Research into influences / Product analysis
 

(Note, I would have researched into Friday Night Funkin’, as that is one of my influences. However, due to it still only being a demo and not being a professionally made game, there are next to no analyses or reviews by any remotely reputable sources!)

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Gang Beasts (Boneloaf, 2014)

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Gang beasts is a game that I have had a lot of fun with recently and have been inspired by the chaotic gameplay and destruction of the environments and wanted to incorporate this into my game somehow. I figured I could accomplish something very similar by using rigid bodies in unity, but I wanted to do some research into how they are implemented from a design perspective, as well as the controls of the game.

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Looking into a review from Matt Gardner, I found a few criticisms and acclamations that gave me an idea of what to work with. Gardner states that the controls are “imperfect”, and aren’t “great, dependable or accurate”. However, it “only adds to the silliness of the experience” and “when things do come together as you hope, there’s no thrill like it”. This is important to my game, as I would like to create a fun/funny experience for the player, as it is a satirical horror game. So, to recreate something like gang beasts, I will try and makes things feel slightly imperfect, but not enough for it to be a hindrance to the player. This will hopefully recreate the silliness of the controls in the game, whilst retaining the somewhat professional platforming experience I aim to create.

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As for the environments, there isn’t much on the internet from any reputable sources I can find, but the closest thing that I can use to replicate it within Unity is Rigid Bodies, so I will use those in the environments where I can, both implementing them into puzzles and just random objects in the world that would make sense, so that it helps build on said world, allowing the player to interact with the environments, adding a layer of immersion (to a certain extent) to the game. Whilst immersion isn’t my main priority, I do aim to create a fun experience for the player, so I will do what I can to have the game be fun when playing.

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Omori (Omocat, 2020)

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Omori was another influence on this project, and inspired me from the very start, mainly in the aspect of how it implements the horror into its art style, opposing a cartoony style with horror. I wanted to try and recreate something similar within my game, so I wanted to investigate what others thought of its horror implementation.

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Looking into a review from Julie Fukunaga, there honestly isn’t much information I can gather from it, other than Omori’s horror is more psychologically based, creating the horror through the storytelling for the most part. However, it is also said that you can tell things are a lot more nefarious than they seem when anything is monochromatically coloured, as opposed to the incredibly vibrant “sketchbook styled” world.

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Looking into another review by Jade Entien, they explain that Omori "truly captures childlike emotions, fears and values of friendship throughout the game", and that "there was guilt, nightmares, monsters, and the black space, with multiple doors filled with frightening areas and denizens". This is most likely how Omori captures its horror, capturing certain fears that a lot of people have, as well as targeting "childlike emotions", as that is something that every player would have experienced at one point or another, making things in the game feel more personal. Entien also states that they found themselves "relating a bit to Omori", which is important, as it allows a slight self insert for the player, adding to the immersion, therefore making the horror more impactful when playing.

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To recreate this within my game, I will try and see if I can recreate any fears that people commonly have, such as arachnophobia, fears of the dark, etc. I would try and accomplish this mainly through the environments, environmental storytelling, and character designs in the game. It could also be done in the sound design where possible. I could also try and have the player relate with the main character via storytelling, however, this may be slightly difficult to do for the FMP submission considering the time given. However if it were a full game I would put effort into this.

 

Also, whilst I should put emphasis on all of these aspects, I should not let them take away from the main gameplay, making a healthy balance between the theming and gameplay, creating a nicer experience for the players.

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The Binding of Isaac

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The binding of Isaac has been an influence on many of my projects throughout my time on the games design course. This time, I was inspired by the art style slightly (as it was part of my research portfolio experimentation), but was mainly inspired by the sound design of the game, as I liked how it was done, in the sense that the sound effects are very simple, but work well for what they have to do.

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I looked into a review by Wes Cowan, who explains that Isaac "is an incredibly stylish game", and whilst all the monsters are "incredibly grotesque", they also manage to retain their cartoony style, which is a "jarring contrast" that "Creates a lot of the charm of Isaac". This is useful to know, considering I have a very cartoony art style, as it means you can create a charm as well as being grotesque, even in a cartoony art style.

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In terms of sound design, Cowan mentions that "whilst there's nothing particularly wrong with the sound design of Isaac, it is probably the games weakest point", and goes on to mention that the sounds, voice acting and music are all good, but due to how the sound effects are used in-game, they can get incredibly repetitive. So, I am going to aim to have similar sound effects in game, but will try and keep them varied, giving multiple sound effects to each character where possible.

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Overall, this review was quite useful in understanding how I could improve on my game, and what I am doing well. Though, to incorporate different sound effects into my game, I will have to find out and learn about the implementation of random sound effects. As for my art style, I shouldn't be afraid to try and draw something unique, as long as I can keep it in my own art style, and don't stray too far from it.

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Girls’ Last Tour (Tsukumizu, 2014)

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Girls’ Last Tour’s worldbuilding really inspired me when coming up with ideas for this project, and I really liked the environments that were featured throughout the series, and really wanted to recreate something similar in the environments of my game. So, to try and grasp a better idea of how it was done, I decided to see what others thought of the worldbuilding, as there are no sources on how the world was designed by the author themselves. Due to there not being any sources from the author, and the author themselves mostly stays away from interviews and such, it was hard to find any sources on their process. Also, due to the series being relatively niche, it was hard to find reviews as well. However, I did manage to find one review that could help. 

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In this review by "Zappaomatic", they say that the world is incredibly bleak, and that the world is dominated by industrialisation. They also say that its very clear the world is on the brink of its end, and that it's very obviously in decline. These very hopeless themes are what I believe are the key to the worldbuilding, as whilst everything is dominated by industrialisation, incredibly little of what is industrialised is actually being used, due to most of humanity being wiped out. This helps create an empty feeling in the world, really emphasising that the two protagonists are incredibly alone in the world. I also think that the sheer size of everything from said industrialisation is another big factor, as it makes them seem incredibly small in comparison to the rest of the world.

