When I was playing the messy kitchen before, I opened it at 9 p.m. after work and felt that I had just played for dozens of minutes, and when I looked at the time, I found that it was almost twelve o'clock. In fact, now because of work and other factors, playing games can rarely be played particularly immersive, basically it is difficult to encounter this kind of game that makes people feel the time, so it is a surprise to encounter this situation, and the surprise in the brain thought about some of the reasons why this game can be immersed, and finally decided to write it down for specific analysis.
Why do some games make people feel the passage of time? For this question, as a game planner, the first time I thought about it, I gave the answer: "Into flow." "Flow is characterized by concentration and consciousness, the sense of time disappears, etc., and the player enters flow in the game so that he will not feel time. However, the analysis of game design is not superficial, so it is necessary to focus on analyzing what excellent designs "Messy Kitchen 2" has made to get players into flow.
1. Game process
First of all, let's break down the production process of individual dishes, as shown below.
Different colors represent different emotional experiences of players, from the beginning of the dull to the final release, with various emotional ups and downs in between. As shown in the figure below, the small emotional ups and downs refer to small successes, or the completion of a small goal. The volt contains two parts, one is the green to yellow in the picture above, which is the foreshadowing between the player's completion of the previous goal and the next goal, when there is nothing successful or worth emotionally freeing. The other part is the challenge or emotional contraction generated by the game, such as boiled rice and fried meat that needs to be removed or removed from the pan within a limited time, otherwise it will be mushy and the stove will catch fire. This mechanic (with an anxious "Didi Didi" sound performance) gives players a tense challenge, and when the player completes this small challenge, they get a short period of emotional release. In summary, this continuous small emotional ups and downs constitute a rich emotional experience.
In the level, the whole process has multiple dish requirements at the same time, and the individual emotional experience of each dish is not exactly the same, and these different emotional experiences together constitute the entire emotional experience of the level. And "Experience Engine" says that "flow is always pleasurable because it is made up of many small successes." "This sense of emotional release and accomplishment of small successes continues to impact the player, making the player's experience of immersing themselves in the entire level richer and more pleasant.
Let's talk about the fun division: the game divides fun into simple fun, difficult fun, other people's fun and serious fun. Let's start with a brief introduction to the definition of these fun categories.
Simple and fun: As the name suggests, simple and fun, or players are curious about a new experience. In this game, sprinting, chopping vegetables, and throwing raw ingredients in another place are simple pleasures, and the actions themselves are simple and fun.
Difficult fun: The challenges brought by obstacles on the way to complete the goal, usually the player uses some difficult operations, or develops new strategies and skills to overcome these challenges, which is called difficult fun. Often difficult fun increases the player's concentration. In this game, in order to overcome the pressure of time, players sprint on tracks (most likely to fall), and accurately throw ingredients in the pot, etc., which are all difficult fun.
(Hard fun sprinting on conveyor belts and precise meat throwing)
In the level, the interlacing of simple fun and difficult fun (refers to some difficult operations created by the player's sprint, chopping vegetables combined with the level scene) also confirms another characteristic of flow: it will not make players anxious because of too difficult, and it will not make players bored because of simplicity.
Second, the level objective
Continuing with the meatloaf example above, the goal of the entire level is split and split and split
Creating a sense of business in a business simulation game is a topic worth exploring, and a large part of the sense of management in personal understanding is the strategic satisfaction of the player's maximum goal after dismantling: that is, giving the player a maximum goal at the beginning, such as the dishes after entering the level in the game. The player will complete the advanced objective of dish, which is to prepare the plate, prepare ingredient 1, and prepare ingredient 2. Then disassemble the goal of preparing the materials into low-level goals such as taking ingredients, organizing ingredients, and cooking vegetables, and these low-level goals are finally disassembled into the player's basic game operations, such as running to the board to cut vegetables after taking the ingredients, and finally placing them in the pot to cook. And the whole process of dismantling the whole big goal after entering the player's mind gradually gives the player a sense of control, from the overwhelm of the situation at the beginning of the situation to the planning of the goal disassembly, so that the confidence process of gradually controlling the game is also more immersive.
And this design also has a good effect is that the player through the goal disassembly, the UI bar designer provides a blunt goal into a sense of goal to be completed by the player himself: the UI bar is just the designer tells the player which goals to complete, and when these goals are disassembled by the player into smaller goals, these smaller goals are more like the player's own generation, usually the player will have more motivation to complete the goals he sets. (In level design and game design, allowing players to complete goals more naturally and spontaneously has always been an important design point.) ）
Third, the pace of the game
What is the rhythm of the game:
As shown above, in the whole cooking process, different operations have different times, these different operations according to the timeline are the rhythm of the game's behavior, and each behavior has a different emotional experience, and these tense or relaxed emotional experiences constitute the emotional rhythm or experience rhythm of the game.
