The Art of Video Game Design - John Walker Quillin

Welcome to The Art of Video Game Design. This exhibit explores video games that incorporate unique gameplay elements. Beyond graphics, load times, and the amount of content in a game, this exhibit showcases features of a game that create a truly rewarding experience that does not fade with time. Choices like these, whether it be a control scheme, level or map design, or visual style, transcend what would otherwise be a quick success from a timeless masterpiece.

Please note that all screenshots and video clips were captured by the student curator.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the media in this gallery may include blood and violence. Viewer discretion is advised.

Minecraft

Minecraft was a pioneer of the indie genre of games, and is arguably one of the greatest of all time. What makes this game successful is that it provides complete freedom to the player(s). There are no requirements, just a free world where users can explore, build, fight, mine, craft, and do whatever they so please. Even the game structure itself has few limitations. With a very large and diverse collection of mods and mod compilations (or modpacks) to choose from, nearly anything is possible in this game.

Minecraft. Directed by Markus "Notch" Persson, Mojang, 2011. Published by Mojang.

Video of Destiny mission gameplay.

Destiny

Destiny, while drawing much inspiration from the Halo series, created a shooter story game that had one of the most unique and thrilling combat flows of its time. Along with a diverse set of weapons, many from exotic backgrounds and with unique projectiles and abilities, the player also has access to different magic abilities that grew more powerful as your character leveled up. With a rich story and phenomenal multiplayer, the game spawned a new genre (“Destiny-killers”) that wanted to achieve Destiny’s success. Most of these games utterly failed.

Destiny. Directed by Jason Jones, Bungie, 2014. Published by Activision.

Video of a fight in the game.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a significant departure from previous games in the Zelda series. Inspired by Skyrim’s critically acclaimed open world story experience, Breath of the Wild ended up with an open world map that was bigger than Skyrim’s. Not to mention, this map is littered with thousands of secrets and puzzles for the player to explore. Along with this design change, Link (the main character) could now wield other weapons found around the world. All weapons in the game eventually break, which forces the player to maintain a diverse arsenal. The combat flow was simple, but felt rewarding, as some enemies have unique strengths and weaknesses that encourage the player's attack diversity. Along with a thrilling story and many methods to travel across the world, the game was wildly successful.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Directed by Hidemaro Fujibayashi, Nintendo, 2017. Published by Nintendo.

A view of the game from the player's regular perspective. The player is fighting regular grunt enemies.

The player from the view of inside their titan (giant mech). The player is engaging a different enemy titan in battle.

Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2, similar to the first game, focuses on high mobility gunplay. Along with the ability to periodically summon and control a giant mech, or titan, the game intrinsically had two different flows of combat, which would swap back and forth between a multiplayer match. What made this game great was the fine tuning of the player’s mobility (wall-running, double jumping, movement abilities, etc.) in regular form, as well as a highly customizable titan that has several different weapon choices and ability sets. The sequel, unlike the previous entry, featured a wonderful campaign, although somewhat short. These features rounded out the title to have a unique and thrilling shooter experience not found anywhere else.

Titanfall 2. Directed by Steve Fukuda, Respawn Entertainment, 2016. Published by Electronic Arts.

The player stands off against 3 enemies and defeats them all in three fluid motions.

Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima is an action story game set in Japan’s feudal era. Among the most stellar things about this game is the flow of combat. There are many different weapons, abilities, and techniques learned throughout the game, each modifying how the player fights each enemy. To start any normal encounter, you have the option to standoff. The enemy or enemies will attempt to attack, but with a well timed button release, you perform a counter attack. The swordplay is also very unique, as each enemy type inspires a different sword fighting stance that the player unlocks as they level up. The player much switch stances, often several times during an encounter, based on what enemies they face. While initially challenging, mastery of these stances is extremely rewarding, as the character’s motions become more fluid as you learn.

Ghost of Tsushima. Directed by Nate Fox, Sucker Punch Productions, 2020. Published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

The protagonist (Sam Bridges) walks through a mountain pass to deliver cargo.

