Description
What lies inside a prison is a corpse, or in fact, many corpses, which one of it is the protagonist, where the player plays as a decapitated head of green goo controlling this dead body, only to die and restart all over again with another corpse, repeating this insanity till what seems to be the end.

Dead Cells is an indie, Metroidvania rogue-like dungeon crawler with procedurally generated maps with different routes, making each and every run a whole different experience. In each run, the player will try to kill the King of the kingdom, but only to have the King explode, causing the player to return as the green blob, and restart again.

Info:
Official Website: https://dead-cells.com/
Gameplay Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5LSwznZKs

Lens #7: Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics:
The combat system of Dead Cells is relatively simple. The player is able to move bi-directionally and equip 2 different weapons and skills. As they progress along, the player becomes stronger by finding powerups by either defeating enemies or picking them off the ground.

With these functionalities, the player is to traverse a multi-biome map, defeating enemies which get progressively powerful. All in all, their goal is to simply defeat the King and “complete” the game.

However, each time the player finishes a run without dying, they can start a new run, but with increased difficulty and items. At the 4^th defeat of the final boss, the player will be able to reach the true ending.

Story:
In this world, a spreadable disease known as the Malaise, has gloom across the kingdom, infecting and killing citizens. The King locks up and kills infected suspects, slowly losing his humanity. The protagonist plays as a single green blob to control a corpse and defeat this King.

What is truly amazing is how the game tells its story. Even though the developers did not really intend for a story for Dead Cells, they slid in areas and conversations in the game that tells the whole story instead of having forced, linear lore.

Aesthetics:
With each different biome, comes with a different background and environment, which changes the ambiance and how the player feels about the current place they are in. Using pixelated art rotoscoped over 3D models, they managed to create smooth and fluid animations, making the game feel extremely responsive.

Technology:
Dead Cells was made in Heaps and runs on, Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, iOS, and Android.

Lens #18: Flow

With the flickering number of enemies and each of their difficulty, the player will experience a surge of anxiety followed by relaxedness. In Dead Cells, the player will slowly defeat weaker enemies in the earlier biomes, which gradually becomes more difficult as the game reaches closer to the end, allowing the player to experience a constant flow.

There are two situations in which this form of excitement and tension mostly comes from. One is fighting a boss, and the other is opening a Cursed Chest. A Cursed Chest curses the player to instantly die upon getting hit by anything but provides a large form of reward that is simply impassable. Both situations will result in the player’s anxiety to rise, which causes their flow channel to constantly fluctuate, but enough so that they do not be overly stressed.

Lens #27, #31: Skill
How Dead Cells exploits the interest of people is by simply providing an extremely difficult challenge, rewarding those with talented mechanics and skills. 

One of these skills required is mainly known as the “Hand-Eye Coordination”. Enemies in this game attack relentlessly, but they always form of indication to the player before their attacks, challenging the player’s ability to react at the correct time. 

This single mechanic is what rules throughout the game, but as the game progresses, the player will be required to get better at it for the difficulty will be tinkered to a higher level.

Lens #33, #40, #41: Triangularity, Reward & Punishment

Dead Cells heavily incentives the risk that the players make. Here are two common situations where a large risk comes with strong punishment.

Cursed Chest: As stated, they cause instant death, but rewards hitless runs with powerups, ending the curse after defeating a set of enemies.

Powerups: Even the powerups have some form of risky take to them. One can either opt for more damage or health at a diminishing returns when going all out for either one. At this point, freedom is given to the player to choose whether they want survivability, or risk their small health to simply hit harder.

Although Dead Cells supports the idea of being risky, not all situations have a risk that comes with a reward. Sometimes, risk comes simply as a mechanism to complete the game itself. Like most rogue-like games, each time you lose, you only start back from the beginning, losing “almost” everything you have since your previous run. 

It may seem unfair or even plain frustrating to reach the final boss, only to die to him and restart all over. But what dead cells do is that you gain more flexibility and power after each run. After each biome, the player can spend one of their currency, known as cells, to unlock new items, or improve every equipment in the game. This provides width and depth for the next run, ensuring the player will have something different to go with the next time they repeat. Hence death itself is actually a form of punishment for your current self, and a reward for your future self. 

