
– Spending more time in the game also gives players a better knowledge of the various maps, improving their map rotations and quality of strategies.

In this department, I find the game very rewarding for the time and effort I put into the game. The game has done a good job in raising the importance of map and game knowledge to a point where raw aim is not enough in bringing a player to the highest levels of competitive play.

Analysis through Lens #53: The Lens of Balance:

Every competitive game with different Characters that bring about exclusive abilities to the game experiences the problem of balancing.

Balancing Operators
Rainbow Six Siege brings about balance in the form of counter-play mechanics that players can bring by choosing the right Operators for the job.

Video above shows counters for a Shield Defence Operator called Clash.

Balancing Sides
Apart from balancing Operators, Rainbow Six Siege also have to take into account the balancing of side advantage. Ever heard of the term CT-sided and T-sided? These terms come from the classic CS:GO where certain maps are known to be better for either the Counter-Terrorists or the Terrorists.

Rainbow Six Siege deals with this problem by designing different Operators that specialise in different scenarios so that there can never be a fixed way for anyone to play the game.

“The map is too small and its impossible for attackers to breach! This map is so defence-sided!” – Angry newbie that has less than 5 hours of gameplay

Maybe pick an Operator that can breach hard walls like Thermite? Or pick an Operator that can disable enemy traps with their drone? Or you could just look at the video below!

Video above shows Fuze, a character with the cluster charge ability that allows him to drop bombs through walls to damage opponents. Best use when opponents are camping in a tight corner.

All in all, Rainbow Six Siege is one of the best tactical shooters I have ever played. With no option to pay to win, the only way to get good at the game is to spend time and effort into learning its mechanics.

Game Design Analysis: Among Us

Posted on January 24, 2021 by LIU TIANZUO

Among Us 🛩️ The Airship Map 🛩️ Reveal Trailer

Description

Among Us is an online multiplayer social deduction game developed and published by American game studio Innersloth.

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/945360/Among_Us/

Lens #4: The Lens of Surprise:

Imagine that you are a Crewmate, working hard to complete your task…At this time a Impostor come from behind and kill you! A red assassin picture and sound effects can scare you, and the Impostor may be your best friend!

Lens #9: The Elemental Tetrad:

Story

The game takes place in a space-themed setting, in which players each take on one of two roles, most being Crewmates, and a predetermined number being Impostors.

Players suspected to be Impostors may be eliminated via a plurality vote, which any player may initiate by calling an emergency meeting (except during a crisis) or reporting a dead body. Crewmates win if all Impostors are eliminated or all tasks are completed whereas Impostors win if there is an equal number of Impostors and Crewmates, or if a critical sabotage goes unresolved.

Mechanics

Goal of the Crewmates: identify the Impostors, eliminate them, and complete tasks around the map.
Goal of the Impostors: covertly sabotage and kill the Crewmates before they complete all of their tasks.

Rules:

If a player dies, they become a ghost. Ghosts can pass through walls, are invisible to everyone except other ghosts, however, dead Crewmates must still complete their tasks.
If an Impostor dies from being voted off, they can still sabotage to help the other Impostor(s).
All players except ghosts have a limited cone of vision, only allowing them to see other players within a certain unblocked distance around them.

Aesthetics:

Cartoon pixel characters achieve a better picture with minimal hardware overhead.

Technology

It was released on iOS and Android devices in June 2018 and on Windows in November 2018, featuring cross-platform play between these platforms.

Lens #17: The lens of The Toy

The game can even forget the goals. You can also play hide-and-seek with your friends, turn off the lights and enjoy the darkness.
Among Us is easy to get started, the rules and goals are simple, the only thing you need to practise is to make up the story when you are a Impostor.

Lens #21: The lens of Flow

Goals are different between Crewmates and Impostors. Even different Crewmates have different tasks to complete.
Because that the game can win in different ways: identify and eliminate the Impostors, complete tasks around the map, sabotage and kill the Crewmates… If some players forget their tasks, the others can also win!

Lens #44: The lens of Cooperation

The Crewmates need to cooperate to win, if all the Crewmates play separate, the Impostors are easy to kill them and it’s hard for the Crewmates to recognize and expel the Impostors. But watch out! Not all the guys following you are good, the Impostors can gain your trust by not killing you.