Death Stranding

Death Stranding follows the story of Sam Bridges, a courier delivering packages in a post apocalyptic world. This game is set apart by its story. Among a decimated and separated nation, it follows a theme of connection. It also explains why the character can come back to life, which is often overlooked in other video games. One of the main obstacles in the game is an enemy that you cannot directly see. In order to survive, you must sneak around these enemies. If you are detected and captured, the surrounding area will explode into a massive crater that will sometimes remain through the entirety of the gam’s play-through. The player must also keep Sam’s balance in check. If there are too many items on the character’s back, or if the weight is not distributed evenly, he is prone to swaying, stumbling, and falling down, which can damage the items he’s carrying.

Death Stranding. Directed by Hideo Kojima, Kojima Productions, 2019. Published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

The player fighting The Eye of Cthulhu, a large floating eye. The player is shooting it with a gatling gun sticking out of a shark's mouth, called The Minishark.

Terraria

Terraria is a 2D adventure sandbox game. This game is set apart by its wide variety of weapons, armors, accessories, and different bosses. Many of the items and dialogue options reference other video games, movies, and pop culture, and often appear out of place. However, these items and interactions serve to improve the experience, as the game is more focused on fun, thrilling combat, exciting new abilities and items, and just generally what would be “cool” to have in the game. There is a super wide variety of melee weapons, guns and bows, magic weapons, summoning staffs, armors, and artifacts, and each item and upgrade feels unique and different.

Terraria. Directed by Andrew "Redigit" Spinks, Re-Logic, 2011. Published by Re-Logic.

The player flying through a local star system in their starship.

No Man's Sky

No Man’s Sky is a space exploration survival game. What makes this game incredibly unique is that the entire galaxy in the game is procedurally generated: each star system, planet, plant, animal, space ship, etc. The size of the galaxy in the game is also much larger than the size of our own galaxy. In this case, each time that the player would visit a new star system, it is all but guaranteed that the star system has never been visited by another player. The game also features three alien NPC factions, several different alien languages that the player learns word by word, a complex economy, ancient artifacts and archaeology, combat (on land and in space), fishing, cooking, farming, mining, a base building capability, along with countless other features. If there was ever a game where the player could do almost anything, this would be the game.

No Man’s Sky. Directed by Sean Murray, Hello Games, 2016. Published by Hello Games.

The protagonist (Isaac) is fights organ-like creatures with his projectile tears in a blood covered basement room.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

The Binding of Isaac is a rogue-like dungeon shooter. At the surface level, the game follows a boy (Isaac), who falls into a basement. Left with nothing but his tears (and a single bomb), he fights various monsters and charges deeper underground. Interestingly, items that would not seem to help the character often add new abilities or increase the character’s stats, like damage or movement speed. Oddly enough, the items usually harm the character, or at least appear to. Some items physically mutilate him, while others might turn him into a demon, angel, or pile of feces. As Isaac progresses deeper underground, he is eventually met with different versions of himself. He often fights them, or sometimes, trades with them. The game deals heavily with themes of self-hatred and depression. However, the wide variety of items and abilities, repeatable gameplay loop, as well as a rich and complex story with multiple endings, all provide a game experience like no other.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Directed by Edmund McMillen, Nicalis, 2014. Published by Nicalis.

The player's island military base from an isometric view. The citizens are constructing a wooden storage shed.

Boom Beach

Although this game is not Supercell’s first military base-builder mobile game, it improves upon many features found in Clash of Clans, from which this game took much inspiration. One of the ways this game improved upon the previous format is the world generation. Instead of choosing a from a list of random opponents, the environment is a large map surrounding the player’s island base. As the player progressed, new sections of the map are revealed. From this map, the player can find and defeat non-player-character enemy bases, find hidden resources, take control of resource bases, as well as raid other players’ islands for resources. This made the game feel much more lively, as it seemed that the world was actively changing around the player’s base. Along with this change, if a player destroys an enemy headquarters in battle, every other building is instantly destroyed. In Clash of Clans, destroying the headquarters often meant little while defending, so it was usually left unprotected. In Boom Beach, players are actually incentivized to heavily fortify their headquarters, which heavily changes base layouts from the previous game.

