I took a look at how games try to lead the player without exactly telling them where they should be going, what visual signs do the designers and builders put into the world? The game I mainly looked at for this was Risk of Rain 2 and it was a cool experience for me to be able to play the game on the lowest difficulty and really go into a deep look of what the game offered for leading the player especially since this style of game isn’t a linear story game. This was prior to the games 1.0 release.
In my Critical Games Study course we had several readings one week and the topic that stood out to me the most was a section about Perceived Affordance. Talking about how items should interact the way they look. I never really thought about it but with door handles being horizontal I do just push on them without thinking and the idea of one of those doors being a pull door bothers my mind. At the same time we need to think that most things like that might not translate well into games as most doors in games you don’t pull open but most doors push away from the player so having the pull handles won’t do anything but confuse the players if they even notice it. This section was really interesting and I liked it the most.
The game I am going to be looking at is Risk of Rain 2 which isn’t a game full of linear levels so I think it is more interesting to dissect these levels. Normally the way you play this game is you run around the map looking for chests and other interactable objects that will give you items or money to buy items which make the player stronger so they can fight the boss of the stage. The longer amount of time the player spends playing the game the harder it becomes. The interesting thing that I noticed while playing the game is that the game never seems to really put items out of sight from the player. There is always an interactable item in sight. If you stand at one item box 99% of the time you can see another one in the general vicinity, normally you can see more than one if you just look around. If you follow these interactables around the map you still be able to find the teleporter that spawns the boss fairly easily. The teleporter is just this black alter type thing sitting on the ground but to make it stand out more and make it easier for the player to find it they added this specific particle effect that is in the close area around the teleporter so the player knows that after following the interactables they will get lead to the teleporter so that they can fight the boss and then progress to the next stage of the game.
On most of the maps there are more than one main area to the map which are usually connected by narrower paths that lead from one to the other with no interactables on the paths but you can see other ones on the other side of the paths just reaching out to the player to come and get them. Also on top of paths there will be caves that will lead you to an underground portion of the map or through a tunnel that forces the player to look down it and follow it to drag their attention and intrigue. Normally in these cave pathways since they are bigger and longer than the normal small paths they will have some items spawned in them and throughout the distance.
One issue that I have taken note of for this sort of drag the player through the level by peaking their interest is that in the most recent update they added in these things called artifacts. Artifacts will change some factors of the game to make it more interesting. Some of these consist of making enemies have a double spawn rate but half health or all enemies are the same type for the whole map. There is even one that makes the player's character change every stage to make it more interesting. The issue comes from one of these that makes it so no more chests spawn on the map and instead enemies will drop items on death. For me this one is more fun than the chests because late game you get more items than normally. The issue for this is that chests are probably 50% of the interactable things that are in the map. With taking out 50% of the items that lead players around the map and drag their interests to the teleporter it can make it harder to explore and find the teleporter because you might be walking around the same area for 5 minutes just killing the enemies instead of locating the teleporter which ruins some of the design for exploring the map and finding the place you are supposed to go to so you can advance to the next stage.
Another issue that happens in the game that can sort of stem from one of the things in the article but works in a bad way is the “attract attention with characters” section. When you get into the more late game of the run that you are on bosses will start to spawn just in the world as enemies to get in your way and hopefully kill you. The issue for this can happen where they will instantly grab the players attention and depending on the player and the boss that it is sometimes they will want to just avoid that area or will go straight at it to either run from or kill the boss. If the boss is near the teleporter but the player doesn’t know running away from the boss and not facing it will just delay you finding the teleporter and making the world get harder for you but if you go straight at it to kill it you can find the teleporter very easily. This is all situational as this will probably be very different every time you play the game.
