Whew! That’s a whole lot of drama going on there. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I can seize the last word. Oh, I almost forgot to put the link to the discussion so far. I really love to see so many different people talking about my favorite game! (Strange, I don’t think any of them have made blog posts before. I wonder why that is. Also, we have a Discord for this sort of thing.)
If you haven’t read their posts yet, this might not make too much sense. So please, read the link before continuing onward! Thanks, and I know they’d really appreciate you taking the time as well.
Alright, there’s a lot of interesting points that have been made so far. It seems like everyone is really passionate, and I would consider most of their points to have merit. However, the important thing that I think they overlooked, (except maybe Jikkal) is that There is No Game is super accessible. Like Doki Doki Literature Club, it is designed to be not just an homage to the tropes of the genre, but also a gentle introduction.
One valid criticism that nobody in the blog had about There is No Game is that it is linear. I have heard that around, but I think it’s actually a plus! All the puzzles generally have one solution, and generally, only one action can be take to progress the game at a time. This is actually a very nice way of introducing people to the genre. Decision paralysis is often overlooked in games, but it’s really quite nice to not have to worry about optimizing. There is No Game is really quite gentle, combining the best elements of a walking simulator with that of a simple puzzle game. Every action you take feels innately good, like you’re violating some unspoken (ok, spoken) rule. You can tell you are making progress each time you combine two objects in an unexpected way.
The hint system also helps with this. It’s sometimes cheeky (have you tried using the hint to solve “2+2=?”), it’s accessible, and it generally tells you just what you need to do to progress. The game is never pushy though, and does just enough to discourage people from overusing it. It has a simple 10 second timer between clues. This is just enough time to politely ask players to try something before using it again, but not enough to make players anxiously wait if they are completely stuck.
The narrator is also an important part of making the game approachable. He always tells you what “not” to do, pushing the game forward, even without making the player exert themselves looking for hints.
I would also consider the references and jokes in the game to not be exclusionary, even if a lot of them need some more context to be fully appreciated. Most of these references make fun of “game logic,” but generally, the mechanics the game is making fun of are funny in and of themselves, like the sense icons in Chapter II, or need no further introduction than the game provides, like the microtransaction portion.
All in all, while Alaric does have a point, There is No Game is not a good example.
Psst… are they all gone yet?
I was everyone. This is a metablogging experiment to see how a dialogue affects people’s views.
