Trailer for Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Switch

Description

Animal Crossing: New Horizons(ACNH) is a life simulation game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch in March 2020. This is the fifth main Animal Crossing game and also the best-selling one in the series. Not only that, ACNH also won many awards, including Game of the Year at the Japan Game Awards as well as Best Family Game at The Game Awards 2020.

The gameplay is very simple. You control a human on a deserted island, design and develop it into a thriving community of anthropomorphic animals. ACNH supports both local and online gameplay, which allows a player to visit and interact with other players very conveniently.

Analysis

Lens 7: Elemental Tetra

Aesthetics

One of the main reasons for the popularity of this game is it’s breathtaking aesthetics. The main goal of a life simulation game is to provide a relaxing gateway, an alternate reality where life is simple and perfect. ACNH gives players the perfect user experience, immersing us in a captivating world where you grow to be a part of. The vibrant colors and limitless choices makes this beautiful world exclusively yours. You can hear the wind blowing and the trees swaying, the waves crashing onto the beach as you pick up sea shells. Every detail of the game tingles your senses and transports you in this utopia.

Mechanics

The mechanics of the game are very simple. Equip an axe to chop trees down, carry a net to catch insects. The gameplay was meant to be as basic as possible to make the game relaxing.

Story

The beauty of ACNH is in how endless the opportunities. The story line is simple as well, decorate and develop your island from scratch, make new friends and enjoy the simplicity of this alternate reality.

Technology

The graphics are a much needed improvement from the previous edition back in 2013. This helped to increase the sensory experience of the game. In addition, this is the first time there is a multiplayer option, where you can mingle with friends and explore each other’s islands.

Lens 2: Lens of Essential Experience

The essential element of ACNH is transporting the player into a different reality, one free from worries and stress of the real world. The point is to create a relaxing gateway for the player to enjoy mindless fun, without a goal unlike in most traditional games. This gives the player to do anything he wants whenever he wants, giving him the freedom of choice to create his perfect world for his character to live in.

Lens 51: Lens of Imagination

The possibilities are endless in ACNH. Having a big imagination and the willingness to try new things will turn your deserted island into a lively paradise. By taking in inspirations from your daily lives, you can create the perfect world for you and your character to live in. Change the colors of your room to match your favorite palettes or grow a garden of your favorite flowers outside your house. Your world can only be as creative as you can be.

Lens 55: Lens of Visible Progress

The feeling of satisfaction of building up an empty, weed-filled deserted island into a perfect, vibrant paradise filled with bustling activities and adorable neighbors in ACNH is amazing. Knowing that the daily grind of collecting materials and intricate planning eventually led to your dream house and an island worthy of praise from your friends feels good. However, there is not much to do after that. ACNH tries to come up with fresh novel updates every now and then but I feel that it is inadequate to keep my attention.

Lens 75: Lens of Simplicity and Transcendence

The rules and gameplay of ACNH is as simple as it gets. This is to put the focus of the game on creating the perfect world without any stress. Add in the right amount of control for the player and the world can be anything he wants. This makes the experience much more joyful as more time is spent thinking what can be done instead of how to do it.

Description

Among Us is an online multiplayer social deduction game developed and published by American game studio Innersloth.

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/945360/Among_Us/

Lens #4: The Lens of Surprise:

Imagine that you are a Crewmate, working hard to complete your task…At this time a Impostor come from behind and kill you! A red assassin picture and sound effects can scare you, and the Impostor may be your best friend!

Lens #9: The Elemental Tetrad:

Lens #17: The lens of The Toy

• The game can even forget the goals. You can also play hide-and-seek with your friends, turn off the lights and enjoy the darkness.
• Among Us is easy to get started, the rules and goals are simple, the only thing you need to practise is to make up the story when you are a Impostor.

Lens #21: The lens of Flow

• Goals are different between Crewmates and Impostors. Even different Crewmates have different tasks to complete.
• Because that the game can win in different ways: identify and eliminate the Impostors, complete tasks around the map, sabotage and kill the Crewmates… If some players forget their tasks, the others can also win!

