T w e n t y S i d e d

Morgan Yu has a tough job. Her goal is to blow up the Talos-1 space station, and optionally find some way to escape the blast, and even more optionally find some way for everyone else to also escape.

To blow up the station, she needs her arming key. To get her arming key, she needs to reach Deep Storage. To reach Deep Storage, she needs to go on a half dozen detours through the malfunctioning, infested, haunted guts of the station.

While she’s working on that, let’s stop and talk about…

The Face of a First-Person Character

In his book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud talks about “amplification through simplification”. The idea is that as you simplify a cartoon character down to the essential details, they become more generalized. As their details become so broad that they could represent anyone, they effectively come to represent everyone. When you strip away age, gender, body type, ethnicity, race, and that stupid haircut you really need to change, all we’re left with is the humanity of the character. And wouldn’t you know it, we have that in common! We’re more able to identify with this kind of simple design. We can see ourselves in them. As a face becomes more stylized, it gradually becomes a mask representing either people in general or ourselves in particular.

But the one thing it doesn’t do – indeed, the one thing comics can’t do – is get you to take the final step and put the mask on. At that point the transition is complete. You can no longer see the mask at all. The character becomes you, specifically. Only videogames can do this.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Prey 2017 Part 7: Who Are Yu?”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

So we’re working our way through Psychotronics. This poorly-lit maze is the oldest part of the station, and it’s also where the classified Typhon research takes place. So while we’re here and reading everyone’s mail, let’s take the time to talk about the various monster types we’ve run into so far…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Prey 2017 Part 6: Meet the Monsters”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

After the tutorial, Prey settles into a pattern that’s going to repeat for most of the rest of the game. You need to get thing A, but to obtain that thing you need to go through obstacles B, C, D and E, and each of those obstacles has sub-obstacles and optional branching diversions to explore. 

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Prey 2017 Part 5: Getting Around the Cosmos”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.