How would you let the mechanics tell the story?

Hi all, just dropping by with an itch for game philosophy. I’ve spent the past few months tinkering in UE4, practicing my hand at blueprints and all the functional aspects of game design, and I’m realizing I haven’t thought about the finer art of things. Employing nonstandard game mechanics to help tell the project’s story, for instance, or to sell the project’s theme.

A popular example: plenty of people – including Yahtzee of the Escapist – point to the Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask and say it instills a sense of futility and loss of identity in players with its time travel and mask-wearing mechanics.

Personally, I feel I’ve made a mistake focusing so absolutely on the function of game mechanics without considering the thematic import of said mechanics. So, uh, I’m going to get on that. In the meantime, I was wondering what other people are thinking?

Here, let’s make a list out of it. That’s fun, I think. Lists are always fun.

How would any of you build a set of game mechanics to sell one of the following themes or character traits?

Loneliness. How would you sell the idea of loneliness? That is, how would you instill a sense of loneliness in a player through the mechanics of the game itself?

Rage. Say you make a game where the player character has anger issues, or else is angry all the time. How would you suggest this through the game’s controls? Or through the level design, perhaps?

Wonder. Okay, most games tackle this one. Your sandbox game sells this theme by giving you a diverse world to explore and a constant stream of new items, enemies or some-such. What would you do different?

Inequality. I don’t see many games approach this one. Most try to give the player a power fantasy, after all. How would you instill a sense of inequality in a player through the use of the controls, level design, etc.?

Just spit-balling here, thanks for reading. Hope you have a great day.

I advise to play “Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons” if you haven’t already. You’ll get couple of ideas there. The game is very memorable, also it is about 3 hours long. Requires gamepad.

Make the world gray maybe with cold bluish tint. Or just make area around player gray and devoid of color with a shader. Make npcs turn transparent or outright vanish when they get close to the player only to reappear when player walks away. Add wind around player, make character shiver from it. It is more about art, not about mechanics.

Make character perform actions without player input. Kicking small things at ground level, punch walls, make “angry face” and npcs. Make a dog walk by, and let the character kick and send it flying, automatically. When rage meter fills up, let the character walk up to nearest npc and initiate combat by punching him without player control.

Most games do not sell this theme. Instead they send you on achievement hunt - “collect 5000 rusty bolts to get “I have too much free time” badge”. No wonder is involved. I think the last game where I felt any kind of wonder was bioshock infinite. I hate treasure hunts in games.

Power fantasies are boring. Make enemies more powerful than player are and let them hunt player relentlessly when they have opportunity. That doesn’t mean they should quickly kill the player. Make them close in, grab player by the throat, take away (and throw away) strongest primary weapon, laugh at it, stuff it into nearest trash can, then throw the player away into the window (preferably from 15th floor), effortlessly, and have the player miraculously survive by landing into garbage dumpster or something like that. The idea is that they could kill the protagonist, if they wanted, but decide not to waste time. Such behavior may result in deep feeling of satisfaction when player figures out how to kill that guy. The important thing is that such enemy still shouldn’t feel invincible - that would be too boring.

You could check resident evil 3: nemesis for inspiration, silent hill 2 (for pyramid head), also, if you manage to make it run, there’s Terminator: Future Shock. Robots in those game were a serious threat and you felt like a rat most of the time - hiding in the severs, behind walls from another metal walking box of doom.

Excellent suggestions! And you’re right – I was discounting the benefit of art design. Your approach to instilling loneliness is particularly interesting to me. Thank you.

I hope more people drop by to share their own ideas too.