Boom Beach. Directed by Petri Styrman, Supercell, 2014. Published by Supercell.

The main character (Cuphead) flying a fighter plane and battling a living cloud shaped as a bull.

Cuphead

Cuphead is a 2D shoot-em-up action game. This game’s unique feature is that every visual element in the game was hand drawn and animated frame-by-frame. Along with this unique visual style, the combat is exceptionally difficult. With an unforgivingly small amount of health and damage, the player must rely on skill and practice to defeat levels and bosses. There are a couple of ways to avoid attacks, one of which is a small dash. Some enemies will occasionally shoot a pink projectile. If timed just right, the projectile can be parried before it hits, which gives the character a bit of energy for an extra strong attack or ability. All of these factors combine to create an experience that is challenging, but rewarding and extraordinary.

Cuphead. Directed by Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, Studio MDHR, 2017. Published by Studio MDHR.

An overlook of the player's base. The colonists, along with the status and contents of each room, can be seen through the roofs of the structures.

Rimworld

Rimworld is a colony simulation game set on a far away planet, far into the future. While there are many other survival colony simulation games out there, this game differs by providing many different options (morally) on how to manage a colony. Though making generally fair and just actions are usually more beneficial in the game, enemy units (or even friendly units) can be captured, tortured, beaten, butchered, enslaved, traded, or even have their organs harvested to sell or use for friendly units. The game also allows the player to produce various substances and narcotics to sell or use for their own units. The game balances these actions with a “Needs” meter. Actions that are generally immoral negatively harm a unit’s mood, which can cause breaks, where the character reacts in various ways to relieve their stress, and is usually harmful to the colony. However, treating characters nicely can greatly increase a character’s mood, which often results in character inspirations or temporary stat increases.

RimWorld. Directed by Tynan Sylvester, Ludeon Studios, 2018. Published by Ludeon Studios.

The player character is standing in the middle of a large production plant. There are lines of assembling machines with robotic arms and conveyer belts moving items between assembly lines and machines.

Factorio

Factorio is a factory building sandbox game. There are other factory building games that exist, but what makes Factorio special is its scale. When designing a factory, creating new technologies and items requires increasing scale in the production of more basic components, like gears or circuits. While individual assembling machine or chemical plant produces only one product at a time, it is up to the player to design a layout that will adequately supply enough components to any given assembler at one time. This problem, along with items and structures that have increasingly complex crafting recipes, often result in massive factories that consume tons of resources and power. However, the game provides many tools to more easily achieve this. Items can travel by conveyer belts, trains, and automated flying robots. Once construction robots are unlocked, blueprints can be made for factories of any size and constructed automatically, given the proper buildings are supplied. With a game engine that is incredibly stable and powerful, along with very well designed buildings and utilities, allows the player to construct factories and manufacture at an utterly massive scale.

Factorio. Directed by Michal Kovařík, Wube Software, 2020. Published by Wube Software.

The user's shelter, along with various diagnostics and options arranged around the screen. The part of the base that can be seen is the living quarters for the characters (or "duplicates").

Oxygen Not Included

Oxygen not included is a colony simulation game that has quite a few similarities to Rimworld. However, the focus of this game, elusively, is engineering. While there are already a wide range of buildings and utilities that can be constructed, the game really shines for its physics engine. Each material and in the game has a specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity, and the game (roughly) models how temperature, gases, and liquids move. Players can take advantage of this to design custom machines that perform industrial processes, with basic components like pumps, heaters, coolers (coolers displace heat, not delete it), to create refineries, coolant lines, air conditioning, decontamination plants, etc.

Factorio. Directed by Michal Kovařík, Wube Software, 2020. Published by Wube Software.

Two teams of five pets are battling. The Lizard pet has just triggered its ability, which summoned a new pet: the lizard's tail.