Why the game needs rhythm:
Regarding the basic definition of games, generally good games are fun and fun, and bad games are boring. And if we define interesting and boring by the richness of experience, the boring game experience is very single, such as repeating one thing for a long time without change, even if it is interesting to do at first, it will seem boring or tired to anxiety later. Interesting games are usually more experience-rich, giving players a new and different experience before they start to feel bored. So a very important role of game pacing is to keep players engaged in the game and not exhausted.
A clever design in the game that adjusts the rhythm:
Cooking food (boiling rice/fried meat, etc.) is a good design for adjusting the rhythm in the game, and one of the steps in the whole process of preparing dish A is to cook food, and this step is usually in the later stage, at which time the player's experience in dish A may be similar. After cooking the food, there will be more than ten seconds, which is enough time to do some other work. The player will then start the process of making dish B, and because the food will be cooked without taking the ingredients or the pot after cooking (that is, there is a limited completion time for this step). The player is forced to return from the B process back to the A process, in terms of rhythm and experience, this design cleverly makes the two relatively linear sequential processes more coupled, so that the richness of the experience will be more changeable, and the rhythm of the entire level will not have a rigid sense of design. At the same time, this experience of transferring to other processes in the later stage of a single cooking process is also in line with the concept of "starting, bearing, turning, and combining" in the level design concept.
Decision-making cadence
The above mentioned the rhythm of the game and its role, I personally believe that there is actually a decision-making rhythm in level design and game understanding, that is, the timing and frequency of players' independent decisions. Throughout the game level, the player's decisions include disassembling objectives, making plans, choosing routes, and so on. As mentioned above, the rhythm of the game allows players to maintain participation in the game as much as possible, and the fundamental reason for its realization is that players are thinking and making decisions at a reasonable frequency, because a good thinking frequency can immerse players in the game, and the rhythm of decision-making also includes the process of making decisions and enjoying the implementation of decisions, such as getting the ingredients to plan the route, players from moving the character to controlling the character to start chopping, is also an emotional ups and downs process.
Fourth, the difficulty
Individual level difficulty:
Messing Around Kitchen 2 calculates the performance of each level by showing points earned to score stars, and there is also an interesting design point here. When playing, the one-star difficulty requires a very low design, and even if you pass the level after one star, in fact, the player feels that one star is too easy and unchallenged, and wants to get the sense of achievement of three stars (the previous levels are all three stars, so the level being played must also be three stars). At this time, Samsung has become the goal pursued by the player himself, and he is more motivated to play and study the Samsung way to pass the level, which cleverly turns the Samsung challenge into the goal of the player's internal drive.
Level Long Difficulty:
The levels are divided into chapters, and after teaching the basic gameplay at the beginning, new mechanics will be introduced in subsequent chapters.
Usually the first level of introducing new mechanics is simpler, focusing on familiarizing the player with the mechanics, and then later levels will gradually increase the difficulty and challenge in combination with the new mechanics.
And the overall difficulty of the level is not linear all the time, but there are ups and downs that continue to increase. For example, the overall difficulty of chapter 6 is more difficult than that of chapter 2, but the difficulty of 2-1 is not as difficult as that of 1-6. This also avoids the constant increase in difficulty that makes it difficult for players to relax and feel too much pressure.
Frustration:
In terms of difficulty, I would like to mention the feeling of defeat, flow needs to overcome challenges, and why players can enjoy it over and over again, frustration is an important factor.
I think there are also two kinds of frustration, one is the feeling of losing when you fail and are close to the goal. Common match-3 games (with Figure 1)
The other is strategy puzzle or "Messing Around the Kitchen", the first time you see the level, the entire arrangement, the goal is not clear, the early stage of the level wastes a lot of time, and the later stage is on track. At this time, I feel that I understand the next handful, how to operate it, and I can't wait to carry out the next one. Or the strategy developed is still not successful, and then think of a new route plan and feel that the next thing is definitely working, which is also a sense of frustration. Both of these frustrations are factors that allow players to challenge again, but I think the difference between these two frustrations is that players who get the following frustration will be more active, more motivated to try again, and more confident in their next attempt. Of course, whether it is "next time may be successful" or "next time will definitely succeed", it is one of the reasons that drive players to challenge again.
5. Other designs
Hourglass:
Time is a limitation condition of the level, and is also linked to difficulty, and the hourglass is used to represent this constraint. But in addition to the time display, it plays an animation that shakes back and forth in the last 30s, and the game's background sound effects also start playing a nervous "drop, drop" sound. As mentioned earlier, the design of flow, rhythm, etc. is to produce a variety of experiences that players feel rich, and the same is true of the design of this last 30s: players may start to feel repetitive and bored after a level. However, as the sound effects and hourglass jitter animations begin, the player unconsciously begins to get nervous, and as the tension increases, the sense of release from completing the goal also increases. This raises the whole emotional point that may be about to slide, which is why I don't feel the passage of time when playing Messy Kitchen 2.
Map & Drive a Car:
In "Messy Kitchen 2", from the next level, the player needs to manually drive a food truck on the map, which is also thematically in line with the theme of driving to various places to cook, but it still has some role in mechanically analyzing.