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So, when creating my game, I will make things feel very normal, but also very devoid of any life throughout, with the exception of the monsters of course (otherwise the level wouldn't be very interesting!), as this would create a similar effect. Though, due to how I intend on implementing the folklore, I don't think I can quite include industrialisation, though I can definitely add things that show that humans were there at some point, and maybe even include them to extensive proportions so that it creates a similar effect. 

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Doom Eternal (ID Software, 2020)

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Doom Eternal was a major influence on how I wanted the gameplay to play out in the game, though not the same, as I want my game to feel unique on its own. I mainly just wanted to have an action platformer where platforming and movement is important to how the levels play out. To try and understand how the game accomplishes this, I looked at what others thought of the mechanics, and how they’d improve it, as there was no information from the team themselves on how they implemented movement.

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In a review written by Josh West, "Doom Eternal is at its best when it is screaming at you to move faster". He also states that doom eternal feels "right" when it is "revelling in ultra violence across some impossibly beautiful environments". Though, they also mention that the platforming sections take away from the experience "forcing you to slow down" and introducing "points of friction in an otherwise frictionless experience". They also say that the platforming doesn't really work "in the controlled chaos of the wider combat experience", however, they say that its only a small annoyance in the "otherwise blistering fps". 

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To implement the inspiration from this game, I will take notes on the combat from Doom Eternal, and focusing on the movement and "screaming at the player to make them move faster". In terms of the platforming aspect, I will try not to fall into any of the traps that doom eternal did such as the "swinging imprecisely between monkey bars, scaling bland craggy walls, bouncing off... and double jumping to ledges with slippery collision detection.". This is a list I will refer to when making my game, trying to avoid making these same mistakes, and hopefully improving on the formula.

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Bibliography

Cowan, W. 2017. The Binding of Isaac Switches Things up [Online] Available at: https://www.horrorbuzz.com/games/binding-isaac-switches-things/ [Last Accessed on 20/4/22] - I used this source to try and find out some opinions on the aspects of the Binding of Isaac, mainly to do with the sound design, but also to see what they thought of the art style of the game. This source is not incredibly reliable, but does the job of showing feedback on the game, which is all I need, there was also the factor of no studies into the binding of Isaac's sound design really existed. I found that they had both acclamations to the art style and sound design, but also had a few gripes with the sound design, such as the repetitiveness of it. This helps with my project, as it gives me insight into what to follow and what to avoid.

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Entien, J.  2021. The Insight: Omori is an engaging, artistic look into a mind riddled with guilty and dark feelings [Online] Available at: https://nygamecritics.com/2021/03/09/the-insight-omori-is-an-engaging-artistic-look-into-a-mind-riddled-with-guilty-and-dark-feelings/ [Last Accessed on 20/4/22] - I looked into this review to try and see what people thought of the implementation of horror in Omori, and to see if they had any feedback on what they liked and disliked about it, as well as any analysis on how it was implemented into the game. I found a lot more useful information than the other Omori review I looked into, such as how it looked into childlike feelings, fears, etc. This is all useful to my FMP, as it gives me a further idea of how to implement the horror that I would like to in my final game.

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Fukunaga, J. 2021. Omori is the horror RPG of your Dreams (or your nightmares) [Online] Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/omori-rpg-review/ [Last Accessed on 20/4/22] - I used this review looking for feedback on the horror implementation of Omori. Though when I finished it, I did not find much of use. All I really found of use was the fact that it made horror stand out using a monochromatic colour scheme on things in a very vibrant world. Other than that though, this source was not very useful, as it did not bring up anything interesting or relevant to my project aside from that. 

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Gardner, M. 2019. Review: Gang beasts gives festive frustrating family fun on a budget [Online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattgardner1/2019/12/15/review-gang-beasts-gives-festive-frustrating-family-fun-on-a-budget/?sh=17044269142d [Last Accessed on 20/4/22] - I went through this review looking for how Gang Beasts worked with its environments and controls to see how it creates the overall game experience, being fun and silly, whilst retaining solid gameplay. I found that it was mainly due to the unreliable controls, and the fact that you can move most things in the environments. This was useful, as it led me to the conclusion of replicating this kind of gameplay with rigid bodies in unity. 

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West, J. 2020. Doom Eternal Review: "Screams at you to move faster and to fight harder, and you can do nothing but obey" [Online] https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/doom-eternal-review/ [Last Accessed on 20/4/22] - This review was chosen, as the title itself led me to believe that it had a large focus on the movement of Doom Eternal. It did, and it gave me some information about both where Doom eternal succeeds in terms of its movement, and where it falls short. This was useful, as it gave me a list of things to keep in mind to implement and improve on when working on my own game, and gave me a slightly better idea on how I could make a more concrete platforming side of the game.

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Zappaomatic. 2019. After the Apocalypse: Worldbuilding in sound of the sky and Girls' Last tour [Online] Available at: https://zappaomatic.wordpress.com/2019/03/21/after-the-apocalypse-worldbuilding-in-sound-of-the-sky-and-girls-last-tour/ [Last Accessed on 20/4/22] - Whilst this is definitely the least credible source here, it was the only source that I could find that wasn't a YouTube video that was even remotely relevant to what inspired me from Girls' Last Tour. I went into this to gather some insight into what went into the worldbuilding, and what it does well. I found out some things that they said about the worldbuilding, but not a lot, though I didn't really find out how it accomplishes, so I was sort of left to analyse why these aspects could help with the worldbuilding.