After playing through the first 10 – 15 minutes of Jonathan Blow’s Game ‘Braid’ I found myself in yet another puzzle game just like ‘The Witness’. He used one key mechanic (Time - Braid) and (2 puzzles – The witness).
Braid was entirely hand painted which for me made the game stand out more to me as a developer, I felt like the game was a piece of art all on its own. The aesthetic was appealing to the eye and the colors were amazing as well. The setting is washed out and quickly resembles Mario, mainly because of the pipes, flag and princess but that’s beside the point. After the success of Braid, Jonathan poured his profits into The Witness which had been in development from 2009, Jonathan decided to take 3D under his belt and learnt how to do things in a unique way. Braid; in contrast to The Witness, players are limited to basic movement schemes. Also, at first glance players are given the ‘Freedom’ effect in which players feel like they can go anywhere. However, they are actually limited by how much they know. For example, in Braid you can move to and from worlds with little information received, but as future progresses and information is gathered through the levels (puzzles, level design and verticality), the player can quickly and easily complete the puzzles from the past. From a design stand point this is the safest and easiest way to develop a game with little to no real ground breaking mechanics that you have never seen before. But, it's one completely solid mechanic that you can play around with in many different ways and polish the world around it. The Witness uses this to its advantage, as the puzzles are situated on panels on walls and objects. These puzzles can be seen throughout the entire game not only on these structures but also within the world. Let me re-word that, LITERALLY in the world. Path ways, clouds, trees, corridors and anything that looks like a line can be connected to a puzzle. This got me to thinking as to weather or not Jonathan had this in mind since the start of The Witness. It had been in development shortly after Braid was released which makes sense right? What if there was something more to the two games other than the obvious. This would mean me taking more time in both games and researching a fair bit more, but for now I can only speculate on the subject matter. To conclude Braid was a 90's retro styled game created in GameMaker – this meant that Jonathan had limitations to what he could use (sprites, animations, physics etc.) But with The Witness he had full control and with the idea, came an entire world filled with puzzle and mystery. This mystery is what I believe Jonathan has explored through the median of games. With his games taking inspiration from popular content and mixing it with his own flare to give it a good word. |
World design theory (WDT)DevelopersThe goal of this blog is to relate current and past attempts at world design to further improve our understanding. Archives
October 2017
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