53-409 Game Design

As any game designer knows, having a smooth difficulty curve is important in a game, as it makes the game flow well and allows the player to consistently be challenged. In linear games, implementing a proper difficulty curve is simple. Each subsequent part of the game just needs to be harder than the previous one. You can see this in action in any high quality linear game. For instance, in Portal, each test chamber gets harder and harder, culminating a boss fight. Because you know that the player has to follow a certain sequence, a game designer can up the difficulty as the player progresses through each area. However, in a non-linear game, where the player can go out of sequence or go anywhere they want, a smooth difficulty curve suddenly becomes tricky to implement. Let’s look at the solutions game designers have come up with to try and solve this problem.

Constant Difficulty

One of the simplest ways to implement a non-linear difficulty curve is to not have one at all. That’s right, have all the content be at roughly the same difficulty for the entire game. This is the tactic used by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While there are pockets of stronger monsters, the majority of the game is about the same difficulty. Each divine beast is similar in difficulty, as is every shrine. The advantages of using this implementation is that it is simple to do and gives the player a feeling of getting stronger and mastering the game. However, in games with character progression, designers run the risk of the game becoming too easy, as the player can level or gear their character to the point where they can trivially complete content. This solution works in Breath of the Wild because there isn’t much character progression and good gear will eventually break, so the game becomes easy much more slowly. Becoming stronger is also tied to mastery of the game, so there is much more satisfaction to reaching the point of trivializing content. It also is a great fit for Breath of the Wild’s focus on exploration and discovery. Since the difficulty is constant, it enables the player to explore any part of the world at any time they want, giving the player true freedom.

Scaled Content

Another simple way to have a difficulty curve is to scale all the content with the player. For instance, in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as the player levels up, so do all the enemies. This way, every fight and dungeon remains difficult regardless of the order visited. In contrast to having a constant difficulty, scaling content allows for the player to constantly be challenged and prevents content from being trivialized. However, because all the enemies get harder as the player levels up, the feeling of progression and gaining strength is mitigated. The player will always have trouble defeating enemies, which prevents them from feeling truly strong. So, while this method prevents the game from feeling too easy at later points in the game, it also doesn’t feel great to progress.

Gated Progression

Instead of scaling content, a game can gate content instead. One common method typically used by metroidvanias is the idea of gating content behind player progression. This allows designers to put the harder areas behind locks requiring a certain item or ability.

While the player can explore and do some content out of order, there is an overarching linear progression of items or abilities that unlock additional, harder content. Compared to the previous two strategies, which allow for fully non-linear gameplay, games using gated progression are only semi-linear, allowing players to explore and complete some content in the order they want, but there is still some linear progression required.

Difficulty Tiers

Having tiers of difficulty allows the player to complete content out of order while still maintaining a general difficulty curve. In games with difficulty tiers, the player explores a group of similarly difficult content in any order before progressing to the next group of harder content. One example of this is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In A Link to the Past, after the initial linear sequence, the map opens up allowing the player to complete the 3 dungeons in any order. Following another linear sequence, the player can choose between 7 dungeons before finally beating the last dungeon and the game. All of the dungeons in each of the tiers are similar in difficulty, which allows the game to have an overarching difficulty curve. However within a difficulty tier, the player often experiences the same problems as constant difficulty: the game starts getting too easy near the end of a tier. Similarly to gated progression, games that use difficulty tiers are also semi-linear, offering non-linear gameplay within each tier, but the progression between tiers remains linear.

Natural Gating

In contrast to gated progression, where specific skills or items are required to continue, natural gating discourages players from entering higher level areas by simply making those areas hard. In Dragon’s Dogma, it is possible to wander into areas with monsters far above the player’s level. As a result, players who find that area too hard will avoid it until they are a higher level. However, the area is not forcibly blocked off, like in gated progression, as a skilled enough player can still complete the area. Natural gating allows players to still complete content out of order if they wish, but makes it difficult. Natural gating also has the side effect of allowing players to self-regulate their desired difficulty, as a player wanting more of a challenge can enter a high level area out of sequence. Compared to gated progression, games with natural gating remain non-linear as players can still do almost any content in the order they want.