Game Design Analysis: League of Legends

Posted on January 24, 2021 by Terence Ho Wei Yang

LoL Season 2021 Trailer

Description

League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Riot Games. It is inspired by a modified version of Warcraft III:Defense of the Ancients (DOTA). The game is free-to-play, and is monetized through purchasable character customisation (skins, icons etc). The game is available on PCs (Windows/Mac), but has recently released a mobile version (LoL:Wild Rift). The following focuses on the PC version.

Link to game’s website: https://lol.garena.com/

Lens #9: The lens of the Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics:

Team-based, 5vs5 MOBA game
Extensive character and item choices (over 140 characters and different in-game items for the characters)
Strategy and mechanically intensive (Character synergies/counters and quick decision making is required)

However, LoL is designed such that casual players or beginners are able to join in the fun as well. Players have item suggestions and tips to assist them in-game. Personally, I feel that this eases casual players into the game. As they play more and get better, they start to explore the deeper mechanics in-game and improve.

Story

LoL started out with a basic lore of the game, with players commanding champions to fight to avert a catastrophic war.

Lore expanded as the game became more successful; Branched out into alternate universes, such as the K-pop styled K/DA universe
Such content was integrated to purchasable content, such as character skins

I feel that the lore makes each character more interesting than just an in-game avatar. It is also an opportunity for the developers to monetise on its success by catering to players who are also fans of similar genres.

Aesthetics

The map of the game is brightly lit which gives it a colourful, bright and visually appealing aesthetic. The character animations are carefully designed, especially certain skin editions that have special interactions in-game.

True Damage Senna: Prestige Edition was a skin for the character Senna in the True Damage edition, and was designed in collaboration with Louis Vuitton, with the character carrying the LV branding.

True Damage Senna: Prestige Edition

Technology

LoL does not have intensive hardware requirements which makes the game easily accessible to a wide audience.

4GB RAM, 16GB memory space
Decent processor and GPU is sufficient for the game to run well

Overall, the 4 elements are integrated well to provide players a different experience each time they play the game. They can use different strategies, champions and playstyles to best their opponents. They can equip the champions with different skins to achieve unique in-game interactions.

Lens #21: The lens of flow

Match making rating (MMR) ranks players and matches them to others with similar skillset
The cycle of “tense and release” is felt when they improve, the game becomes easier (at the same MMR) but challenging at a higher MMR.
Goals of the game are clearly defined: Defeat the enemy’s Nexus.
However, sometimes players are too distracted with their own goals in game: Making good plays and killing many enemies, for example.

It is frustrating to see that while it is a team game, players are too focused on their individual gains and lose out on the big picture sometimes. Often my teammates will not realise that focusing too much on fighting individually (while we can fight as a team) has caused them to lose their lead and fall behind in the game.

Lens #34: The lens of skill

As the game is mechanically intensive, players with better skills are able to perform better for the games
Some skills required are: Champion mastery, communication, decision making skills, being able to consider opponents’ strategies
Over time, players who play more and analyse their games tend to improve their skills.

Personally, I feel that the MMR system makes it fairer for players as they can play with others of different skillsets. It strikes a balance between the game being “too easy” and gives players a challenge to keep the game interesting.

Lens #39: The lens of meaningful choices

The game provides a plethora of choices for the players. They can choose to secure objectives, neutral monsters, to hang back and get more experience (farming) or choose to fight their opponents
Players have to weigh and choose the best choice which can help them secure a lead and snowball to victory

For example, my team prefers to secure buffs that can empower our team and let us push for a lead when we are able to. Else, our dominant strategy is to hang back and secure more gold and experience to better equip our champions so we can fight another time.

Lens #45: The lens of Competition vs Cooperation

As aforementioned, LoL is a team-based game, yet players are sometimes too focused on their individual playstyles and being too competitive to forget the cooperation aspect of the game.
They want to come out ahead of everyone in the game but forgot the rest of the team.
However, I feel that at a higher MMR level, players generally understand the need for cooperation and communication, and are able to embody the appropriate skills required to win games.
Experienced players are better able to balance the need for cooperation and competition which allows users to have fun on both fronts. They can cooperate with their team to win games and at the same time come out ahead of their opponents.

