intentional emotional experiences
If you go to my itch.io page right now, the top 9 are these kinda interesting-to-play-with prototypes that don't have what I'm about to discuss. I've been trying to make good "playables" for the past several months and I think I'm about to go in a different direction.
As interesting as toy design remains to me, I was recently playing Heat Signature and realized I didn't want to make (or to continue playing with) endless procedural spaces, I wanted to make, and bask in, more weird handmade content.
One thing lead to another and I've come to the conclusion that I've been designing pretty empty experiences because I wanted to leave space for my potential players to decide for themselves what kind of emotional experience to have. I still think that's exciting, but it's also... well, it's sort of an art form, and I'm not in the habit of making art tools. I make games, and I want to make games.
Finally, here I am wanting to get back to thinking about experiential moments I want to bring to someone through games. I think this is in some ways a development upon, the general case containing, my Breaking the Horizon article.
But this isn't an article really discussing the idea of 'intentional emotional experiences'. For now it's just a small announcement about the direction I'm moving in.
More Asphyx, the game that started with "what if I made a game about holding your breath and I punished cheaters"
More Starseed Pilgrim, the game that... well, it started with 'planting platforms' but I think the more meaningful part came a little later
And more Orbs.