Mastery Gating

The last way to have a difficulty curve in a non-linear game is hard to pull off. As you can tell by its name, mastery gating locks content behind player mastery and knowledge. The best example of this is a game called The Witness. The Witness is a non-linear puzzle game, allowing the player to do a variety of different puzzles in any order. However, some areas are locked by hard puzzles that require the player to have mastered or understood the mechanics of the puzzle. One excellent example of when a player experiences this is at the very beginning of the game. After a player leaves the tutorial area, they fairly quickly find this large puzzle with a bunch of black and white dots on it.

Without the knowledge of what the black and white dots mean and the mastery of the puzzles with black and white dots, the player cannot solve that puzzle. Instead, the player must explore the rest of the available puzzles and come back when they have mastered the black and white dot puzzles. Mastery gating is similar to natural gating, but instead of discouraging players from entering areas through high level enemies, it discourages players from entering by requiring mastery of a mechanic found elsewhere.

There are a variety of ways to add a difficulty curve to a non-linear game, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. Of course, some of the methods fit some genres better than others. For instance, I don’t think mastery gating works on much else other than a puzzle game or a platformer. Gated progression works best in metroidvanias and scaled content works best in RPGs. By understanding the different ways mastery curves work in non-linear games, you can pick the one that best fits your games. Or you might even discover a new way to implement non-linear difficulty curves. Who knows?

One of the most interesting games I have had the pleasure of playing is a small game called Atlas Reactor. It’s a 4v4 team turn-based tactics game where players play as various characters with different skills. However, what makes it interesting is the fact that all moves are chosen then executed simultaneously. As a result, the game is based on players having to predict what the other players are going to do. Let’s look at how the game is designed to give players interesting ways to “out-predict” each other and engage in mindgames and explore how it can be applied to create prediction battles in other games.

Sequencing Actions

Each turn of Atlas Reactor starts with all the players choosing their action for the turn and where to move (players can also choose to forgo their action to move farther). After everyone has chosen, game executes those moves. The execution of moves is divided into 4 phases: Prep, Dash, Blast, and Move. These phases serve to sequence moves and execute them in specific orders. First is the Prep phase, where buffs, shields, and traps are applied. Then comes the dash phase, where all movement actions are executed. After is the Blast phase, where all attack actions are applied. Finally, in the Move phase, players move to where they chose.

The order was chosen to allow players to gain advantages when they properly predict what the opponents are going to do. By having the Prep phase first, it allows players to shield players they think are going to take damage or place traps where you think opponents are going to move through, either with a normal move or a movement action. Then having the Dash phase before Blast phase allows the design of movement actions that can be used to dodge attacks. Having the Move phase last allows players to see where the enemies end up and start the turn knowing where the enemies will be for the Blast Phase, unless they use a movement action to dodge attacks. This is important, because having the Move phase happen before attacks would require the players to predict where the enemies might move to, which would be nigh impossible. By having the Move phase be last, it limits the necessary predictions players have to make to a more manageable level while still retaining depth and complexity. In addition, this 4 phase system creates opportunities for counterplay, punish, and limiting of options, which are important concepts we will cover later.

The important takeaways from this, is that for predictive gameplay to work, a game needs to limit what a player has to predict to avoid overwhelming them. There also needs to be reasons for choosing to do one action over the others, so a player can try to logic through what the opponent might think. For example, in fighting games such as Street Fighter, predicting the moves of your opponent is an important part of gameplay. Even though you can move in many directions in Street Fighter and other fighting games, players understand that the opponent has to move towards them to attack. This limits what players need to predict from predicting the opponent’s actual movement to simply how they are going to approach for the attack. At the same time, the player can reason what the opponent might do in certain situations. If the opponent is backed into a corner, the player might be wary of the opponent trying to jump over them and attack from behind. On the other hand, if the game has too little to predict or lacks reasons to choose one action over another, it would get stale and devolve into luck. Consider the classic game Rock, Paper, Scissors. The goal is to predict the opponent’s choice and choose the one that beats it. However, you only have one thing to try and predict, with only three options. On top of that, there isn’t a good reason to choose rock over paper, or paper over scissors. As a result, most games of RPS come down to luck and pure guessing.