The new "God of War" has a very famous design: one shot to the end, that is, the game has almost no loading interface and camera switching, and entering the hall and cave will use actions such as opening the door and squatting to cover up the scene loading behind. The teleportation between the maps allows Kratos to run in a special space, waiting for the actual scene to load and a door will appear for Kratos to cross.
The advantage of this is that the player has something to do during the map loading process, and usually there will be various conversations between the characters in this process to attract the player's attention so that the player will not lose his mind, thereby maintaining the overall coherence of the game and trying not to make the player feel bored because of waiting and loading.
"Mess Kitchen 2" is a level-breaking game, and the driving design between levels is also to allow players to have something to do and will not be distracted, but in addition to this, there is a more important reason, adjust the overall rhythm of the game: each level will have a new experience every few seconds, and after a period of time to make new decisions, although concentration is a characteristic of flow, but the entire game process if you have been in the intensity of the level one level after another will also make the player tired. Mess Kitchen 2's level switching uses simple driving (including simple puzzle solving) controlled by the player themselves, which will have a relaxing and soothing process between high-intensity levels, so that the rhythm of the entire game session is relaxed.
VI. Theme
Many different types of games will choose to cook in the theme, because cooking itself is very rewarding. From ingredients to cutting to cooking to coming out of the pot, it is also a small goal after completing a big goal. A good integration of themes and mechanics is necessarily coordinated and elegant, that is, players get two points of achievement while completing the goal, which comes from the achievement of completing the game challenge and the achievement of actually finishing a dish on the theme. And this unified and coordinated combination will further strengthen the player's sense of substitution.
7. Fun for others
Assuming that the multiplayer module is cut out in Fall Guys or Humanity Defeated and only one person makes it through, it can be expected that the fun of the game will be greatly reduced. The fun here is not only the joy of working with others, but also the challenges that come with competing with others, because with these factors, the sense of victory is even stronger when the level is passed. This is also one of the characteristics of the fun of others, and working and competing with them makes the emotional experience more intense.
And "Messy Kitchen 2" is positioned as a multiplayer party game, so its other people are also fun, with people playing together, the whole emotional experience is stronger, such as everyone divides the work together, and the feeling of completing the goal in cooperation will be better.
And there are also small designs around multiple people, including the possibility of throwing food directly into friends' hands.
In addition to making the experience more intense, another important role of multiplayer in Messy Kitchen 2 is to enrich the strategy, and players will assign tasks to each other, and these tasks are also making decisions. And these decisions are changeable, you may find that your next step has been done by your teammates halfway, at which point you can feel different emotional experiences and start making decisions again. (When you were supposed to do a whole process, but accidentally found that your teammates helped with the follow-up process, you will get an unexpected surprise.) Or find that teammates disrupt the original strategy will feel a negative experience, and the emotional ups and downs will be greater after completion)
8. Level design
The essence of the level is a container for gameplay, allowing players to fully experience the stage of game fun. This is especially true in games with heavy levels. Mess Kitchen 2 has not only guided levels designed to familiarize players with the new mechanics, but also special levels designed for challenges and challenges.
The design role of levels in the game includes route progression planning, rhythm setting, difficulty planning, creating challenges, creative combination, etc., but this article aims to analyze the role of levels on design and flow.
1) First of all, it should be clear that the level itself combined with the game mechanic design produces the entire game experience. Using the cooking analogy, the gameplay mechanism is like raw ingredients and seasonings, and the role of the level is to make them "delicious" together. The fun of the gameplay is the taste itself, but the delicacy that comes to the mouth at the end is concocted through the level design. So the role of the level is to create another dimension of experience for each level beyond the system gameplay. Each level is fun, but not the same "fun".
Specifically, look at a few levels
Because of the conveyor belt, players have different decision-making schemes in path planning, some paths are better, and some paths are more time-consuming, so this level has more path selection and decision-making in addition to the basic gameplay.
As the middle disc rotates in this level, the position of the player's two movable zones changes within the same level. Therefore, at this level, players need to allocate personnel outside of the basic gameplay, and always ensure that both divisions need to have a strategy.
2) In addition to creating experiences in different dimensions, creating difficulty and difficult fun is also one of the functions of levels.
In this level, players can choose a path with low risk and low return, or they can choose a high risk and high return projectile, which creates difficulty and challenge for players while giving players strategic choices, and after completing the challenge (parabolic), they also get greater feedback and rewards (saving time)
This level increases the difficulty of running to the cutting board and delivering the food in the otherwise dull release process, and the experience will be different.
Summarize and think
The above analyzes why "Messy Kitchen 2" makes people flow from the perspectives of behavior flow, goal disassembly, behavior rhythm, emotional rhythm, decision-making rhythm, difficulty distribution, fun distribution, theme, level design, etc.
But writing here is still thinking about the question: can these immersive and flow-oriented designs make a good game, and why I think the small design of the game is ingenious and excellent, but I am not interested in playing later.
So I don't know whether the above analysis is a solution or a solution for game design. But I understand that game design still has a long way to go, so let's talk about it. (Text/Seeking)