Lens #44: The lens of Cooperation

The Crewmates need to cooperate to win, if all the Crewmates play separate, the Impostors are easy to kill them and it’s hard for the Crewmates to recognize and expel the Impostors. But watch out! Not all the guys following you are good, the Impostors can gain your trust by not killing you.

Description

League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Riot Games. It is inspired by a modified version of Warcraft III:Defense of the Ancients (DOTA). The game is free-to-play, and is monetized through purchasable character customisation (skins, icons etc). The game is available on PCs (Windows/Mac), but has recently released a mobile version (LoL:Wild Rift). The following focuses on the PC version.

Link to game’s website: https://lol.garena.com/ 

Lens #9: The lens of the Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics:

• Team-based, 5vs5 MOBA game
• Extensive character and item choices (over 140 characters and different in-game items for the characters)
• Strategy and mechanically intensive (Character synergies/counters and quick decision making is required)

However, LoL is designed such that casual players or beginners are able to join in the fun as well. Players have item suggestions and tips to assist them in-game. Personally, I feel that this eases casual players into the game. As they play more and get better, they start to explore the deeper mechanics in-game and improve.

Story

LoL started out with a basic lore of the game, with players commanding champions to fight to avert a catastrophic war. 

• Lore expanded as the game became more successful; Branched out into alternate universes, such as the K-pop styled K/DA universe
• Such content was integrated to purchasable content, such as character skins

I feel that the lore makes each character more interesting than just an in-game avatar. It is also an opportunity for the developers to monetise on its success by catering to players who are also fans of similar genres.

Aesthetics

The map of the game is brightly lit which gives it a colourful, bright and visually appealing aesthetic. The character animations are carefully designed, especially certain skin editions that have special interactions in-game.

• True Damage Senna: Prestige Edition was a skin for the character Senna in the True Damage edition, and was designed in collaboration with Louis Vuitton, with the character carrying the LV branding.

Technology

LoL does not have intensive hardware requirements which makes the game easily accessible to a wide audience.

• 4GB RAM, 16GB memory space 
• Decent processor and GPU is sufficient for the game to run well

Overall, the 4 elements are integrated well to provide players a different experience each time they play the game. They can use different strategies, champions and playstyles to best their opponents. They can equip the champions with different skins to achieve unique in-game interactions.

Lens #21: The lens of flow

• Match making rating (MMR) ranks players and matches them to others with similar skillset
• The cycle of “tense and release” is felt when they improve, the game becomes easier (at the same MMR) but challenging at a higher MMR. 
• Goals of the game are clearly defined: Defeat the enemy’s Nexus.
• However, sometimes players are too distracted with their own goals in game: Making good plays and killing many enemies, for example.

It is frustrating to see that while it is a team game, players are too focused on their individual gains and lose out on the big picture sometimes. Often my teammates will not realise that focusing too much on fighting individually (while we can fight as a team) has caused them to lose their lead and fall behind in the game. 

Lens #34: The lens of skill

• As the game is mechanically intensive, players with better skills are able to perform better for the games
• Some skills required are: Champion mastery, communication, decision making skills, being able to consider opponents’ strategies
• Over time, players who play more and analyse their games tend to improve their skills.

Personally, I feel that the MMR system makes it fairer for players as they can play with others of different skillsets. It strikes a balance between the game being “too easy” and gives players a challenge to keep the game interesting.

Lens #39: The lens of meaningful choices

• The game provides a plethora of choices for the players. They can choose to secure objectives, neutral monsters, to hang back and get more experience (farming) or choose to fight their opponents
• Players have to weigh and choose the best choice which can help them secure a lead and snowball to victory

For example, my team prefers to secure buffs that can empower our team and let us push for a lead when we are able to. Else, our dominant strategy is to hang back and secure more gold and experience to better equip our champions so we can fight another time.