Counterplay and Punish

Another important concept is counterplay. Almost every action in a predictive game should have counterplay. What this means is that there needs to be some other action a player can take to beat that action. In Atlas Reactor, every skill has counterplay. Most attack skills can be beaten by using a movement skill to dodge it or using a shield to block the damage. Players can focus on another enemy instead of a shielded one, use the unstoppable buff to stop knockback, or not move to avoid tripping a trap. All of these provide opportunities for players to outplay their opponent by predicting their moves. In a predictive game, you want to give the player many ways to gain an advantage through correct predictions.

Related to counterplay is the idea of punishes. In contrast to counterplay, where a correct prediction can nullify the opponent’s move, a punish disadvantages the enemy for being too predictable. One skill in Atlas Reactor that showcases this is a skill called “The Big One”. The skill drops a giant marker on the ground the turn a player uses it, but drops the next turn. The center of the blast deals a lot of damage compared to other skills. If a player correctly predicts that the enemy will move into a commonly used location and uses this skill on it, the skill punishes the opponent by dealing massive damage. The purpose of counterplay and punish is to reward players for correct predictions. Counterplay does this by negating the opponent’s move, which could have used a lot of resources, while punishes directly harm the opponent in some way. If the game does not reward correct predictions with advantages, players will be less inclined to try to predict.

What Are Your Options?

The final concept to cover is a player’s options. A player’s options are what they can feasibly do at some point in time. A player’s options change depending on their position, resources, and other variables. Above, we talked about limiting what a player has to predict. This means limiting their available options. In Atlas Reactor, you know that all players can only move during the Dash or Move phase. Movement actions activate during the Dash phase, which allows players to use them to dodge attacks, but they have a cooldown. This means that, when a player has recently used a movement action, they have less options as they cannot use that movement action. This demonstrates an important mechanic for predictive games, which is the limiting of options. The player needs to have ways to forcibly limit other player’s options. By limiting a player’s options, other players gain an advantage. The less options a player has, the more easily other players can predict their move. Therefore, a move that forcibly limits another players options is great for two things: punish, and helping a player make easier or even guaranteed predictions. In fact, a common strategy in Atlas Reactor is to try to limit the opponent’s options by burning their movement actions early. By doing so, opponents can only move during the Move phase, severely limiting their defensive options. This also means that the opponents can no longer dodge any attack, ensuring that the players’ attacks will hit. While this mechanic has the downside of having a negative feedback loop, it allows for skill expression and helps close games while keeping the potential for a comeback.

In conclusion, prediction-based games like Atlas Reactor rely on several core concepts and mechanics to make the game engaging and keep players interested in trying to “out-predict” other players. These include limiting necessary predictions within a range, having counterplay and punish, and having ways to limit other players’ options. They allow for skill expression by rewarding players for correctly predicting the opponent’s moves which is what makes these kind of games fun. Just remember to keep these principles in mind if you want to create a game or mechanic that relies on mindgames and prediction.

One of my favorite things in games, especially RPGs, is the ability to customize your character to your playstyle. Some games do this by offering various classes to play, sometimes with subclasses, awakenings, job advancements, or similar. However, outside of some limited skill point allocation, these systems tend to be somewhat limited in their customization, as each class is typically carefully designed by the developers to follow certain playstyles. Some games give the player multiple customizable systems that interact with each other and leave the player to design their own playstyle. Some of the most well-known examples of these kind of games include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Path of Exile. While highly customizable characters certainly have their benefits, they also have a lot of downsides, both in their fundamental design and in their development cost.

Can There Be Too Much Customization?

