'It's an escape room, you don't need a story'

The thing that a games designer misses out on most is getting to experience their own games as if it was their first time. They are so absorbed in perfecting their creation that they sometimes forget how a person playing their game for the very first time would feel. They have had so many iterations trying to get that perfect balance that they sometimes forget about the very basics of a game. One of the basics that make for a good game is the narrative of it, the journey that a player embarks on.

Most of the games that we see these days have a basic narrative wrapped around the mechanics that they incorporate, especially digital games. One significant exception, or so some would say, probably a controversial one as well, is – The Journey. The Journey is an exceptional game with some stunning graphics coupled with some mind blowing background music. The game really has some jaw dropping moments which could easily leave the player awe-struck. What it lacks, ironically too, is a ‘journey’, a story for the players to follow. It could quite easily be that the players are so involved in solving the ‘puzzles’ that they don’t really pay much attention to what’s happening on the story front of things. The question that remains is – could the designers behind the game have done better?

Real world games are becoming increasingly popular these days with a lot of people coming up with some really interesting concepts. A real world game could be anything that is played in a physical space, irregular of the size, and it generally involves a set of puzzles that the players are trying to solve while pushing towards the final aim. Escape rooms are one very common example of real world games. An escape room is something where a group of players are inside a room and they have to make their way to the final objective, which generally is to get out of the room, using the clues hidden inside the room. There has been a sudden growth in popularity of such games with a lot of studios coming up with all kinds of ideas, some quite unique in their capacity as well. One thing that most of them seem to lack, though, is a good narrative.

It almost feels like a trend now that any real world game you see won’t have a narrative in it. What’s frustrating is the fact that they seem to be okay with the fact that their game does not really have a story. Even more frustrating is the fact that they don’t even want to try and design a game that incorporates a story, sometimes even advising others against it. They might have their reasons in that the players are too busy solving the puzzles that they don’t really care what’s going on with the story. The problem, again, is that there are not many real world games that have actually tried coming up with a game that stresses as much on the story as they do on the actual gameplay. At the moment, the games feel like a set of puzzles thrown in together with a massively broad story line which doesn’t complement the puzzles in any way. What if the puzzles all had a specific meaning and contributed towards the final goal of the game?

The task is a huge one, obviously. Digital games find it easier to incorporate a story into the game by making use of the dialogues in the game. Even then, the players choose to skip through the cut scenes or don’t bother reading through the text most of the times because they want to play the actual rather than wasting their time reading something or listening to someone. All of this is, of course, false for the more hard core players who want to experience the game as it is supposed to be experienced. On the other hand, there are games so engrossing that the players automatically start taking time out to pay attention to the story. Lumino City is an amazing example where the story is right on par with the puzzles. The game designers seem to have drawn the puzzles in accordance with the story instead of coming up with random puzzles and wrapping them around with a story. That looks to be the problem.

Most of the real world games today looked to have come up with a bunch of puzzles first and then seem to have wrapped those around with a story. Even if the story came first, the puzzles never seem to play a part in pushing the story forward. The objects being used in the puzzle look right out of place and have no connection whatsoever with the overall story that has been put in place. The ‘magic circle’ that these real world games usually crave for only ever makes use of the setup of the room. This magic circle could be so much more magical if the puzzles or the events were all connected with each other, not just in the taking input from other puzzles sense of things but also making sense of how that input is being used in the next set of events. This might require the players to read through text or listen to dialogues which is never an easy thing to have but that is where the magic circle helps the designers.

It is not easy to get your players to be a part of the magic circle you are trying to create but once the circle starts working its magic, it is safe to assume the players are at your disposal and they will do whatever you want them to do for they are trying their best to complete the challenge that has been thrown in front of them. General human behaviour is bound to bring the competitiveness out of people when they are faced with a challenge. It is upto the designers to take advantage of this fact and use it to put across a story in any manner possible. Real world games, today, usually rely on a brief introduction to get their players into the magic circle but then back off on the narrative, partly because they are too busy designing the puzzles and partly because they assume that the players are never going to pay attention to the narrative and so, it’s not worth the effort. What they don’t realise is that by the time the players have solved the first puzzle or have had their first ‘victory’, the players are already willing to go the extra step in order to solve the next one.

Not all digital games, even with the advantage of being digital, have been able to do this but those that have, do it in such a seamless manner that the players don’t even realise that they have been sucked into doing things they probably won’t have in any other game. The fact that this has not been tried in real world games yet gives all kinds of opportunities for the game designers to explore. Instead of throwing out random puzzles at the players, they can actually align the puzzles and the objects they use with the narrative behind their game. It is time for the studios to move away from the convention of not having a story in their games. It is time for people to start investing a similar amount of time and effort to the story as they do to the gameplay.

#escaperooms #immersion #gamedesign