Super Auto Pets

Super auto pets is an auto battler game. The player chooses a small team of pets to fight an opposing team. Each pet, with their own health and attack power, has an exclusive ability. These abilities can heavily synergize, like other pets massively increasing the health and damage of an animal, or pets that summon a bunch of new pets after current pets faint. This turns the game into almost more of a puzzle game, which is dissimilar to most other auto battlers.

Super Auto Pets. Directed by James Vaughan, Team Wood Games, 2021. Published by Team Wood Games.

The character's view while swimming through a small seaweed forest. Several meters to the left monitor the character's health, hunger, thirst, and remaining oxygen.

Subnautica

Subnautica is an underwater exploration action game. Virtually the entire game is set underwater, which is unusual for this genre. The game has an excellent story, and the underwater world design, both visually and practically, is incredible. The world, while still being open, requires the player to progress and find certain key objects and upgrades before they can explore farther and deeper, uncovering more of the story as they go.

Subnautica. Directed by David Mikkelsen, Unknown Worlds Entertainment, 2018. Published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment.

An overlook of the player's coastal city. The buildings are connected by streets and railways. At the bottom of the screen are various options to construct, modify, or demolish parts of the city.

Cities Skylines

Cities Skylines is a city planning game. Other games of this genre, like SimCity, go into the more general areas of city planning. This game, however, provides a hands on approach. Roads, railways, bridges, and municipal buildings and services are constructed manually. Along with district zoning, this game offered much more control than many other city building games.

Cities: Skylines. Directed by Mariina Hallikainen, Colossal Order, 2015. Published by Paradox Interactive.

The character, a shirtless man in a cauldron holding a sledgehammer. The character is climbing up a mountain using only the sledgehammer.

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

Getting Over It is a self proclaimed platformer “B game”. The character is tasked with climbing a large mountain of random objects to get to the top. As the narrator, Bennett Foddy, describes it, a B game is a game cobbled together with assets that made the game appear unpolished. Getting Over It was actually inspired by a different B game, where the player had to climb over a series of unreasonably (and probably unintentionally) difficult objects and obstacles. This game however, considers the difficulty as a feature, and is more of an artistic statement about perseverance and generally unfair conflict. The game saves all of the players progress and setbacks, including when the player falls all the way down to the start of the game. Whenever the player falls a significant distance, the narrator chimes in, sometimes with peaceful music, sometimes with an “inspirational” quote meant to “calm” the player. This is one of very few games designed for the player to hate it, which is perhaps what made it quite popular.

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. Directed by Bennett Foddy, Bennett Foddy, 2017. Published by Bennett Foddy.

The player's view. The gauges on the bottom right display the player's hunger, thirst, stamina, health, and armor.

The Forest

The Forest is a survival horror exploration game. The main character starts as the sole survivor of a plane crash on a mysterious island. As the player explores and finds more secrets of the island, they discover a secret tribe of cannibals on the island. This game combines these elements, along with base building and crafting, to create an experience that was previously dominated by horror games with only a linear story and environment.

The Forest. Directed by Ben Falcone, Endnight Games, 2018. Published by Endnight Games.

The character jumping off of an exploding platform while fleeing two enemies that appear to be slices of toast with legs. The player has collected 4 gems, shown from the top of the screen, revealing that the level exit is now available.

BattleBlock Theater

BattleBlock Theater is an action platforming game. The character in the story gets taken as prisoner on an island, where he is forced to “perform” on stage, which is basically navigating through different levels while collecting gems, avoiding obstacles, and fighting enemies. The story, characters, and environments are all cartoonish and whimsical. The narrator has a hilariously crude and immature tone, which makes for a very humorous experience. With a variety of different tools, obstacles, and enemies, the game combines humorous elements and gameplay with an engaging story in a very unique way. The game also features a built in level creator, which was a pioneering feature for most other platforming games of the time.

BattleBlock Theater. Directed by Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp, The Behemoth, 2013. Published by The Behemoth.