Spoiler alert: the answer is yes. The thing is, adding more customization to a game gives decreasing returns and increasing costs on the part of the developer and after a certain point, starts harming the game instead of helping. Games like Path of Exile risk confusing or overwhelming the player with its immense amount of customization available. Just look at the size of its passive tree:

In addition to the massive amount of choices presented every level up, skills in Path of Exile are tied to skill gems, which are slotted into the gear players wear, allowing any character to use any skill. On top of that, slots in equipment can be linked to each other, allowing support gems, which modify linked skills, to change the properties of skills. A new player would definitely be overwhelmed by the amount of choices available. Fortunately, problems like these can be solved by adding systems to automatically allocate skill or passive points or by following another player’s build.

The other problem with lots of customization is that it is hard to design, requiring a lot of development work dedicated to balancing. With a lot of highly customizable systems working with each other, sometimes unintended interactions occur, which can sometimes create cool playstyles that the developers did not anticipate. On the other hand, it can also create overpowered builds which players are very good at finding. The problem with having an overpowered or best build is that it dominates, causing most players to use that build, leaving most of the customization untouched. This type of playstyle of choosing the strongest build is more prevalent in multiplayer games but still exists to some extent in singleplayer games as well. This is the case in Skyrim, where the best build is a stealth archer, which allows the player to one shot most mobs and clear content with ease. Of course, a big portion of Skyrim players do not build a stealth archer because they want to roleplay or are more willing to choose their own playstyle in a singleplayer game. In contrast, in a multiplayer game like Hearthstone, a card game, the strongest decks run rampant. In the past, there existed a deck called “Pirate Warrior” that, thanks to newly released cards, did extremely well against most other decks and was swiftly found to be the single strongest deck at the time when there are usually multiple “strongest” decks. As a result, for the following months until some cards played in the deck were nerfed, the overwhelming majority of players played that deck.

The best solution to this problem is to have multiple builds that have similar power levels. This requires a lot of balancing work on the part of the developer to achieve this goal. In addition, the more customization the developer adds, the more they have to balance. This is why most games stick with a class system or limit the amount of customization to the amount the developers are willing to balance.

Creating Impactful Passives

A common customization method used in games that is often done wrong is the passive tree or even passives in general. A lot of the time, passives are simple stat increases. The problem with passives being stat increases is that stat increases don’t feel very impactful. In fact, typically the player does not notice stat increases. This leads to a feel-bad moment when the player allocates points to or chooses a passive and feels like their character plays no different. Passives instead should have unique effects that boost the character in some way or even potentially changes the playstyle of the character. This way, when the player gains the passive, they can notice a tangible difference. This is the reason why League of Legends changed their rune system, which was previously a bunch of small stat increases, to passives with unique playstyle changing effects. For instance, one rune causes the player to do burst damage after hitting three abilities, encouraging the player to hit three abilities before backing off and waiting for the cooldown of the rune to finish, while another rune allows the player to activate a temporary out of combat movement speed buff, encouraging the player to move around the map and ambush the enemy.

In the case of Path of Exile, due to the sheer size of the passive tree as well as the amount of passive points a player receives, most of the passive tree is stat increases. Only the large important nodes have game-changing effects. Because of this, leveling up in Path of Exile feels more like incrementally progressing through your build with the occasional playstyle change rather than getting a new effect to test out every level like in Skyrim. As a result, leveling up in Path of Exile feels lackluster, but this is partially counteracted by how noticeably customizable the skills are. However, while Path of Exile’s system leads to less impactful leveling, it allows for a much more flexible result.

Creative Freedom

While Skyrim’s system of having no set classes and being able to learn any passive allows for unique builds, it is limited by its unchangeable set of skills. Every sword swung, arrow shot, and spell cast remain the same between every build. Each build only changes how these skills are used. In addition, the passives are in individual trees, with more powerful passives at the top, incentivizing specialization but limiting options for customization. While that is enough to build your own playstyle, some people want more customization so they can get more creative with characters. This is where Path of Exile’s massive customization system comes in.

