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I wonder if you feel the same way I do. In today's era of video games, Word Games will also be the kind of work that can be recognized at a glance.
The visual design with and only Chinese characters can be called minimalist to "simple". Even the graphical scene, the material used by the production team Team9 to build it, is chinese characters.
Words, words, words, while people still regard video games as young technological attribute products, Word Games chooses to transform almost everything into an ancient information carrier.
This gesture, like a mud game, exudes a retro temperament that is visible to the naked eye.
But a little further, Word Games is infused with the interactive creativity that only new-age games have. Its mechanics are interesting and closely related to the text. The fusion of the old and the new is contradictory and itchy, and I can't help but want to try.
Yes, words, what a common thing. In contrast, it is not easy to rely entirely on words to express creativity in video games. Word Games takes a step forward, and interestingly, any distress and excitement that the player feels along the way may be something it wants to convey to you.
In a group of players played "very brain hole! "Imagination takes off!" In the praise, as well as some of the "look at the words to see the eyes" spit, BB Ji, who could not stand the curiosity, contacted Team9 in Taiwan, which was far away from the treasure island, and chatted with the three co-producers.
To exaggerate, the birth of "Word Game" is not only accidental, but also the inevitable possibility of language and writing, the cornerstone of culture.
On the official website of the game, the image of the three characters is composed of text dynamics
01
Players first know this game, it should be last January's "Word Game: Chapter Zero". As a demo nature, Chapter Zero is almost the same as the beginning of the current official version, and it takes on the heavy responsibility of introducing the basic gameplay.
The difference is that the protagonist of Chapter Zero, "I", in the process of less than half an hour, quickly showed off the three interactive abilities of the word warrior, and then was squeezed and hung up by the giant fist, and the demo suddenly stopped.
This has left a deep impression on many people.
Like many stories from scratch, co-producer 404 told me that he didn't have any development experience before Word Games. The concept of text interaction was born in 2014 when I was still in college. Words, everyone will deal with it every day, so I think that I can do something with words.
In 2016, he used the development tools of "stupid people will use" to make a demo-like thing, presumably there is the word "door" in the screen, players need to leave the "door", and a simple gameplay mechanism is achieved. This is logical, starting with the most visual pictography of words, and then the complex functional mechanisms.
Every time I see a door, I immediately think of the door of a cowboy bar
404 mysteriously used "a karmic meeting" to describe to me the actual starting point of "Word Game". It was a long-lost reunion with his long-lost friend, Team9 co-producer Kai. Kai heard his idea, and the two immediately discussed it, thinking that the threshold for word-related games should not be high, and "a few people can make it".
It didn't take long for them to form a team and start working on Word Games.
The team must have the same kind of attraction. The 6 members of Team9 have done all kinds of creative work before, graphic design, industrial design, music, just don't have any game qualifications. In the field of games, in addition to love, everyone is a blank piece of paper. In other words, know what you want. You'll find that Word Games ends up at the intersection of everyone's game preferences – some ingenuity, a good plot, a meta element...
They learn while doing, 404 feels that everyone spends a lot of time, even if it is full-time, and the production process will also take other jobs to make money and maintain the development of "Word Game".
The development history of the official website
After determining the general direction, word games chose the engine of choice for Godot. Although its reputation is not as good as that of unreal, Unity and other big engines, Godot wins in open source, high degree of freedom, and the community has a lot of material to refer to. According to 404, word games have a lot to tailor, at least from the rules, which are "starting from scratch".
The protagonist's three interactive abilities are based on the rules of use of language and text, namely "Delete", "Move", and "Disassemble, Merge", which are used by the word "I", which in turn affects the game world of pure text.
To prevent people from not understanding the specific gameplay of the game, here is a simple example:
In a scene about a sentence, "I" can move out, delete the "right" word in the sentence "My opponent took out the sword", and achieve the goal of transferring the sword to "I", thereby changing the situation and passing the level.
I don't know how to read pictures anymore
This is just an example, the near-infinite possibilities of words, how many ideas are needed to visualize it?