Game Analysis: Genshin Impact

Posted on January 23, 2021 by yeohhq

Genshin Impact Gameplay (Character Demo – Zhongli)

Description:
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action role-playing game developed and published by miHoYo. The game features a fantasy open-world environment and action-based battle system using elemental magic and character-switching, and uses gacha game monetization for players to obtain new characters, weapons, and other resources. The game is online-only and features a limited multiplayer mode allowing up to four players to play together. [Source: Wikipedia]

Link to Official Site: https://genshin.mihoyo.com/en/home

Lens #7: Elemental Tetrad
Mechanics:

**Environment:** Open-world environment with emphasis on elemental reactions like Vaporize (see image) to improve damage, healing, etc. Elemental reactions from enemies affects players as well (e.g. breaking an ice shield using fire, deal more damage to enemies of specific elements)

**Physics/Player Actions:** Players are able to explore the open world by walking, running, swimming, climbing, gliding, plunging (attack), shooting arrows (bow users) etc. Characters have stamina (yellow stamina bar in image) and fall damage, and arrows shot are affected by gravity.

**Rules:** No specific rule to overall gameplay, but Elemental Reactions govern most of the game mechanics. The image shows the Water (Hydro) character trying to break weaken the Fire (Pyro) boss by hitting its weak spot.

Goals:
Players can decide the level of exploration/competitiveness on their own as Genshin Impact is a PvE game with an option of Co-Op to play with other players to clear content. Ultimately, the end-game goal is to level up characters and weapons by using resources gained through experience through exploration and quests, in order to complete the storyline.

Storyline:
As a traveler from another world, you will embark on a journey to reunite with your long-lost sibling and unravel the mysteries of Teyvat, and yourself.

Aesthetics:
Beautiful and visually appealing game graphics with sensational background music and voice actors that are specific to environments, gameplay and encounters with enemies.

Technology:
Genshin Impact is made with Unity, where it allows cross platform gameplay between phones, PC and even PlayStation.

Lens #6: Problem Solving
Overall, the game contains puzzles scattered across the whole map (see image below) that allows players to claim rewards once they are solved. However, I believe the bulk of the problem solving comes from using elemental reactions to defeat enemies in the most effortless way given the constraints of the elements/abilities of characters a player owns, especially when challenges are timed.

Using an Electro character to unlock an Electro pillar.

Lens #5: Endogenous Value/Rewards
Genshin Impact offers various attractive rewards for players who play diligently:

(1) (Above) Daily quest rewards *(experience points, in-game currency to gacha for characters)*

(2) (Above) Spend their resins *(energy) (capped at 160 resins, which fully refills in 21h 20min)* to claim rewards from domains to gain resources to become stronger

(3) (Above) Limited-time events and character banners.

However, even for casual players who are not power-hungry or min-maxers, exploring the open world for chests or puzzles can also earn them rewards (albeit at the risk of dying more easily to open world enemies if they are under-leveled or under-geared).

Lens #8: Holographic Design
I believe that for this lens, there is a need to satisfy both “spirits” for the success of the game:
(1) Developer spirit: Gacha system for characters and weapons to earn revenue
(2) Player’s spirit: Gain characters they like/are ideal for their team setup to deal more damage/clear content.

How Genshin Impact achieves this need for players to gacha:

1. Extensive storyline where characters are linked to each other and new version updates progresses the storyline to introduce new characters
→ Consistent hype for new characters with backstories and attractive appearance to attract fans.

2. Elemental reactions mechanisms boosts damage and resonance and different weapons have different gameplay (e.g. Claymores can break structures and ores faster)
→ Need for characters of specific elements, even if player does not like the character design.
→ Need for characters that use specific weapons for different purposes.

3. Highly deciding factor: Low Barrier of Entry – Available to play on multiple platforms
→ Larger player base, easy for players to play anytime, anywhere, increases social gaming where friends can play on different devices.

Overall Opinion

Lens #7: Elemental Tetrad
I feel that the developers of this game has incorporated the elemental reactions very well in every aspect of the game to make players consistently think of ways to use different characters, equipments and skills to clear content more easily. One other very impressive mechanism to me is the ability to climb almost any surface in the game which makes it enjoyable to explore the world.
Lens #6: Problem Solving
This is the part of the game that is more regrettable for me as most puzzles are easy to clear, and the types of enemies are limited, which also means that the way to deal with them does not change much, so players who have played enough may start to get bored of the grind, even if new characters and events are released. This makes me wonder if there is a way to vary gameplay without creating a large variety of enemies/content to clear – possibly through environmental factors?
Lens #5: Endogenous Value
→ The developers’ mastery over the distribution of rewards is clear from how 160 primogems (in-game credit) are needed for a single gacha pull, yet the daily rewards adds up to 60 primogems, and a monthly subscription card gives 90 primogems – total of 150, just 10 short of a single gacha pull. This increases player retention rates by forcing them to come back the next day.
→ Even for randomized rewards from domains (dungeons), the algorithm that drops good artifact is so bad that it forces players to keep grinding or even using real money to buy energy to claim rewards. However, this seems to have backfired towards some players who have lost their patience to bad RNG luck.
→ This highlights to me the importance of managing the rewards system.