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a Tactical Role-Playing Game for the Nintendo Switch. The main gameplay consists of a single continuous campaign, that may branch into 1 of 4 routes depending on the player’s choices. The player assumes the role of a Professor at a military academy and later a military commander and battles for the fate of the continent of Fódlan.

Elemental Tetrad:
1. Mechanics
During each chapter, the player is given a month of in-game time to interact with their students – and later soldiers – in activities that help improve the characters’ combat abilities.

At the end of each month, the player must successfully complete a battle in order to complete the chapter. During this phase, the player controls their allied units on a grid-based system. Each turn, the player may command each of their units to move to another tile within its own range, and to perform an action – attacking an enemy or supporting an allied unit. Defeating enemies awards a unit experience points, through which they may level-up and grow stronger. Once all allied units have moved, the enemy AI takes its turn. As a grid-based and turn-based strategy game, the player is able to – and in many cases must – think carefully not only about the actions their units take, but also the order in which to take those actions.

Through the Lens of Triangularity (#33), the moment-to-moment gameplay often involves a risk-reward trade-off. The outcome of battles is partially luck-based as the hit- and critical-rate of each attack is a percentage chance. In many cases, the player might adopt a less reliable strategy that reaps greater potential rewards, or attempt a more reliable but less rewarding strategy.

Each battle may have a different goal – such as routing the enemy or defeating the enemy commander. Each battle may also have multiple side-objectives – for example, the player may be tasked with protecting NPCs, for which they may be rewarded with better items after each battle. Some battles feature chests, which the player may open to reap additional items. These are typically optional towards the completion of the battle – and by extension the game – but must typically be completed within a turn-limit.

Through the Lens of Goals (#25), the player’s ultimate goal is to beat all the chapters in a particular route and thus complete the campaign. Proximal to each chapter, the player might try to complete both the main and side objectives. Turn-by-turn, the player’s goal is to keep their units healthy while moving towards the battle’s objective. The player may also have other goals in mind, such as feeding kills to a particular unit in order to raise them, building the support levels of units, or during the non-battle phases, trying to achieve a particular build for a particular unit.

2. Story
The game has 4 different routes that the player may experience depending on their choices. They might either team up with Adrestian Empire, determined to conquer the continent in order to revoke an antiquated system of nobility, or 1 of 3 other opposing factions that aim to stop the Empire on its warpath.

A consistent element throughout the Fire Emblem series has been the need to fight and kill characters you might be reluctant to in order to progress. This element is particularly well-executed in this game. During the first half of the game, the player may recruit students from other houses into their own. If they fail to do so, the characters return in the second half of the game fighting under opposing banners. While previous games would place the player under similar circumstances, the situation is especially poignant as the player is allowed to bond with them for the first half of the game. Through the Lens of Meaningful Choices (#32), the player’s choices are able to affect the ultimate fate of the continent and characters.

Thanks to deep world-building, the player is unlikely to piece together the truth behind the world’s history and the unfolding events unless they have played through all 4 routes. Through the Lens of Curiosity (#4), the mystery of character motivations and in-universe lore provide a good incentive for the player to both progress in the story and to replay the game.

3. Aesthetics
The game’s art is beautiful, with detailed character models and combat animations. Of particular note is the game’s music. There are two renditions of each battle theme – normally, a more melodic rendition will play, but during combat animations between two units, a more rhythmic version of the same track would play to accentuate the intensity of combat. The use of recurring motifs also gives the game a strong musical identity.

4. Technology
The game runs on the Nintendo Switch. Compared to previous 3DS titles, the more powerful device allows for the more detailed models as described above.

The Lens of the Player (#16)
One common dynamic that arises in the Fire Emblem series is resetting battles. Because death is permanent in old games (and on “classic” mode in newer games), players would often restart an entire battle if any of their units were to die. This game allows the player to optionally turn back time a set number of times per-battle, allowing them to run back a poor decision. The player is also warned whenever their unit moves into the enemy’s attack range, removing the need to check and memorise enemy attack ranges. These comprise Quality-of-Life changes that help to enhance the player experience compared to older titles.

