Every week, sort of, features editor Anthony Burch discusses games and gamer culture in his “Rev Rant” video series. You can watch the previous rants here.
If nothing else, this week’s rant certainly has one of the silliest titles yet. My skin is also red again, because colorblind people aren’t the best at using chroma keyer.
Take a single game mechanic. Look at it from as many different perspectives as possible. Build a game around choosing the most interesting, unusual, and game-changing uses of that mechanic. I’m not a hundred percent sure I did the best job of explaining this idea in the video proper — it’d be really easy to interpret the video as me just saying “make the level design good and stuff cuz good level design is fun” — but if you’ve played Braid, Osmos, Chains, or World of Goo, you hopefully know what I’m talking about.
I’d love to see something like, say, a Mirror’s Edge sequel subscribe to the same structural philosophy that I describe in the video above. You’re always parkouring and trying to keep your momentum up while finding ideal routes through the world, but what if those basic mechanics were turned on their heads and tweaked and recontextualized as frequently and dramatically as possible? Come to think of it, what if that’s exactly what Mirror’s Edge tried (and failed) to do in the first place?
Not sure. Something worth considering further, maybe.