Thanks to its passive tree and extensive skill modification system, builds in Path of Exile can range from a standard tanky face-smashing warrior to setting yourself on fire and doing ludicrous amounts of damage to everyone around you including yourself while surviving through life leech. Essentially, it allows players to get really creative with how they want to build a character and playstyle, which is one of its biggest selling points. However, like previously mentioned, it does have its problems with lackluster leveling and overwhelming complexity to new players.

In conclusion, adding the ability to customize characters to your playstyle allows for a lot of creative freedom for the players, but requires a lot of balancing on the developers end. In addition, the various systems of customization has to be designed well to give players a proper feeling of progression. If you don’t have the ability or time, then a normal class system allows players to partially pick their playstyle while avoiding most of the work associated with creating customizable playstyles. However, another thing to note is that customizable playstyles are mostly appreciated in RPGs and may not fit as well in other genres.

Narrators are commonly used in books and movies to tell a set story, and are usually some intangible observer or a character in the story itself. However, video games are an interactive medium, with each player acting differently. While most video games have chosen to forgo narrators, many still have a narrator. So how can these games have narrators when players interact with the medium and could potentially change the story? Let us explore some of these games and see the various ways narrators are used in video games.

Narration in Cutscenes

A common use of a narrator in video games is using them similarly to how they are used in films. In the case of video games, this means having narration during the only noninteractive parts of a game: cutscenes. An example of a game that does this is Dishonored 2. In between every mission, the main character, Emily or Corvo depending on who you chose, narrates part of the story in an animated cutscene.

Normally, cutscenes are used in video games to get information or story across to the player quickly and efficiently. A narrated cutscene can convey information and story even faster and clearer. By narrating the cutscene, there will be no confusion over what is happening in the cutscene. In addition, when the narrator is an in-game character, such as in Dishonored 2 where it is the main character, the narration also can serve to reveal more about the narrator character. For example, in the opening cutscene for Emily, she remarks “All these years later, am I the ruler my mother wanted me to be?” This shows that Emily is insecure about her ability and accomplishments as empress. While the developers of the game could have chosen many different ways to express this part of Emily’s character, a narrated cutscene remains one of the quickest and easiest.

Narrators as Storytellers

Another common use of a narrator is to have the narrator tell the story. In some games, the narrator is used as way to tell the story clearly when a developer is low on resources or doesn’t know better ways to tell the story. In other cases, using a narrator to tell the story is a design decision made to have the story told in a specific way in order to enhance the experience, as using a narrator can allow a game to avoid using cutscenes or text. One such game that does this is the indie game, Thomas was Alone.

Thomas was Alone is a puzzle platformer where you play as various colored rectangles with different abilities. What stands out about this game is the masterful use of the narrator to tell the story about these rectangles. Through the narrator, you learn about each of the rectangles’ personality as well as their overarching story to find their purpose in life. Soon, you begin to think about these rectangles as human-like characters with their own feelings and aspirations. By having a narrator tell the story, the developer was able to give colored shapes complex characterization and make them charming. The use of the narrator makes an otherwise boring game about jumping rectangles suddenly become about this struggle for newly self-aware artificial intelligences to find a reason for their existence.

Interactive Narrators

The unique thing about video games as a medium is the fact that players can interact with it. Some games extend this uniqueness to narrators as well, creating a narrator that can only exist in a video game because the narrator reacts to player actions. One of the best examples of a narrator commenting on what the player does is Bastion, an action RPG by Supergiant Games.

The narrator in Bastion tells the story of the Kid, who is on a quest to fix the Bastion, a structure capable of restoring the breaking world. Using a narrator in a game like this helps keep the flow of the game smooth by avoiding the use of cutscenes and text, which can create unnecessary pauses in gameplay. In addition, the narrator remarks on some of the actions the player does, such as rushing through areas, taking it slow, falling off, and struggling against monsters, and tells it like it was part of the story. This makes the narrator feel more like an extension of the game and makes the game and player actions feel more of a part of the story.