As you can imagine, 404 and his friends will have to find a path that can mold Word Games. This is not about the word or the single concept of the game, but a whole playable, fun work.
02
Producer 404 is responsible for coordinating and splitting configuration in the team and planning all aspects of the game; Kai is mainly responsible for community and marketing; screenwriter Hank is mainly responsible for... Well... Just write the plot.
Originally, I was thinking of distinguishing between the three in this way.
But after the interview, when I confirmed the details to them, Kai told me that the titles they gave to each other were actually called "co-producers", as I mentioned at the beginning.
This should be a small habit of Team9: in addition to pure professional technical things like music and programming, the content of the planning and design direction is all on the staff. During the conversation, the three of them also mentioned many times that "everyone discussed together".
Like the animation of the game opening with words, I take it for granted that the 2D screen is done with a 2D idea. But that's not the case – forgive me for using a "surprising". 404 said that these animations are actually done with 3D modeling first, rendering, lighting and shadowing, and the special effects on the top, the difference is that the rendering is a low-resolution picture, and then he uses an image metaphor, "just like the comic dots, the dots become words."
"This operation made the animators rack their brains, but in the end, everyone overcame it together."
To define it, Word Game should be considered a "puzzle solving" game. But 404 told me that when it was made, it was not limited to thinking within the framework of the puzzle game. Because it is necessary to reflect the value of words and highlight the presence of words all the time. And this is not a small challenge for Hank, who is mainly responsible for the screenwriting.
Hank believes that in other games, words are a tool for presenting information. But in "Word Game", the text is not only the plot, but also the puzzle and the picture, the text will promote the picture, produce the puzzle, he needs to use a comprehensive thinking to design.
He divides the core puzzle design into three types. One is that the text comes first, which requires the player to feel what can be done in the story, such as the lock can be rotated, then set the words in the plot description, and then do the corresponding animation effect.
Then the picture comes first, the fifth chapter re-fights the snake demon in the magic dragon city, the core idea at that time is to show the dynamic sense of the snake, you have to draw the storyboard first, use words and idioms to form a picture like a hundred snakes twisting, and then make a level.
"Then the last, the one..." Speaking of which, 404 took up the stubble and mentioned the third: form.
Or the Magic Dragon City, 404 mentioned that there are three rooms here in parallel, they used the form of tribute to the escape room to design this part, but also a less linear level in the whole game, players can freely collect props, look for clues, props can also unlock the places that can not be passed before, "This is still quite interesting in the word game, because the game does not design a special prop column, just use the first sentence to constantly mention the form of what is held in the hand, which is a disguised prop column."
"The result of brainstorming, in fact, everyone is quite happy to help themselves find a topic."
But in turn, this highly connected design process makes problems a disaster. After they told me that the difficulty was "too much to count," the three of them laughed in unison.
404 bears the brunt of it, as a person who deals with creativity, he said that he often gets stuck in the creative shell, a bit of the meaning of watching the sky to eat, sometimes too tight to think of things, can't think of things and easy to tense. Later, I ran out to see a lot of exhibitions, and got a lot of inspiration from graphic design, just like many developers, "if you only care about the game, you can't do it."
Hank's encounter is a typical lead to the whole body, after building the script structure, any new thing coming in will lead to every place from beginning to end, which feels "terrible", and not only the script, everyone will be implicated.
"What matters is the pull and trade-off between the division of labor and cooperation, how much freedom is needed here, what you want to convey, and how much text space the player is given." Thinking too little is not interesting, thinking too much will be crooked. Being able to show the core in words, and then letting the player understand the content behind it with the core thing, is what we need to do in a balanced way," 404 added.
The kai responsible for community and operations gives a very player's perspective. He mentions Baba Is You (baba). This is a high-profile independent game that uses pushing boxes as a surface play to change the rules of the game by combining sentences with words.