Lens #45: The lens of Competition vs Cooperation

• As aforementioned, LoL is a team-based game, yet players are sometimes too focused on their individual playstyles and being too competitive to forget the cooperation aspect of the game.
• They want to come out ahead of everyone in the game but forgot the rest of the team.
• However, I feel that at a higher MMR level, players generally understand the need for cooperation and communication, and are able to embody the appropriate skills required to win games.
• Experienced players are better able to balance the need for cooperation and competition which allows users to have fun on both fronts. They can cooperate with their team to win games and at the same time come out ahead of their opponents.

Dirty Bomb is a first-person team-based shooter with a strong emphasis on objectives and teamwork. Each match can have between 10 to 16 players, with smaller team sizes preferred for competitive play and larger ones for casual play. One team is the defenders, and one is the attackers. The attackers try to complete objectives on the map, and the defenders try to stop them.

The game is unfortunately no longer being actively developed, and has only a small player base of a few hundred veterans and some newbies, but it is still playable.

Official website: https://www.dirtybomb.com/
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/333930/Dirty_Bomb/

Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics

• First person team-based shooter.
• Objective-based gameplay.
• Character classes and abilities.
• Advanced movement mechanics such as long jumping, double jumping and wall jumping.

Story

• London is attacked with dirty bombs, and the Central Disaster Authority is created to deal with the fallout. A criminal group called Jackal starts disrupting their efforts and stealing valuable technology, leading to both sides hiring mercenaries to serve their interests.
• Nothing special, there is not much emphasis on the story in the game itself. Some snippets are mentioned sometimes in cutscenes before and after matches, and some map assets are themed, but besides that the focus is on gameplay.

Aesthetics

• Modern London, with some maps based around landmarks such as the Bank of London and the London Victoria station.
• Each character has a distinctive silhouette and look, which improves visibility and also looks good.
• Some objects are themed after the story, such as an escortable armoured vehicle being painted with the colours of one of the factions.

Technology

• Windows 7+.
• Unreal Engine 3.
• Requires a decent graphics card and CPU due to the game not being well optimised.

Lenses

Lens of Cooperation

Players can choose from a variety of mercenaries from the five classes: engineer, medic, fire support, assault and recon.

Each class is superior to the others in one aspect of the game, such as engineers completing objectives faster, and fire supports being able to resupply ammo and call in wide-area attacks for damage and area denial. All serve an important role, and a balance of classes must be present or the team is much less likely to win.

In the competitive scene, almost every team had 2 medics and 1 engineer at all times, with the other 2 slots being taken up by assaults, fire supports and recons depending on the map and the game state. For example, on the defending team, they might take an assault and a fire support in order to increase their firepower and have area denial capabilities. On the other hand, the attackers might take a recon in order to pick off the defenders safely before moving to do the objective.

Additionally, cooperation is facilitated via the quick chat system. Players can press ‘V’ to bring up a list of callouts, ranging from greetings, to asking for ammo, to taunting the enemy team. This allows players to simply quickly press a few buttons to instantly provide their team with information. For example, the keypresses V-2-1 results in a call for a medic in text chat as well as causing your character to call out.

Lens of Skill

Dirty Bomb is a skill-based game. Players must cultivate many skills such as movement, aim, timing and situational awareness, to name a few. All these skills are needed in order to become good at the game. To give an example, a player who simply runs to the objective will arrive slower than another who uses wall-jumping to boost their speed. Similarly, some shortcuts or spots on the map can only be accessed via advanced movement mechanics.

Dirty Bomb has a respawn system that is not commonly seen that adds an additional layer of complexity to the game. Instead of individual players having a death timer, such as needing to wait 3 seconds before respawning, there is a team-wide timer that constantly ticks. At the end of the timer, everyone downed or dead on the team can respawn in what is called a “spawn wave”.

Spawn waves affects the flow of the game, as players cannot rush blindly into combat or they risk being stuck waiting to respawn for a long time. Good players can take advantage of this system. When there is a long time before the next spawn wave, they play more defensively, and when the spawn wave is due in a few seconds, they push aggressively so even if they die they can be back in the action nearly instantly. Also, due to this system, if a player knows the enemy spawn wave timer, they can call down an airstrike just as the enemy leaves their spawn and loses their spawn protection, giving their team an advantage in the next fight.

