Is Setting Important?
Gloom and It’s Settings
Since this project is a table top game I have wondered about the importance of setting. I do think that story is important to this design but the idea of setting can be questioned. To help me think about this idea I recently replayed Gloom.(1) This game originally was designed with a spooky vibe that fits the mechanics and goal of the game. The designers of Gloom were influenced by the idea found in the Catholic church culture that persons who suffer in this life will find happiness in the afterlife. So the players compete by trying to make their opponents family happy and kill them off while trying to make their own family as miserable as possible. This game as been “reskinned” many times as the mechanics are really very fun. I have a good time every time I play it. I own the original and the fairytale version of this game and when I replayed them this week I was struck by idea that in the fairytale version the mechanics start to disconnect from the story. It is not quite as integrated of a play experience as the original. I am splitting hairs here but I do think that the close integration of story, setting, and mechanics contributes to the overall feeling of the game. It is a minor shift from “killing off the family members” to “giving the characters unhappy endings” but this tiny shift changes the players’ perception of the humor of the game. On the other hand some of the events from the fairytale version, like turning a character into a toad, were fun additions.
Unlock!, Setting, and Player experience.
The second series of games that I explored was Unlock! (2). I was originally attracted to thinking about this game as an influence for the “Child’s Eyes” game because it has a starting point and then each step reveals what to do next based on a discovery in the current step. I downloaded their free print and play demos (3) to learn more about the designers’ approach to game design. When focusing in on the setting of these games I found that the available mechanics and puzzles were highly influenced by the setting. The story and setting inform what the player does and increases player agency. What the player searches for and how they pair items creates or “unlocks” the next available player choice. It is a well titled series.
Some Final Thoughts Today
I think that perhaps my word choices of “reskinning” and “series” are revealing the design nuance that this line of thinking brings to the table (no pun intended). It seems that a reskinning of a game, in some ways, truncates or diminishes the player experience by introducing a very subtle disconnect as a result of changing the setting. In the case of Gloom while it made sense that the characters were given “unhappy endings” in the fairytale version but the original motivation of living a happy afterlife was gone and created the disconnect. Part of the draw to the original Gloom is that it took on the Catholic church as a source of dark humor. As I was raised Catholic, I connected with this humor immediately. I remember laughing out loud when I first discovered it and had to purchase it at once - for the humor alone. On the other hand a “series” can give the designers the opportunity to explore the depth and breadth of specific mechanics found within the core loop of a game by changing the setting. In Unlock, each new setting gives way to new puzzles.
(1) https://atlas-games.com/gloom/