He found that players who had seen the promotion would compare "Word Game" with baba, so he felt that as a game work and a product used to buy, how to meet everyone's expectations, how to maintain their own things, and finally make a difference that looks similar but is actually different, is a ubiquitous pressure point in the development process.
Fortunately, "Word Game" does a different job, "if you look at the word game with the psychological preparation of baba, you will find that it is very different."
In their view, baba seems to be linguistic, but in fact logical. "Instead, we are based on language, and the boundaries will be blurred."
In the words of 404, "The feeling of having nothing but being able to do anything".
"Imagination is the best display card."
03
After removing the points of conventional games such as puzzle solving and RPG, the meta-related content of "Word Game", the three main creators and I mentioned a lot. As an important focus of development, meta also touches on what the game wants to convey.
meta, the meta of the meta game. In following the meta-creation concept of "pulling the player out of the game", word games can be said to have a unique advantage.
After all, as a symbolic information, the text is highly abstract and different from the visual picture. "We are actually quite careful about the rhythm control of the first half of the game", 404 said, "the first chapter of the player wakes up from the pure white background black characters, the text purity is very high", at this time the game screen can be described as rough, you need to go to the brain to make up the scene, but "the further back the screen is more and more 'gorgeous', the color also comes in, when the garden is saved, there is color, then the player will have a little 'wow' feeling, perceive the room for reversal and growth." ”
"The ending xxxx (I manually helped him silence) appears before it can be set off. The excitement of the meta game is not a certain climax achieved, but the previous process is needed to set off, so it is necessary to do the curve of expectation. ”
Hank felt it when he was involved in the production. He who is in charge of the story needs to set up a very routine thing in the first half, the routine to make everyone feel "Oh, that's it", and then slowly find the mystery and cattiness from the process of the game, and finally take the initiative to try to leave the cocoon that has been set up and find things outside the game.
So he adopted the classic sword and magic + brave breeding + embark on a journey setting, which is indeed very routine.
In the context of the process, "Word Game" is obviously suppressed first and then promoted. For example, in the second chapter, there is a scene where the player explores in the grotto, and the path in the scene constitutes the word "zigzag", you have to solve the puzzle, add a little to the word "fold", become the word "demolition", and finally open the passage.
If you are too "engaged", you may not be able to realize this
There will be many such heart-wrenching "wonderful" moments in the whole process. But the best thing that is recognized as the best is probably the ending.
On the surface, the ending scene that seems to provide a choice is actually implied by a chapter of hidden levels, and there is not much to say about the anti-spoiler, but this is almost the most meta part of the game, and the passionate speech of some players is "Play crying!" "God!"
As you can see, everyone in Team9 is usually interested in meta elements, and 404 introduced me to another work of the author of Stanley's Fables, "Beginner's Guide". The Beginner's Guide was born with some reflections, self-doubt, and struggles by its authors after developing Stanley's Fables.
Beginner's Guide
The whole work is "a game about the game", which only deals with the concept of the game itself, and it is very rough as a game. But 404 felt that the game could talk about this level. "A lot of times games are about immersion, meta is anti-immersive, it makes you re-examine the 'game itself', to put it bluntly, it's a bit uncomfortable, but I like that feeling." 」
Compared to the 404 developer-like expression, Kai explained to me their hopes for the ideal state of Word Games in a way that players understand. "We're trying to figure out a balance. Most players don't want to play the game hard and uncomfortable, the game unfolds to be immersive, but there are also moments that allow the player to "sit away" and see what's going on on the screen. The player can switch freely between the two states in order to experience different feelings."
For example, the above -- "twists" and "demolitions", if you sit "too close to the table", it is a bit ignorant of the true face of Lushan. Players have to push with both hands, sit in a chair with a scroll wheel away from the computer desk, and examine it with flexible focus to get a new experience.
The familiarity of words in everyday life, and the alienation that often exists as information independently in video games, ultimately reflects them, creating the unique texture of Word Games. According to Hank, the player "reads and changes while playing, and is both a reader and a writer"
This is what makes Word Games unique.
