The scientific term ‘interaction’ refers to a significant effect when two or more elements are combined. Elements A and B may do little on their own, but when together, they create a novel and exciting result. This mentality applies to game design with interacting gameplay elements. With interacting gameplay elements, two seperate gameplay systems are merged to create a new gameplay experience. Some games are termed ‘systemic games’ because they merge as many of their systems as possible. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a standout example of a systemic game because its one mechanic of temperature, for example, affects clothing choice, combat, movement, visual design, etc. Compound this interconnectedness with enemy AI, geography, the game’s physics system, the game’s chemistry system, stamina, etc., and Breath of the Wild demonstrates a shocking amount of interconnected systems - hence its name as a systemic game. However, not all games must intertwine all of their elements. By interacting even a few gameplay mechanics, games can create rich and entertaining experiences for the player that feature the best of both mechanics.
Complex strategic gameplay
By interacting gameplay mechanics, games can synthesize intricate strategic gameplay to satisfy the puzzle-loving player. Fire Emblem Fates does so throughout its unit skills system. Each unit in Fire Emblem Fates retains several skills, some originating with the unit’s class (such as archer, pegasus knight, or mercenary) and one that is distinct to the character and his/her personality. For example, the lovably klutzy Arthur has the personal skill called Misfortunate, which increases the probability for himself and nearby enemies to receive a critical hit. This skill introduces a risk with using Arthur, and it fits how the game’s dialogue characterizes his unfortunate nature. But Fire Emblem Fates involves more than one unit; each stage allows about ten of the player's units to engage battle. As a result, each unit’s general and character-specific skills interact with one another to deepen combat complexity. Some skills buff or heal nearby units, while other skills debuff or help defeat nearby enemies. With a thoughtful strategy for unit placement, the player interacts his/her units’ skills to strategically engage gameplay.
Interacting gameplay elements often result in strategic gameplay even in games that are not inherently strategic in nature. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s new Battle Mode demonstrates this notion with how its driving mechanics interact with its item mechanics. In Battle Mode, the player uses fluid kart racing gameplay and with various items to fight opponents. While Mario Kart’s classic racing mode emphasizes mainly kart racing gameplay with items as secondary mechanics to serve its kart racing, Battle Mode more directly links smooth kart racing gameplay with an added emphasis on items to fight opponents. As a result, these two interacting gameplay styles create fast-paced gameplay that engages the player while rewarding his/her understanding of how these mechanics sync. For example, the game rewards the player who plans ahead with saved items, coordinates with teammates to overwhelm opponents, and utilizes level layout to escape danger. In these instances, the skilled player recognizes how Battle Mode's kart racing and item mechanics merge to reward tactful gameplay. This union enriches gameplay by introducing satisfying success to the player who maximizes Mario Kart's subtle strategic elements.
Added Realism
Life is not an isolated system in which its many elements are singularly contained. Instead, it is a highly dynamic and complexly interconnected web of causes and effects. Interacting gameplay elements mirrors this structure to silently enhance games' realism. Persona 5 does so to a great degree with how its confidant system aids its battle system. Persona 5's gameplay is mainly divided into two categories: dialogue and battle. Regarding dialogue, the player can elect to spend time with a chosen friend to strengthen the bond with said friend. Once this bonds develops enough, the friend becomes more viable in battle through unlocked benefits. These benefits range in effect from saving the player from a critical hit to evolving that friend's persona (main fighter). As a result, the player is able to depend upon the supporting characters with whom he/she spends time. This process mirrors how in real life, spending time with someone results in a deeper friendship and greater trust. This natural process is easily understandable, thereby helping the player adopt and maximize its gameplay. As a result, the realism of Persona 5's interacting confidant and battle systems help inform the player of their implications and relevance.
