When it comes to deciding an Essential Experience for my game I have tried playing around with several ideas, but always loop back to one thing: Movement
I want to give the player an immersive feeling of creative exploration. 'freedom to explore and traverse the environment the way you want'
The point I want to drive home from this experience is you can explore anyway you want...
BUT the essential part is if you can give the player the freedom to do so in their own way it will encourage that exploration.
This can be accomplished in a variety of ways some of which are:
level design encouraging multiple paths through the environment. (example image from Mirrors edge)
Abilities that allow you to forge your own path. (example image from Dishonoured)
changing what the player is accessible to in an area. (example image from Hitman)
Each of these are interesting takes on how to give freedom to the player, and this is the essential experience that i wish to explore throughout my development.
Feedback (16th Oct) :
Liked the idea that the different ideas with a corresponding image but it relies to much on other games, use real life experiences
I have said what I want them to experience but not the mood or emotions / feelings rather than I just want them to have this ‘freedom’
Liked that the idea is quickly made out and you understand it but it just needs to be more fleshed out with the above comment.
Feedback (23rd Oct) :
good experience starting to sound more refined, would be interesting to hear a theme or setting the game to be placed in.
This lead to me narrowing my idea down to a few specific types based around navigating through a urban environment:
Infiltration: making your way into a specific part of the map (maybe encompasses themes of Stealth mechanics) – I like the idea of this game worlds environment being inaccessible to an ‘average’ person
Repair/ maintenance: you have get to/ fix broken objects to fix them but they are in hard to reach and strange areas. – the idea that these jobs are so odd and in strange places you’ve been called in to fix them.
Race across an urban environment: this one is pretty self explanatory … - making your own shortcuts to beat opponents would be cool
Runaway: getting away from pursuers via your ability to traverse the environment – your outnumbered and getting cornered but can still escape.
this got some good feedback mostly positive reinforcement saying that the experience works really well with the ideas I presented. Some comments had some interesting ideas about interacting with the environment which I want to explore in the future.