It's a bit like the "fall off of the fictional layer" theory I mentioned earlier in the "Two-Man Trip" producer. When the player begins to focus on things other than fictional layers such as graphics and stories, if it can be placed in the right style, such as the field of meta, it can also become a sense of acquisition.
04
Naturally, I also had some views on the Chinese characters, which are used in traditional Chinese characters.
At present, the game has a built-in simplified character version, but in the interaction of some words, the traditional characters with complex structure still show the corresponding expressiveness, such as "one" can be disassembled into adults and solid, and "door" is better than "door" to make animation effects that are opened on both sides.
In their opinion, after the release of the game, people have successively sought out Team9 to cooperate, thinking about whether they can produce extended content, they will suggest that these people can remake their own version, encouraging them to try.
Because it only loses a very small amount of commonality in the experience compared to the Jianzhong version, this is just a game that is completely impossible for native speakers of other words.
This sense of identity based on language and words also helps the game design process. Team9's programmers wrote an internal editor that others could use to add the underlying framework for new scenes when they came up with a viable idea.
So rather than creating a way to play, Word Games has found a new way of expressing the text. And each language will have a different culture, meme and Easter egg, and Word Game just happens to be Chinese.
For example, I asked the easter egg in chapter zero of the game with doubts, and Team9 gave the brave a number, no more, no less, 4396, and the official version was 4397.
I pretended not to understand and asked, "Is it possible that this is also an Easter egg?" ”
"This is left to everyone's imagination," screenwriter Hank said, and the next second, everyone laughed in unison.
After playing, it is not difficult to find that "Word Game" has stuffed a lot of Easter eggs in the interest of Team9. But even in the same anime, the same movie, the same ACG cultural circle, the expression in different text contexts is different.
Wordle, which is very popular abroad, is a crossword puzzle based on English structure
Just like no one may have thought before, Chinese characters as square characters have a natural affinity with dot matrix pixels. Then extend it to the Chinese characters into screens and make them into games. After the appearance of "Word Game", you will inevitably think of going with 404, "only Chinese design features." ”
One of steam's most praised comments
Interestingly, this is also reflected outside the game.
404 and Kai ran to see some live and video after the game was released, and saw the text bullet screen floating over the game screen on the live broadcast or video, just like a new scene appeared in the game, which made them think it was quite "ridiculous" and "funny", which later stimulated their creative enthusiasm.
Starting from the text, they envisioned the near future. You can do ARG (intrusive virtual reality activity game) and do something that combines virtual and real. For example, for live broadcasting, they specially developed a Chinese character filter to turn the face of the anchor into a collection of words.
404 describes himself as " quite happy with yourself ." ”
The face is made up of the three words "producer"
Slightly scary, but ok...
Just I noticed that the logo design of Team9 on the official website is also very interesting, it is the English of Team, followed by two orthographic characters, and the second orthography is just missing the last horizontal. When I mentioned this design to 404 to be careful, they showed a hint of surprise, "Turns out you saw that." ”
Their ideas are very frank, "this will make people who do not understand the Chinese think that it is some kind of password", "have thought of a lot of things, re-deconstruct ah or something", it seems very mysterious, but in fact there is not much deliberate connotation and composition, "with nine fingers can be, the right stroke can also be ... It's quite like the spirit of the game we got together to make. ”
Of course, after talking for so long, I also talked with the three co-producers about some big empty, about the future of game interactivity, about the spirit of independence...
Some of them are not accustomed to calling themselves in the game circle, hoping that "Word Game" will become a "street card that tricks everyone in"; others mentioned the meaning of independent games, whether there is a small breakthrough to rush out to become a new rule, it is meaningful; and some people think that a closer combination of virtual and real, text is actually a good interface.
The trophies displayed on the steam page are also made of words
So it wasn't until the end that I finally asked the question that had come to mind at the beginning, "What's the point of the Team9 name itself?" ”
404 gave me an answer in a serious manner, "The meaning of this 9-word word is only beginning to accumulate now."
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