Lens of Balance

While there are a few outliers at top-level play where communication is constant and relevant, at lower levels of play the roster of mercenaries is remarkably balanced. Each mercenary has their own strengths and weaknesses, and has counterplay to their abilities. For example, one medic can put up a dome-shaped shield that destroys all incoming projectiles such as grenades and artillery strikes, but the shield is easily destroyed by gunfire.

Looking away from character abilities, the weapons are mostly balanced well and are meaningful sidegrades to each other instead of upgrades. Also, all mercenaries are competent in combat, with even medics being able to take down assaults with proper positioning, ability use and aim.

Lens of Parallelism

Each objective has side objectives that make it easier to attack the main objective and prevent. For example, the attacking team might try to destroy a generator to open up an alternate path to the main objective. On the flip side, the defending team has to decide if they want to allocate resources to preventing this from happening. This adds further depth to the game.

Description:
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play open-world role playing game developed and published by MiHoYo. It features a fantasy environment and a battle system that uses different magical elements with different characters. It also features a gacha game system where you can pay to get new characters, weapons and other materials.

Link to official English website: https://genshin.mihoyo.com/en/home

Lens #4: The Lens of Surprise:
Being an open-world game, Genshin Impact contains many surprises which reside in the hidden puzzles and hidden achievement. Puzzles in Genshin Impact typically give chests which reward player resources required in the game. Some puzzles are not very obvious and may be overlooked if nobody is to talk about it. For example, one need to step on a series of rocks in a certain order to receive a chest, and the only clue given is just a tiny spark of light on the rock. There are also achievements that requires the player to certain task to get it, where it is also not stated in the game. Thus getting those hidden puzzles and hidden achievements bring out a sense of surprises as they lie in places player least expected.

Lens #9: The Elemental Tetrad:
Mechanics:
Players able to wander around the world by walking, running, swimming, climbing and gliding. They uses characters with their own unique elements which may work with other elements to perform better. Players level up by getting experience through exploration and quest, and their characters level up by using resources.
Story:
The main character is a dimension traveler who get stuck in the world of Teyvat due to a nameless god. He or she also loses contact with the other sibling and is on a journey to reunite with each other, accompanied by a companion named Paimon.
Aesthetic:
The game has an anime styled 3D graphic which bring out the fantasy feel of the world.
Technology:
Genshin Impact is made with Unity, where it allows cross platform gameplay between phones, PC and even PlayStation.

Lens #29: The Lens of Secrets:
Many players know and understand the current state of the game, but not many players are able to know the future content or even predict it, Hence the knowledge of the future content is a secret kept by MiHoYo, but still some players are to dive deep to uncover it, where they leak it to the public. With the knowledge of the future content, some players are able to plan on how to use their resources wisely and not be left behind. However, not all the leaks are correct as some are fake news. Therefore, some important leaks that are known to some may not be available to others, causing a sense of outrage as the leaks are kept in secret from them, making them feel unfair and unjustice.

Lens #36: The Lens of Chance:
Having a gacha game system, players are able get items with certain rates, and paying will help to increase the number of tries. Those items are categorized by number of stars they have, where items with five stars have the lowest rate and are the hardest to get. Hence there is randomness in getting those items where the lucky ones may get more than one would expect, where it all depends on chance.

Lens #53: The Lens of Balance:
Despite having a pay to win option in the gacha side, the game itself is still fairly balanced where the starting characters are good enough to complete most of the game contents. Some rare characters may seem to be overpowered, but those common characters can also be built to match the power of those rare characters. Hence Genshin Impact currently has its characters balance in control, where characters have their own unique skillsets and mechanics to learn and play.

Lens #78: The Lens of Story:
Genshin Impact contains many stories, where players can learn about the main character, side characters and even non-playable characters. Their stories itself bring out the secret in them and their surrounding, where players will understand the world of Teyvat more. Some stories may even lead to the other stories, where players can see the links between them all.

