The human brain is an elusive, enigmatic thing. It can produce stunning intellectual achievement or irredeemable inanity. It loves a good puzzle almost as much as it loves shiny objects. Dan Gould’s detailing of the psychological goldmine that are videogames shows how game designers know how to woo our minds:
This “acquire, test, master” model is still intrinsic to game design. The recently released Portal 2, a brilliant, physics-based puzzler set in an abandoned science research facility, works in exactly the same way. Here, players wield a portal gun, a device that creates dimensional wormholes in walls, floors and ceilings but they’re only introduced to one facet of the gun at a time, and when it has been mastered, new items such as super-bouncy gels are introduced. There is constant progress and a continually evolving challenge, but there is always room to experiment and to figure things out through intuition.
This makes us wonder what GIRP creator Bennett Foddy would have to say about this kind of thing.
–Lana Polansky