Journey
Most parts of the Journey's inteface are diegetic, except for 2 parts where a game handle would fade in and out on the screen, teaching the player how to control the character when they play the game at first time. It uses 3rd person camera viewpoint for the game environment, but the perspective could slightly change through the game. For example, players can adjust the perspective using game handle, or the perspective would slightly changed due to composition of the visual effect.
Output
Visual display of game status is provided in Journey through frescos between chapters. Journey uses frescos to keep track in players process through the whole game by displaying all the stories in the game on a long fresco. When player goes to the final gate of each chapter and intented to enter the next chapter, an animation would show that which part of the fresco did the player get to.
Audio elements also contribute in giving feedbacks during the whole game play. Themood and atmosphere of background music would change when the atmosphere of game changes. For example, the music would be delightful and vivid when the playeris in a level where he needs to slides on golden sands, but it would dramatically changes when the player falls down from the golden sand area to a dark underground. Moreover, when the monster attacks player, sound effects of attacktion will come out as feedbacks as well.
Input
In Journey, users only use game handle to control the game. It allows players to do mbasic controls such as walk, fly, sit/stand up, give a shout, as well as adjust camera angles. These basic controls are similar with other games which requires a game handle,so players could get familiar with them very quickly. There are not too many controls players need to do, so they don't need to think when they are playing. But these basic controls could be combined together to create special movements such as spining around, which creates diversity and would be interesting for players.
Design Feedback Elements
– Is it appropriately designed in terms of telling the player what she needs to know in gameplay, as per the rule of functionality preservation?
In Journey, the character is initially a red robed figure. Players can play this game for several times to collect light dots, delight frescos and complete achievements. After complete the traveling once, a layer of beautiful golden patterns will appear on the robbed cloth, indicates that the character's "level" of travelling is up. There is also a group of light dots indicator at the beginning of the game in the chapter selection area, and after collecting all the light dots in the game, all the indicator would be lighten, and there would be several layers of golden patterns on the robed cloth. Then protagonist now could able to switch between red robe and white. When the player is in red rob, his flying time is related to the length of his ribbon. But if the player is in white, he can fly whenever he wants without limited duration.
Also, the gate area players go through to the next level are consistent. They look similar, and players needs to use the same way to active the gate. Therefore it is obvious and leadable for users to understand the gameplay.
– How intuitive is its control scheme to let the player do what she wants to do (e.g. how they use onscreen buttons, menus or physical buttons, joysticks, and/or other gadgets to take actions, how intuitive they are to learn/use)?
It is very easy to let the players do what they want to do. Since players only needs to use game handle to control the game, they only need to memorize all the controls on game handles, and don't need to be confused if he has to combine multiple controllers such as game handle and hand gestures.
Diablo II
Diablo 2 uses non-diegetic interface. All the interface components are displayed at the bottom part of the game, as well as some hiden interfaces that need players to open them using shortcuts. The camera viewpoint is 3rd person isometric.
Output
Health bar and mana bar are displayed at the bottom left and right of the screen, where red represents health and blue represents mana. If player is attacked by enemies and gets hurted, health bar would decreases to remind player add more blood to the character. Enemies health bar is also displayed in the game and located on the middle top of the screen. In this way, players would get an idea of how much effort he needs to put on to kill the enemy.
Character's level and information such as strength and intellegence are all displayed in the game. Players could use short keys to open and close these tabs. Properties of equipments, magic stones, weapons are all shown in numbers, along with different color of texts representing different special properties.
Audio elements also contribute in giving feedbacks during the whole game play. Sound effects of attacktion encourages players to attack more when fighting with enemies.
Input
Players use both mouse and key board to control the game. Players control the character to move by mouse click the place where they want the character to go. Physical attack and magical spells are also released by mouse left and right click. Blood and mana could be refilled by pressing keyboard. If players put blood bottles and mana bottles on their belt, they could quick access them by pressing hot keys.
Design Feedback Elements
– Is it appropriately designed in terms of telling the player what she needs to know in gameplay, as per the rule of functionality preservation?
Diablo II uses non-diegetic interface so that it's only visible for players in real world. The design feedback elements are appropriately designed in terms of telling the player what he needs to know in gameplay. In Diablo 2, information players always needs to see in the game are provided directly in the game. For example, heath and mana status are showing at the bottom left and right corners; spells and belt inventories aredisplayed at the bottom so that players could quickly choose which spell to use, as well as adding blood when health status is low. Other interfaces are hidden and could be displayed whenever needed, such as inventory, skill tree and quest. Map could be on or off during the game, depends on player's choice.
– How intuitive is its control scheme to let the player do what she wants to do (e.g. how they use onscreen buttons, menus or physical buttons, joysticks, and/or other gadgets to take actions, how intuitive they are to learn/use)?
In Diablo 2, it is quite intuitive to control the interface. Onscreen buttons such as belt inventory and spells has numbers/keys indication on them, so that players could quickly get an idea of which short key they should press to activate them. In this way, when players are fighting with enemies, instead of switching mouse arrow between enemies and spell menu, pressing short keys with left hand would be more efficient. Moreover, Hidden interfaces such as map, skill tree, inventory and quest could be open and close by a hit of short cut as well. These controls are very easy to learn because the hot keys are based on the first initial of each interface. For example, hot key for "inventory" is "I" and hot key for "quest" is Q. But sometimes players could mis-press these buttons during exciting fights, which would be an annoying part of the game.
It is actually quite difficult to judge which game is doing a better job by comparing a RPG game with an adventure game. Their interfaces, visual feedbacks, output and input, and the way providing information are all different. Personally, I love the way Journey presents information. Diegetic interface in a 3rd person 3D gameworld fully engages players players to explore and experience the gameworld. Players have the same sight with the character - what they see is what players see. Instead of seeing allthe control panels from beginning to the end, players could get more information through exploration. In this way, players would feel being involved and the game becomes more attractive to them.
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