Week 2 Game play blog - Never Alone

Did linear storytelling your chosen game engage and excite you as a player? Why/why not?

Never Alone is a unique side scroller platform game that involves a lot of storytelling through narration and videos embedded into an accessible library. These videos are unlocked as the player progresses through the levels and would like to learn new things about the game and it's relation to the real world it's based off. I found this new way of telling a story through game play quite interesting, as it clearly shows you it's relation to a real world culture and landscape and they effectively built the game to make you feel immersed in this realistic environment. The only thing I didn't find as engaging was interrupting the game play to watch the videos that taught the player about various aspects of the culture/environment and the animals. I felt that it dragged me away from the immersion everything I came back I was slightly disorientated.

Do the story nodes in your chosen games work well to support game play and game play objectives? Why/why not?

I think that in a way, the story nodes really compliment the game play because it gives you a lot more information about different aspects of the game. For example when you receive the bolas a video is unlocked telling you the history of the bolas and how they were used in their culture. This extra information about things you are using in game gives you more knowledge that I don't think could have been explained that in depth if not for the educational videos. I think that this extra knowledge that the videos give you make you feel more immersed because you have a better understanding of the world inside the game and I think that it definitely supports this game and it's style.