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Short Description of Overcooked! 2 (Versus Mode, 2v2)

When the Nintendo Switch was released in 2017, along came the game Overcooked!, a co-op arcade action game about chefs scrambling to get food orders out of unique kitchens. The refreshing and original concept of the game made it a hit. In August 2018, a sequel of the game was released, and it was met with considerable fanfare as well. The game play is like that of Overcooked!, whereby cooks in a kitchen get tasked with many orders and they must accomplish as many of these orders as they can. The chefs must not only pick out ingredients from crates, they still must chop them up, remove them from chopping boards, cook these ingredients and ensure that they do not “overcook”. After which, the cooked ingredients must be placed onto a plate with other cooked/raw ingredients to make a complete food item. This food item then needs to be brought to a tiny window to be served before the order is considered completed. The game play usually involves 4 players, 2 players cooperating with each other to beat the other 2 players who are on the opposing team. It is possible for just 2 players to play the game as well, however, I will be focusing on communicating ideas for a 4-player game play, specifically the Versus Mode.

Game Analysis of Overcooked! 2 (Versus Mode, 2v2)

While playing the game, I feel a sense of anxiousness because I can see the orders piling up very quickly and as a result, I become flustered. It is necessary for each pair to work well in order to complete more orders than the opposing team. While I play the game, I am most focused on the orders list, and sticking strictly to only the things I am delegated to do. If I am supposed to take the ingredients, chop them up and serve the done dishes, I will stick to doing these tasks and nothing else. This prevents a conflict of responsibilities between my teammate and me.

Overcooked! 2 involves arenas which are static, whereby the kitchens remain the same throughout the 3 minutes of game play. It also features dynamic arenas, which morphs every 15 seconds or so, for players who are itching for an additional level of challenge. With the dynamic arenas, players must think on their toes, because the tasks the player will be able to accomplish changes according to how the arena morphs. When I got stuck on one side of the arena, I was only able to toss the ingredients to my teammate and she had to do all the chopping, cooking and plating, then she had to toss the completed food items to my side for me to serve. This is occasionally frustrating, because we ended up tossing completed orders into the water or molten lava, which render the food items useless. Hence, we must redo the same order again which reduces the chance of completing the order request satisfactorily. However, this makes the game even more addictive, as the additional layer of challenge invites players to come back to compete for an even better score if they know that they were delayed due to mistakes.

Cooperation is key in Overcooked! 2. In order to complete as many orders as possible, 2 players must communicate throughout the 3 minutes of game play effectively, especially when the arena is dynamic, or if the arena allows for the opponent pair to steal completed orders/ingredients from you and your teammate. There is synergy when the players work together because of how the game mechanics work. If players decide to work on completing orders alone, from getting the ingredients to serving the completed orders, it would be too slow, and the points earned would be affected. The optimal scores are achieved the Overcooked! 2 Versus Mode only  through cooperation.

Despite the high-level of cooperation required between teammates, the competition element of the game is not ignored. In the Overcooked! 2 Versus Mode, teams of 2 compete against each other to see which team can earn the most points in the same time period. Some game arenas are also pieced in a way that allows players to steal the completed food items of their opponents, making the game play even more challenging. All 4 players are playing within the same arena and their actions can affect one another. Players can block opponents from getting certain ingredients by standing in the way of their opponents. The competition aspect of Overcooked! 2 makes the game more entertaining; players must not only strategise on ways to cooperate with their teammate and compete against their opponents.

Finally, the game has an intuitive and bright visual interface to complement its intention of being a party game. The intuitive interface is a necessary game aesthetic as it prevents the complication of the fast-paced game. Players can glance down quickly to check the time left and their current scores, which are placed at the bottom right and the bottom left of the screen respectively. This saves time, as placing these elsewhere might require players to glance around for a couple more milliseconds, affecting the players’ momentum. Also, the bright colours used to paint the whole game provides a cheerful atmosphere, uplifting the essence of fun. The background music used is upbeat, which complements the theme effectively. It also speeds up towards the end, as the game clock approaches 0. This adds on to the adrenaline that the players feel towards the end of the game, as they eagerly clear as many of the remaining orders as possible.

In conclusion, Overcooked! 2 is a fantastic game. It is a good example of how real-world scenarios can inspire interesting and refreshing game plays that work. Even though it does not have a detailed narrative, nor does it have stellar graphics, it stands out because it is an effective party game. Its inviting and fun atmosphere, and the relatively short duration keeps players entertained for hours. In a generation where we are so disconnected by technology, maybe it is time we consider how we can adapt technology to help us connect, just like how Overcooked! 2 has achieved it.

Game play demo link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcVISRmANIo