Man is such a complex creature, when he is young, he hopes to do his best to make others feel mature, and when he grows up, he hopes to return to his childhood, to the life of a student or even a child. I don't belong to the category of "verbal nostalgia", and when I want to be nostalgic, I will really go to see some old things, old cartoons such as "Elf Gray Bean", "Tom and Mouse", "Cosmic Furball", "Journey to the West"; old games such as "Age of Discovery 2", "Silver Fantasy", "Heroes Invincible 2" and so on.
Because the relatives and friends of classmates have successively had their own children, suddenly found that as the player's children, "play 2 generation" has also become a group of people who cannot be ignored in the future, some of them have already read middle school, some have just fallen to the ground, compared to the "TV era" of that year, computers, smart phones, tablets and other electronic terminals are now more mainstream, so it is inevitable that children's games will replace the children's programs and children's magazines of the year to a certain extent.
To be honest, children such as "Double Star Story", "Gollum Little Angel", "Mario Kart" and "Moore Manor" were dismissive of playing works, because they felt that this kind of game was always inseparable from the word "childish". But when I looked back and played at this time of middle age, I found that these games can make people so relaxed and happy, not only these games can relieve the various pressures in my reality, but also the game itself is not tired at all, very happy. Later, "Friendship is Magic", "Peppa Pig", "Young Titan Attack" and "Flying Little Policewoman" were added successively, which is a complete understanding of why there are so many "old children" who are keen on this.
This preface is a bit much, let's start the topic as soon as possible, this time I will divide the elements of children's atmosphere to the game into 4 parts to discuss.
<h1>1. Space and levels</h1>
Most good children's games have one thing in common: the snowfields and forests of Typing Chronicles, the spacious three-dimensional space of Star Kirby that even allows you to inflate and fly, the vast world you can explore in Pokémon, and the adventure map in "Double Star Story" - children's games must avoid claustrophobic spaces in game shots, fog barriers to vision, dark spaces that can only be explored by flashlights, and narrow passages and elevators. These elements must be used with caution, because claustrophobic space can have a strong sense of oppression on people, which is usually the space design used in horror games such as Silent Hill.
Adventure map in Tale of Two Stars
If space doesn't give children a sense of openness and "total control," it may make them feel like they're "isolated" once again in the game. As we used to say before, Resident Evil 2 and DOOM3 are "open door" games, the opening of the doors represents the character's distance from the "normal" game world, and the Diablo generation also uses the "layer count" to represent how close you are to the final demon king, which will obviously make the player more and more nervous rather than relaxed. Therefore, in the children's game, the camera will not have unknown elements that will make children panic, such as extending to the dark corridor, such as the dark ceiling where monsters may hang upside down, etc. The openness and transparency of the level information is very important. The monster level of "Harry Potter 1" has become a point of criticism for the game because of the design of the camera and space.
In "Yaoxi's World of Yarn", there is no element of "hidden danger" in the lens
Regarding the puzzles in the level, it should not be designed too difficult, and the hints should be given obviously and bluntly. Let's look at an example from Pokemon: Ruby
This level is the maze of lava cluster bases, and the white origin can be teleported to different rooms by stepping on it, and only by constantly stepping on the correct teleportation point can you get out of the maze to clear the level. The difficulty of this puzzle mainly depends on the number of trial and error settings, that is, in the worst case, stepping on the wrong teleportation point several times can know that your teleportation route is wrong. The most terrible thing is that you have to pass 3-4 times in a row to find out, oh, wrong pass, dead end... But this is not the case in Pokemon, generally one of the three teleportation points will be directly teleported to a separate small room, directly telling the player that this road is not passable, one is the correct option, only one may appear to teleport 2 times to find that it is a dead end.
In "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", the hints of the puzzles are more obvious, and many of the puzzle solving processes are omitted, such as the "unlocking mini-game" popular in many RPGs, which is not used in this game, and only needs to aim at the place where the lock needs to be opened and press the mouse Harry to directly cast the unlocking magic. There are also obvious and consistent "big locks" signs where locks can be unlocked in the game, just like the metal house in the center of the picture above, which children can easily find and crack. In short, the children's puzzle setting in the game allows children to mobilize some insight and thinking ability to try and crack, but to avoid setting the puzzle too difficult, and try to give easy-to-understand and consistent prompts nearby, so as to enhance the children's sense of achievement in the game and reduce frustration.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Similarly, in the design of the level route, the children's direction to the game should use fewer forks, and the forks should not be too deep (such as the "Wind and Cloud" and "Legend of the Paladin Sword" kind of maze is not suitable for children to appear in the game), in the game with a high degree of openness to encourage exploration, you should also give enough hints to the path to the main line or make the main line path more obvious.
For example, in "Kirby of the Stars: Labyrinth of Mirrors", the mirror is used as the link between the levels, and the mirrors that have a key propulsion effect on the main line will also be designed differently, with unique and gorgeous shapes, even pure road players like me will not be stuck because of getting lost.
Kirby of the Stars: Labyrinth of Mirrors
In addition, children's games, generally choose a non-first-person perspective will be more reasonable. Choosing a first-person perspective, in addition to the discomfort that can produce "halo 3D", is somewhat contrary to the fact that "the player should be given global information", because the first-person perspective has blind spots on the side and behind the blind spot, and if there are enemies or traps in these blind spots, children may be frightened or nervous during the game. In addition to the more efficient information gathering, the non-first-person perspective allows the player to quickly orient themselves (you can always know where I am), which can put an end to the headless fly-like blindness, because at least the player is much less difficult to return to the original way to find a new way, and many FPS game levels are not because of how fierce the enemy fire is, but because "My God, where am I?" ”
Non-first-person perspective makes it easy to know where you are (TeenAge Magician 2)
Finally, the non-first-person perspective allows children to see the shape of their characters, and they care a lot about what the characters they control look like.
<h1>Second, light and color</h1>
In the game, the combination of light and shadow can create a different game atmosphere, the role of light is not only lighting, sometimes can express a level or the theme of the entire game, the same color. Children to the game in the light effect and color in fact have a routine to follow. So let's interpret the use of light and color in children's games one by one.
As we all know, darkness is the source of all terror, and its terrible thing lies in darkness, and everything is unknown. Therefore, in children's game works, the situation of a single light source is avoided as much as possible. That's right, it's the kind of way that many horror and suspense games rely on flashlights as the only lighting source, which must be avoided. Because if you choose such a method, in fact, the entire game space is divided by a single light source.
You can imagine a scene where the flashlight hits, the rest is pitch black, assuming that what you see through the flashlight is a table, chair bench, oil painting vase and other ordinary decorations, and you will start to think "What happened to this house?" "Will there be something waiting for me in the shadows?" Not to mention what you think of if it's a black cat, a bat, an armor, or something like that.
In addition, a single light source (such as the flashlight mentioned above) will also create a sense of loneliness, the contrast between the light and the dark place is obvious, the subject and the surrounding environment are completely isolated, will give the player a sense of helplessness, which is also a way for children to avoid as much as possible in the game.
Dark environment plus a single light source, you see what kind of atmosphere this is...
In terms of color, although the "Morandi color system" with reduced saturation and darker brightness is now favored by various types of art works, specific problems should be analyzed in detail. Children's color matching in the game, most of the classic works are still high saturation, bright colors. Two scholars, Kaz and Budd, did a color propensity survey of 2500 children, and the results showed that the younger the child, the more liked short-wavelength colors, such as blue and green, and as children grew older, they gradually began to like long-wavelength colors, such as orange, red, and yellow.
The image above is a screenshot of the game Kirby of the Stars: Alliance of Stars, which shows us a good way to show how a children's game color and light should be used:
Very few dark/shadow parts, the picture presents a whole, there are no unknown elements that may appear suddenly, and all the information is under the eyes;
The picture is bright, the light source is sufficient, and there is no "sense of loneliness" and "helplessness" caused by a single light source;
The appearance of lateral lighting is avoided, the lighting angle is comprehensive, and if the lateral lighting is not paid attention to, the game characters will be divided into two halves, that is, "yin and yang face";
The color of the protagonist character is more distinct, which is different from the background color, so that children can quickly find their own role;
Bright, bright, highly saturated colors allow players to enter a relaxed state faster while playing. Emerald green tropical plants, blue sea and sky, and even enemies with umbrellas falling from the sky look so cute and full of childlike fun.
Most successful children's games can see these commonalities, such as the four in the picture below.
Mario Kart on top left, Little Big Planet 3 on bottom left, Gollum Little Angel on top right, Moore Manor on bottom right
It can be said that after so many years of children's puppet shows such as "Sesame Street" and various children's animations as pioneers, game designers have fully mastered the matching skills of light and shadow and color, and have transferred them to their own works to show children a beautiful virtual world.
Classic cartoon "Donald Duck Club"
<h1>Third, the details of the scenery</h1>
To create a joyful, fantasy fairy tale kingdom is inseparable from the depiction of various scene details. Let's recall, how do all kinds of children's games express such an atmosphere? The answer is anthropomorphism, in addition to the anthropomorphic treatment of enemies and protagonists and NPCs, many details in the scene can also be anthropomorphic. The clouds and trees with smiling faces, the stones that nod to you in greeting, and the dice that will throw themselves out can not only add a little cuteness to the game, but also remind players that "this is a virtual fairy tale world, not a real world, and everything that happens here cannot be taken seriously." There have been incidents in which children have imitated the behavior of characters in games that have led to disability, and in those cases, children's imitations of games have mostly been realistic. Young children have limited cognitive ability and lack mature discrimination ability, so it is particularly important for children to use scene details to "de-reality" the game.
The screenshot is from Virtual Life, pay attention to the two anthropomorphic elements in the figure
In addition to simply adding facial features to the scenery and matching the smiley face and other expressions, here are also several types of scenery elements suitable for appearing in children's games as decorations:
1, gourmet, and cakes, doughnuts, ice cream and other sweets are mostly. They are generally the type of food that children like, and food can bring people a pleasant mood. Due to conditioned reflexes, players will also have a pleasant feeling after seeing their favorite food in the game.
Burgers, cakes, donuts, delicacies (The Artisanal World of Yaoxi)
2. Small animals. Most pinyin books and toddler fairy tale books have a lot of small animal illustrations, these small animal images will leave children with deep memories, coupled with their own particularly cute appearance, so most children are very fond of small animals, including the previous "Storm Hero" with the theme of "children's toys" an advertisement, but also made the ugly stitching monster into the skin of "bear toy".
3. Cottage
Various hut buildings in the Typing Chronicles forest level
Different from the real-world reinforced concrete forest, as a small house in the background of the game, it generally does not look particularly tall, and many of them are located in nature, such as cabins in the forest, windmills in the sun, igloos in the ice and snow world, and small mini castles that represent the residences of royalty and magnates in the game, most of which have a "paradise" feeling. These buildings are cute and beautiful in appearance, and reflect the peaceful life of the local residents in the game world, allowing players to more identify with the game purpose of their characters (such as defeating villains, or finding artifacts to restore peace to the game world). At the same time, the appearance of artificial objects such as houses has also eliminated the player's sense of loneliness to a certain extent, making them feel that they are not the only group of people in the game world.
<h1>4. Plot setting</h1>
Generally speaking, the high-scoring game plot needs to have depth, connotation, and even some bridge sections that are "carefully thought out". However, for children's games, the plot should not be too advanced, but should be simple and easy to understand, positive and positive.
For example, the plot of "Virtual Life" is the embodiment of human heart demons, the protagonist is selected to defeat the heart demons and their commander Asura King, along the way including recklessness, sloppiness and other problems have become specific enemies, players need to defeat them one by one; and the plot of "Double Star Story" is also very simple, the protagonist in order to find the lost god in the village and unfold the yarn; "Monopoly 4" is simpler and rougher, players from all over the world for prize money; "The Labyrinth of the Star Kirby Mirror" It is Kirby who retrieves the broken mirror fragment in order to lead to the real world.
So you see, the game script of the children's xiang does not have the hatred of the country and the family like "Xuanyuan Sword", nor the conspiracy and trickery of "Heroes Are Invincible", nor does it have the plot depth of "Biochemical Soldier". Simple, but reasonable, and that's enough. But it can't convey negative content, or take the classic works mentioned earlier in this article as an example, the Mario series is against the evil King Kuba; "Virtual Life" is against all kinds of bad habits, making bad habits into monsters to directly make small players reject them; "Gollum Little Angel" is about the power of friendship, telling children that they should make more friends. Plots like Overlord and Dungeon Guardians that manipulate demon legions against humans are unlikely to appear in children's game works.
Bright colors, playful shapes, anthropomorphic moon, cute little houses, and a group of friends ~ ("Gollum Little Angel")
But there is one plot that must be paid attention to in such games - death. A simpler and rougher approach is to use words such as "knock back" or "defeat" and "knock down" in the description, such as the Pokemon series using the word "fall" after the pet's defeat, and allowing the pet to fully recover in the Elf Center; the performance in "Magic Baby" is also the character's head venus fainting to the ground as a sign of incapacitation.
But sometimes the death of the game character is difficult to avoid, so it should be noted at this time that the corpse can be directly "disappeared", such as the mushroom head stepped on in the Mario series is dropped to the publishing side, and the enemies swallowed in Kirby of the Star can eat kirby to obtain relevant abilities, or protrude to become a small star as a flying prop attack. The use of blood stains should also be used with special caution, and mutilated body parts such as broken hands and feet should not appear, otherwise the atmosphere of the game will become strange and terrible.
The above is the content of this article, you are welcome to leave a message in the comment area below for children to create an atmosphere for the game.