In an approach to allow immersive gameplay, Oxenfree adopted a similar approach with the realism of its interacting navigation and talking mechanics. Oxenfree is more of a story than a game, yet its intelligent dialogue system deserves great praise because it is a dynamic system that reacts to the protagonist's actions. As the player walks, climbs, and jumps to navigate the setting's geography, supporting characters interrupt their voice-recorded dialogue to interject something else. For example, the player can jump and grab onto a ledge at one point while mid-conversation with another character. If this action is done, the other character suddenly stops his sentence to gasp, urging the player to be careful. Afterwhich, he interjects a reconnection line to his previous statement, such as: "Anyway, what was I saying? Oh right..." This is a sophisticated dialogue system because of its adaptive nature; typically, games' voice acting continues in a preset pattern with no input from the player changing its order. Oxenfree's reactive dialogue system interacts with navigation gameplay to counter this precedent. As a result, the conversations mirror real conversations, with friends interrupting each other, getting sidetracked, and bouncing off each other's statements. This added realism contributes to gameplay emersion, thereby assisting the player embrace and relate the characters. As a result, Oxenfree's inventive dialogue system interacts with simple navigation gameplay to create engrossing realism unlike most games in its story-based genre.
Novel creativity
Creativity is typically a difficult result to achieve in game design. Yet, a simple approach to develop creativity is to merge two originally separate units. Through interacting game elements, designers can quickly evoke a novel sense of creativity for the player to enjoy. Fortune Street does so through its union of classic Monopoly property gameplay with the stock market. To create fiscal fun, the game involves buying properties to gain full sets - standard Monopoly gameplay. However, each set of properties can be invested in, resulting in an interconnected gameplay loop in which property development rewards players who invested in them. As a result, players meticulously decide what sets of properties to invest in while additionally managing their funds to ensure they can purchase properties for their own development. Lucky players can capitalize on the market by investing in their own full sets of properties and expanding upon them to profoundly increase their wealth before other players can join the action. From the interconnected and dynamic nature of Fortune Street's property and stock systems, the player enjoys a creative and rich gameplay experience that no other game series quite captures. Fortune Street's ingenuity of its two merged elements remains additionally impressive from its understandability; the player understands how properties and stocks generally work, thereby allowing their extrapolations to gameplay to be more commonsensical and approachable.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds reimagines its iconic forefather by creatively blending its varying 2D movement. In this game, designers intended to remake and expand upon the classic gameplay of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. To do so, they created the the wall merge function. With it, Link can momentarily escape the game's 2D top-down perspective by merging into walls. This merging process introduces a new 2D perspective of Link against the wall and contrasts the game's typical 2D top-down perspective. But rather than keeping the wall perspective and top-down perspective sections isolated, the game links them through traversal and combat. With traversal, many of the game's overworld navigation and dungeon puzzles require merging in and out of both perspectives to reach the desired goal. In combat, several bosses specifically require or at least reward the player who recognizes wall merging. For example, the final boss of the Thieves' Hideout is defeated by merging into his flat shield, thereby escaping his line of sight. Then, the player merges out of the shield and back into the top-down perspective to catch the boss off-guard and then attack. Whether it be for traversal or combat, merging in and out of walls is a delicate, interdependent process. This flow between camera perspectives helps keep gameplay fresh and creative by making something new out of two camera perspectives that were well understood on their own. From the gameplay addition of merging alone, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds successfully recreated and reenvisioned its predecessor in addition to creating intelligently ingenuitive gameplay that distinguish it from other games.
Conclusion
Interacting gameplay elements remains a relatively simple method to add value and depth to games. And with so many gameplay elements active in a single game, designers enjoy a wealth of possibilities and gameplay materials to interact. Doing so can help actualize a game by having a summation of its parts bear greater weight than each part on their own. And the player is likely to appreciate such interacted gameplay elements from their added depth and greater implications of merged gameplay. Chemists spark reactions by mixing two elements, artists evoke beauty from blending two colors, and game designers can similarly enable entertainment from interacting gameplay elements.
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