The essential experience of a player is the essence of the game. But what does the essence of a game entail? What we mean by “essence”, is the experience which can be explored through events and certain emotions. In other words, the essential experience of a game are the emotions you want your audience to feel in the game. In this project, it is imperative to know what is my essential experience so I can produce a well-fleshed out game that connects to my audience.
As the game I want to make is a horror game, I am going to cover emotions such as being scared, adrenaline and anxiety. In the future when I start researching, I think it would be interesting to conduct a survey that takes into account of what triggers a player to make them scared or raise their heartbeat. Here, I have made notes on what I want my player to feel when playing the game I will make.
Here is a mood board and a couple sketches of the essential experience I want my player to have:
Summary of findings
What type of experience do I want my players to have?: I want my player to be unsuspecting of the true circus’ story, as far as they know they’re playing a game where you have to perform circus acts as a cute avatar. However, when the true nature of the game is revealed, I want them to feel shocked, pitiful and scared. They should feel a sense of weariness when talking to the ring leader, even if he doesn’t pose a threat to them outwardly.
What is essential to that experience?: The main things I want to consider to enhance their experience is the music choice, sound effects and dialogue (mainly the choice of words). It is also essential to my player’s experience that they have likeable NPCs to talk to so that they’re brought back to the realm of comfortability, this also reinforces the idea of feeling sad or pitiful when and if that NPC dies.
How can my game capture that essence?: My game is going to capture the essence by cute visuals, sounds and using 4th wall breaks.