Game Analysis: Dirty Bomb

Posted on January 23, 2021 by Justin_Ong

Official Dirty Bomb trailer

Dirty Bomb is a first-person team-based shooter with a strong emphasis on objectives and teamwork. Each match can have between 10 to 16 players, with smaller team sizes preferred for competitive play and larger ones for casual play. One team is the defenders, and one is the attackers. The attackers try to complete objectives on the map, and the defenders try to stop them.

The game is unfortunately no longer being actively developed, and has only a small player base of a few hundred veterans and some newbies, but it is still playable.

Official website: https://www.dirtybomb.com/
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/333930/Dirty_Bomb/

Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics

First person team-based shooter.
Objective-based gameplay.
Character classes and abilities.
Advanced movement mechanics such as long jumping, double jumping and wall jumping.

Story

London is attacked with dirty bombs, and the Central Disaster Authority is created to deal with the fallout. A criminal group called Jackal starts disrupting their efforts and stealing valuable technology, leading to both sides hiring mercenaries to serve their interests.
Nothing special, there is not much emphasis on the story in the game itself. Some snippets are mentioned sometimes in cutscenes before and after matches, and some map assets are themed, but besides that the focus is on gameplay.

Aesthetics

Modern London, with some maps based around landmarks such as the Bank of London and the London Victoria station.
Each character has a distinctive silhouette and look, which improves visibility and also looks good.
Some objects are themed after the story, such as an escortable armoured vehicle being painted with the colours of one of the factions.

Technology

Windows 7+.
Unreal Engine 3.
Requires a decent graphics card and CPU due to the game not being well optimised.

Lenses

Lens of Cooperation

One character from of each class of mercenary – Assault, Engineer, Fire Support, Recon, Medic (left to right)

Players can choose from a variety of mercenaries from the five classes: engineer, medic, fire support, assault and recon.

Each class is superior to the others in one aspect of the game, such as engineers completing objectives faster, and fire supports being able to resupply ammo and call in wide-area attacks for damage and area denial. All serve an important role, and a balance of classes must be present or the team is much less likely to win.

In the competitive scene, almost every team had 2 medics and 1 engineer at all times, with the other 2 slots being taken up by assaults, fire supports and recons depending on the map and the game state. For example, on the defending team, they might take an assault and a fire support in order to increase their firepower and have area denial capabilities. On the other hand, the attackers might take a recon in order to pick off the defenders safely before moving to do the objective.

Additionally, cooperation is facilitated via the quick chat system. Players can press ‘V’ to bring up a list of callouts, ranging from greetings, to asking for ammo, to taunting the enemy team. This allows players to simply quickly press a few buttons to instantly provide their team with information. For example, the keypresses V-2-1 results in a call for a medic in text chat as well as causing your character to call out.

Lens of Skill

Dirty Bomb is a skill-based game. Players must cultivate many skills such as movement, aim, timing and situational awareness, to name a few. All these skills are needed in order to become good at the game. To give an example, a player who simply runs to the objective will arrive slower than another who uses wall-jumping to boost their speed. Similarly, some shortcuts or spots on the map can only be accessed via advanced movement mechanics.

A video showing some movement and jumping mechanics

Dirty Bomb has a respawn system that is not commonly seen that adds an additional layer of complexity to the game. Instead of individual players having a death timer, such as needing to wait 3 seconds before respawning, there is a team-wide timer that constantly ticks. At the end of the timer, everyone downed or dead on the team can respawn in what is called a “spawn wave”.

Spawn waves affects the flow of the game, as players cannot rush blindly into combat or they risk being stuck waiting to respawn for a long time. Good players can take advantage of this system. When there is a long time before the next spawn wave, they play more defensively, and when the spawn wave is due in a few seconds, they push aggressively so even if they die they can be back in the action nearly instantly. Also, due to this system, if a player knows the enemy spawn wave timer, they can call down an airstrike just as the enemy leaves their spawn and loses their spawn protection, giving their team an advantage in the next fight.