Overall Genshin Impact is a game where the exploration of the world of Teyvat is never-ending, and even more will be revealed in the future.

Description

Justice Online is an MMORPG developed and published by the Chinese company Netease Games. It features an expansive open world and a real-time combat system involving multiple classes and skills. There is a huge plethora of in-game activities to choose from, ranging from battling to fishing to making friends with NPCs, and countless more.

Link to official site: https://n.163.com/

Lens #9: The Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics

• The player can navigate the open world by walking, flying, or riding mounts.
• In combat, the player presses keys to execute skills, which have cooldowns.
• Players can choose from a variety of goals, but a primary measure of game progression is one’s level and “combat score”, which is determined by experience points, gear, skill levels, etc.

Story

• The player roleplays as the protagonist of a main storyline set in the Chinese Song Dynasty.
• The storyline is relatively linear with branches based on player-selected options that can affect minor outcomes. This grants some degree of player autonomy even though the overall flow of the story remains unchanged by player decisions.
• There is a sense of suspense as the story is concerned with slowly uncovering the mystery of what happened to the player’s village, which was sacked when he was a child.

Aesthetics

• The game has highly detailed, realistic 3D graphics which help to craft an immersive experience.
• Maps are designed in a style conforming to a reimagined version of the historical Song Dynasty.
• The beautiful maps make it such that simply exploring the world and capturing screenshots can be an exciting mode of gameplay by itself.

Technology

• A good CPU and graphics card is needed to render the realistic 3D graphics.
• There are different graphics settings available. Hence, players’ experiences of the game aesthetics can differ significantly depending on the quality of their hardware.

Lens #52: Economy

• The in-game economy is complex. Players can earn money by battling monsters or participating in other activities like crafting, fishing, and gathering herbs. This motivates players who are unwilling to pay for in-game currency to do more in-game activities to earn money. However, the activities may get dull as they are usually mindless and repetitive. For instance, gathering herbs simply involves clicking on a plant and waiting for the countdown to finish.
• There is a central marketplace for players to sell their goods for money, as well as the option to trade with other players. This gives rise to a dynamic economy driven by supply and demand. The virtual economy thus recreates the allure of “real-world” shopping.

Lens #55: Visible Progress

• Most aspects of the game have clearly visible markers of progress. For instance, combat ability is quantified using an overall score made up of separate components. One example is the gear score, which can be improved by upgrading weapons and armour. Besides character level, the game also encodes levels for non-combat related abilities like gathering and crafting.
• The process of powering up a character is very gradual and many players spend years grooming a single character. These visible markers provide a sense of satisfaction as even a slight power-up is reflected clearly in numbers. They also serve as a basis for comparison among players, and are an important driving force behind continued playing of the game.

Lens #84: The World

• Aided by powerful rendering techniques, the open world contains many large and beautiful maps. They are designed to appeal rather than to be completely realistic, hence players may find themselves marveling at the scenery when travelling.
• There are different methods of travelling, which enable the player to experience the world from different points of view. For instance, the flying ability allows one to appreciate the view from high above ground.
• The world is also interactive. As players explore the world, they can pick up side stories and missions which serve as backdrops to the main storyline. These are optional and can be done at any time, thus encouraging the player to explore at their own leisure.

Lens #85: The Avatar

• The advanced character customization system allows every player to craft their own unique avatar. There are also many outfits and accessories which can be bought or procured in-game. The emphasis on customizability is very strong, going down to details like makeup and body height/girth. Hence, there is ample opportunity for the player to construct an ideal avatar that appeals to them and expresses their identity.
• However, the system mostly caters to common Asian standards of beauty, and may alienate people who do not identify with those standards.

Lens #98: Community

• There are various in-game structures for building communities, including a guild system and guild events. Players are forced to cooperate with others as certain rewards can only be obtained by fighting together as a group. This is frustrating but also rewarding if one manages to clear a mission with their team.