Narrative

How would you scare a player with a mechanic in an ordinary everyday context?

I thought about how to create a shock effect for the player. Take Pokémon Go, as an example. Players need to walk around their local environment and capture a Pokémon; this is a very easy day-to-day game, so the players will not be prepared for a scary situation. Then they have to focus on the process of capturing a Pokémon. Suddenly BGM switches to the Lavender Town’s BGM where it is full of supernatural events taking place, and where the real identity of the evil Pokémon is revealed bringing a shock factor to players. The mechanics trigger the events and the conditions are random and without notice, it will only trigger when player is concentrating.

As in many horror games, they always try to focus on the players so that their breathe, gets taken away in shock. But in itself is a just horror game, players will be fully prepared for such events, so the shock effect would be somewhat anticipated. For example, in 'Resident Evil '  zombies became a popular adversary in this game and in the core players’ mind there is  not so much of a terror atmosphere, as it turned out with  a lot more kill and humor, such as Lollipop chainsaw, Plants vs Zombies etc...

 

How would you create a ‘ludic’ joke? Sketch out a concept for an in-game joke involving mechanics, assets or self-referential humour.

When we talk about the ludic joke in games, people will think of the mouse meeting in Dooms, Silent Hill’s alien ending, Diablo’s cows levels, the strange weapons of Monster hunter etc.

In my game design, I want to take the Assassin's Creed series as the background, add a new ending for the game. The story continues, the protagonist wakes up and finds himself in the office but earlier in his dream he was an assassin creed and finally understand what he wants to do. His last mission is to leave his resignation report, and depart the office.