Lens of Balance

While there are a few outliers at top-level play where communication is constant and relevant, at lower levels of play the roster of mercenaries is remarkably balanced. Each mercenary has their own strengths and weaknesses, and has counterplay to their abilities. For example, one medic can put up a dome-shaped shield that destroys all incoming projectiles such as grenades and artillery strikes, but the shield is easily destroyed by gunfire.

Looking away from character abilities, the weapons are mostly balanced well and are meaningful sidegrades to each other instead of upgrades. Also, all mercenaries are competent in combat, with even medics being able to take down assaults with proper positioning, ability use and aim.

Lens of Parallelism

Each objective has side objectives that make it easier to attack the main objective and prevent. For example, the attacking team might try to destroy a generator to open up an alternate path to the main objective. On the flip side, the defending team has to decide if they want to allocate resources to preventing this from happening. This adds further depth to the game.

Game Design Analysis: Genshin Impact

Posted on January 23, 2021 by NgBoonHong

Description:
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play open-world role playing game developed and published by MiHoYo. It features a fantasy environment and a battle system that uses different magical elements with different characters. It also features a gacha game system where you can pay to get new characters, weapons and other materials.

Link to official English website: https://genshin.mihoyo.com/en/home

Lens #4: The Lens of Surprise:
Being an open-world game, Genshin Impact contains many surprises which reside in the hidden puzzles and hidden achievement. Puzzles in Genshin Impact typically give chests which reward player resources required in the game. Some puzzles are not very obvious and may be overlooked if nobody is to talk about it. For example, one need to step on a series of rocks in a certain order to receive a chest, and the only clue given is just a tiny spark of light on the rock. There are also achievements that requires the player to certain task to get it, where it is also not stated in the game. Thus getting those hidden puzzles and hidden achievements bring out a sense of surprises as they lie in places player least expected.

Lens #9: The Elemental Tetrad:
Mechanics:
Players able to wander around the world by walking, running, swimming, climbing and gliding. They uses characters with their own unique elements which may work with other elements to perform better. Players level up by getting experience through exploration and quest, and their characters level up by using resources.
Story:
The main character is a dimension traveler who get stuck in the world of Teyvat due to a nameless god. He or she also loses contact with the other sibling and is on a journey to reunite with each other, accompanied by a companion named Paimon.
Aesthetic:
The game has an anime styled 3D graphic which bring out the fantasy feel of the world.
Technology:
Genshin Impact is made with Unity, where it allows cross platform gameplay between phones, PC and even PlayStation.

Lens #29: The Lens of Secrets:
Many players know and understand the current state of the game, but not many players are able to know the future content or even predict it, Hence the knowledge of the future content is a secret kept by MiHoYo, but still some players are to dive deep to uncover it, where they leak it to the public. With the knowledge of the future content, some players are able to plan on how to use their resources wisely and not be left behind. However, not all the leaks are correct as some are fake news. Therefore, some important leaks that are known to some may not be available to others, causing a sense of outrage as the leaks are kept in secret from them, making them feel unfair and unjustice.

Lens #36: The Lens of Chance:
Having a gacha game system, players are able get items with certain rates, and paying will help to increase the number of tries. Those items are categorized by number of stars they have, where items with five stars have the lowest rate and are the hardest to get. Hence there is randomness in getting those items where the lucky ones may get more than one would expect, where it all depends on chance.

Lens #53: The Lens of Balance:
Despite having a pay to win option in the gacha side, the game itself is still fairly balanced where the starting characters are good enough to complete most of the game contents. Some rare characters may seem to be overpowered, but those common characters can also be built to match the power of those rare characters. Hence Genshin Impact currently has its characters balance in control, where characters have their own unique skillsets and mechanics to learn and play.

Lens #78: The Lens of Story:
Genshin Impact contains many stories, where players can learn about the main character, side characters and even non-playable characters. Their stories itself bring out the secret in them and their surrounding, where players will understand the world of Teyvat more. Some stories may even lead to the other stories, where players can see the links between them all.

Overall Genshin Impact is a game where the exploration of the world of Teyvat is never-ending, and even more will be revealed in the future.

Game Analysis: Doom (1993)

Posted on January 23, 2021 by Bobbie Soedirgo

Synopsis

Doom is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software. Players assume the role of a space marine, popularly known as Doomguy, fighting his way through hordes of invading demons from Hell.

