Vinrafel Gaming

On the face of it, this game is just a really elaborate excuse to practice math problems. However, there is a more insidious side to the design of this game that is not immediately apparent. Bryan Audley’s Numbers is a recent puzzle game developed by SUNSET Games wherein the player is trapped in a labyrinth that they must escape. To do so, they must use their knowledge of mathematics. Bryan Audley's Numbers screenshot The entire game consists of one basic mechanic. The player opens a door to another chamber, reads the three digit code for the chamber, and if any of the three numbers are prime then the room will kill them. That’s it. You continue to travel between rooms, occasionally getting levels that only tell you some obvious mathematical fact like “all even numbers are not primes.” As such, this game is really something that one could give to a kid who is learning to factor numbers in school. Otherwise, write these few lines of code in Java and you can go forever wit...

You take a little tumble off a fence and into a truly strange world. Fariwalk is a strange game that was recently released by the developer AIHASTO. You are a child who is in a world filled with monsters, just trying to find a way out of the yard you’ve fallen into. It is weird, oddly suspenseful, and overall just a delightful play. If weird indie games are your thing, I’d recommend you check this out right now. The less you know, the better. The gameplay revolves around exploring the strange world that the player has been dropped into and completing a few mini-games that are scattered throughout the world. It’s simple and it works. There is also a bit of dialogue between the player and a few creatures throughout the world. Fariwalk focuses entirely on exploration and discovery. The player isn’t really given any direction from the moment the game starts except when talking to the various creatures that will give the player a few quests. This game really plays off of it’s str...

Investigating a crime is always a risky business, but to interrogate the dead? That’s a whole new level. Bloober Team, the developers behind Layers of Fear , created a game that asked exactly that when they made >Observer_ . The player is placed in the position of a futuristic investigator as they analyze crime scenes and enter others minds in order to find the truth. While the investigative portions of >Observer_ are about as typical as can be seen in the industry, the interrogations are incredible works that play with non-euclidean geometry and abstract imagery to place the player in the position of each character. The gameplay of >Observer_ is divided between two main sections. The first is the investigative portion where the player wanders a cyberpunk world as Dan Lazarski, a special operations police agent. In this portion, the player wanders around an apartment block following an investigation. In the course of this, the player will either investigate a crime sc...

Sections Narrative Method and Essence Gaming’s Narrative Method: Interactivity The Avatar Vivens - Lived Experience Acting the Part Routine and Habit Inter and Intra-personal Meaning The Two Forms Exemplum Vivens Habitual Vivens No two forms of art are quite the same. Novel, stagecraft, painting and every other art-form are all differentiated not only by their mediums, but also by the stories that they can tell. For instance, a play can express different themes than a novel on account of it’s use of visuals and motion. In the case of gaming, neither the narrative method nor narrative essence of the medium has yet been formally defined and so I will do what I might to illuminate both of these topics. For the medium of gaming, the narrative method of interactivity allows the audience the unique ability to access a work’s themes through a form of lived experience that we shall call vivens . Narrative Method and Essence Before we can delve into gaming we must first...

Sections Two Part Genres Experiential Conventions in Other Art-forms The Thematic Content of Mechanics I was recently posed with a question regarding game genres. To sum it up, the individual made the argument that the way we currently classify games is reductionistic in a way that other art forms’ genres are not. Instead of classifying games according to their thematic value, it was argued that we classify them according exclusively to their mechanics (i.e. first person shooter, city builder, point and click). After some thought on the subject I have come to the conclusion that game genres are both no different from any other genre conventions and that mechanics are a means to thematic content Two Part Genres Generic naming conventions in all art forms are not as simple as placing the works into horror, action, or first person shooters. In reality, all forms of art follow the same two part naming system. We will examine three examples of genres in as many art-forms: horror...

A great tragedy has destroyed your village and taken the one you loved. The only thing left to do is to try to reclaim what has been lost. Hollowed is a recently released free-to-play game from Project Polish Productions. It is an extremely impressive piece for being completely free. There is narrative depth throughout the entire experience with engaging, if not terribly challenging, puzzle solving. The gameplay is that of a 2D platformer with an extra perk. The player runs and jumps along the linear plane, moving the very typical left to right. In order to solve various puzzles that range from traversing difficult obstacles to racing to outrun some danger, the player has a ball that is attached to their character. Instead of just controlling the main character, the player has to use both analogue sticks of the controller to simultaneously move the character and the ball. The ball can then change into one of four colors, each of which has it’s own special properties from swappi...