Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Two articles about Gone Home

First, the creators discuss level design:
As it turns out, Gone Home shares the same general structure as many levels in the BioShock series. It's a hub and spoke design, intended to gate off certain areas of the map while providing players the illusion of being open and familiar. While that's important for game design reasons, in reality it makes the Greenbriar's home an impossible space, with rooms in weird positions relative to one another and even entire floors floating unsupported. Yet it evokes a kind of reality in the mind of the player nonetheless.

"There’s this concept which I think I first heard about at Irrational Games called 'player RAM,'" Gaynor said. "As you’re playing a game you’re seeing what’s on screen, you’re reacting to what you’re seeing right now, and what has come before, and what you are predicting will come next is kind of passing through your head. But you only have a certain amount of capacity to really hold a high-fidelity image of the overall structure this place is describing.
Second, a fan looks at the cleverness of the first cabinet.