Official website: https://bethesda.net/en/store/product/DO1GNGPCBG01

Lenses

Lens 9: The Elemental Tetrad

Aesthetics

Doom’s art style is made to be “nightmarish”: a mix of sci-fi weaponry, xenomorphic aliens, and Hell. This places an emphasis on the environment, and especially on the design of the monsters. Monsters are sculpted from clay, and then photographed from different sides to get a realistic 2.5D-style graphics: 2D sprites with multiple viewing angles.

John Romero and a sculpt model of the Baron of Hell

The music used in the game further evokes this imagery, with heavy inspiration on metal bands such as Metallica, Black Sabbath, and Alice in Chains.

Technology

id Software used DOS to develop its previous titles, but switched to the NeXTSTEP operating system for Doom (despite it being developed for DOS). This switch gave the team a much improved development environment, with high screen resolution and better graphics, which was a huge step forward in iteration time and overall productivity.

Doom demands a fairly beefy computer at its time, but this was acceptable given how fast the hardware space was evolving in those days. To compensate, the Doom engine employed clever tricks to squeeze out maximum performance, one of which being the use of fixed-point arithmetic. Computers back then had slow floating-point arithmetic performance. To alleviate this, the engine used integers split into an integral part and a fractional part to represent decimals. This allows arithmetic using normal integer instructions which is much faster. Nowadays this workaround is obsolete, since modern CPUs have dedicated floating point units, and even modern GPUs are compared to each other in terms of floating point operations per second (FLOPs).

Doom’s assets are stored in WAD files, short for “Where’s All the Data”, which allows not only easy swapping of game assets, but also makes it easy to develop and distribute custom modifications.

Mechanics

Most first-person shooters of late follow the same mantra for their game mechanics: aim, shoot, cover. Doom takes a different approach: like its predecessors, the low punishment of getting hit, the abundance of pickups, and the plethora of secret locations motivate the player to take on a more reckless and explorative gameplay.

The selection of weapons and level design adds to this mindset, giving the player more options to decimate hellspawns, from environment hazards like explosive barrels and crushing walls, to the Big F***ing Gun.

Story

The game follows a simple narrative: Earth’s last man shoots satanic alien demons that invaded Earth. The protagonist? We call him the “Doomguy”. Name is irrelevant – he’s here to slay demons, not befriend them. As John Carmack put it: “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” This doesn’t generalize for all games, of course, but it certainly applies for Doom.

Lens 38: Challenge

You start with a pistol, finding your way around a hangar, surrounded by what were your comrades, but are now zombie troopers. It’s a straightforward level with a straightforward gameplay. As you progress through the levels, the game provides harder obstacles, including puzzle-like levels and tougher enemies, matched only by the new weapons you unlock.

The game’s challenges are rather balanced. Speaking personally, while you may not finish some levels on the first try, they don’t leave you feeling helpless, even on boss fights. Otherwise, you have the option to adjust the difficulty of the game.

The Spider Mastermind, the final boss in Doom

That said, the game doesn’t fall short for the more demanding players. Secret levels provide new challenges, and there’s a lively speedrun, multiplayer, and modding community.

Lens 94: Atmosphere

To echo the sentiments in the Aesthetics section of Lens 9, many elements from the game gives the player the impression of being the deepest part of Hell, from the monster design to the iconic soundtrack.

The capability of the engine allows detailed texture maps and effects that supports this atmosphere.

Doom’s detailed texture maps contribute to the Hellscape atmosphere

Lens 98: Community

Part of the reason of Doom’s overwhelming popularity is its shareware distribution strategy: the first episode is available for free. Doom would go on to have more installations than Windows 95, which is no easy feat.

Another contributor to Doom’s popularity is its openness to mods. The use of WADs allows easy distribution of customizations, be it different assets for the monsters or new maps. id Software also released level editors and other tools that fosters the mod-making culture.

Along with single-player mode, multiplayer mode ensured the game’s longevity. The word “deathmatch” was coined for the four-player last-man-standing mode for Doom.

Lens 106: Utopia

Doom sets the trend for the 3D first-person shooter genre. While it’s more apt to attribute the introduction of the genre to its predecessor–Wolfenstein 3D–Doom is arguably the one to bring the genre to its peak. Following the release of Doom, first-person shooter games that appeared would be termed Doom clones, including the widely popular Duke Nukem 3D, and id Software’s next title Quake.

Quake would carry on Doom’s spirit, with its hellish and satanic atmosphere, involvement with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, and more advanced multiplayer capabilities… but that’s a story for another time.