Dead Space is a game set in space, a place filled with wonder, darkness and death. The game is a trilogy, set 400 years in the future, which follows protagonist Isaac Clark, a ship engineer as he battles hordes of undead alien/human hybrids known as “Necromorphs”, through a spaceship, a research base on the moon of Saturn and an abandoned planet infested with these creatures over the course of all 3 games. He also fights to stop a cult that worship “The Markers”, stone monuments that convert human beings into necromorphs. The cult believes that the markers will lead humanity to a new age of evolution and prosperity. The game was created by Visceral Games and was published by Electronic Arts. The designers perfectly capture the theme of a person trapped in an impossible situation. Making the best use of limited resources, stealth, and strategy, the player is forced to fight one grotesque creature after another. The necromorphs range from the simple “blades for hand” type to ones that cannot be killed. To defeat these, the player can either unload a lot of bullets or aim for specific limbs to slow down and eliminate them. When you face multiple types, your survival depends on how fast you can switch from one effective weapon for certain types to another, whilst trying to take as less damage as possible. Later in the game, Isaac gains access to a tech suit which allows him to survive harsh in-game environments like the vacuum of space or rooms engulfed in flames and take greater amounts of damage. The suit also allows him to use healing aids and a “tractor beam” to fire the decapitated limbs of enemies as projectiles and increase his own lethality. As the game progresses, the player can upgrade the suit to increase his base stats of health, tractor beam duration and force, the number of guns he can equip to a maximum of 4 and ammo capacity.
Now, let’s strip the game of the theme. How does the player see the game now? All that’s left of the game are the core mechanics of shooting, stealth, resource collection and suit upgrade. How do we make this game with no connecting narrative into a fun and enjoyable experience?
The players now have no back story, no characters to empathize with, and get scared with. All they see are weird looking creatures coming at them. To make this a fun game, we will change the setting to 2D with a top down view, and a cartoon color scheme. Now, let's add a score system and keep the core mechanics. The player now has the objective to score as high as possible. To make it a little more interesting, let’s randomize the drop rate of ammo caches and limit the types of guns to 2. Weapon A that does high damage to a single enemy but also pierces through multiple enemies (damage decreases as it passes through each monster) and weapon B has a large blast radius that can take out/weaken multiple enemies. The ammo drops are random but weighted to give you more ammo for weapon B as compared to weapon A. The level starts out with the simple and easy to kill necromorphs. As the player kills them, their score increases by, let’s say 5 points for each simple monster they kill with an additional 2 points if they use weapon A and an additional 1 point if they use the weapon B. Additional style points are awarded if the player is able to kill multiple enemies with a single shot from weapon A. After they hit a certain threshold, the game spawns another type of the enemy with a score point of a higher value assigned to them. The level design also changes as you make progress in the game. The game ends when you either run out of ammo or get eaten. The idea is to score a certain high score in each level to unlock an upgrade for your suit which allows you to get further in the game next time you play it.
The game is now a simple shooter where you kill monsters to score points. The player has to balance their usage of weapons. They must ask themselves when they should use the secondary gun and when they can use the primary gun. Their decisions could lead to fun scenarios such as destroying a group of enemies with a single shot from the primary gun and gaining additional style points or using the rocket to take out a horde of enemies too quickly resulting in a lower score than it could have been. The player must make careful decisions on resource use. These mechanics, in my opinion challenge the players and, make them use their guns in a more strategic way.
This was a simple exercise I did to challenge myself. In stripping a game of its theme and seeing if I could come up with ways to keep the mechanics intact was a way to test my design skills and can be adopted for multiple games. By stripping a game of its parts like theme, mechanics etc., and trying to keep the essential experience intact is not an easy task. Exercises like these help us keep our design skills sharp and even lead us to create some really fun games.
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