Subversion of the Narrator Role

Our previous explorations of the narrator in video games covered their use in telling a story and making the player feel like part of the story. But all of these narrators simply told a story and the player was forced to follow it. What if the player could ignore the narrator? Choose to intentionally go in the wrong direction, or explore routes not covered in the story, or do other ridiculous things? These are the kinds of questions The Stanley Parable set out to answer.

In The Stanley Parable, you control Stanley as he walks around the office and tries to figure out the mystery of why all of his coworkers have disappeared. Or at least, that is what the narrator wants you to think the purpose of the game is. At the start of the game, the narrator begins telling the story of Stanley, and tells us what Stanley does. However, soon the player is faced with a quandary. The narrator tells us that Stanley walked through the door on the right, however, you, as the player, could also make Stanley walk through the door on the left. There are various other similar decisions to be made as the narrator tries to get you to go back on track towards the “proper” story.

In this game, the narrator is not just there to tell the story, but also there to intentionally provoke players and force them to make decisions on whether to obey. What is otherwise a normal linear story suddenly becomes an exploration as you see how the narrator reacts to you going off the path at various places. In fact, what is interesting about The Stanley Parable, is that the narrator is used as a gameplay element and can be interacted with, rather than being an observer that simply reveals more of the story or notes what the player does.

As you can see, there are many ways to use a narrator in a video game. Some games will use narrators as a vehicle to deliver the story, while others use it to immerse the player in the game. More experimental games explore what narrators in video games can do and what purposes they can serve. The role narrators play in games is varied, but they are an important tool that developers can use as part of their game.

Ace Attorney is a popular and commercially successful series of visual novel adventure games about being a lawyer and defending your client. But wait, you may think, how is being a lawyer fun? As demonstrated by the series’ success, not only was the series able to make being a defense attorney fun, but also able to make trials tense and exciting, despite being a visual novel. I will explore how Ace Attorney accomplishes this by looking at their innovative game mechanics, sound, story, and use of game flow.

Contradictions and Objections

The Ace Attorney games are always split into two phases: investigation and courtroom trials. The investigation phase plays similarly to a point and click adventure game, where the player examines various locations and talk to people to gain evidence and clues for the trial. Investigations are admittedly not as exciting but they provide hints to the upcoming trial, develop characters, and foreshadow story elements. The investigations also serve as a relaxation period in between each day of a trial.

The second phase, the courtroom trials, are where the games really shine, thanks to an innovative game mechanic: finding contradictions. Multiple times during a trial, the player has to cross-examine witnesses, which involves carefully reading each of their statements and pressing them for more information. When the player sees a statement which contradicts evidence that the player has, the player presents the evidence that it contradicts. The mechanic of finding contradictions is similar to solving a puzzle and makes the act of uncovering witnesses’ lies fun and interesting. However, this mechanic mainly serves as a base upon which the other elements of the games build on to create the tension and excitement.

The Sound of the Court

The sound and music of Ace Attorney is not only superb, but also greatly enhances the experience of playing the games. A lot of the courtroom music is composed to create tension and suspense and since most of the time the player is being pressured by the opposition and in a bad situation, it gives the feeling that the player is surviving by the narrowest of margins. Furthermore, when the player presents the correct evidence to the contradictory statement, the music stops, which makes the player feel less pressured and more confident.

In addition, when the character the player plays as starts going down a line of logic that completely refutes the opposition’s argument, some of the series’ most iconic tracks play. These tracks are epic-sounding tracks composed to build hype and make the player feel like a total badass. Combined with the player’s character verbally pressuring the opposition and turning the situation around, these moments give the player a feeling of pride and accomplishment.

On top of using music to improve the experience of being a lawyer, the series also uses sound effects to subtly and not so subtly make the games more exciting. When a cross-examination begins, the screen shows the player’s character and the opposition in a fighting game versus screen style and plays a sword unsheathing sound, subtly making the player think of a fighting game. This makes the player subconsciously associate cross-examinations with a fighting game, making it seem more exciting than it actually is. Both the player’s character and the opposing side always loudly shouts “Objection!” (or a line unique to that character used for the same purpose) whenever they refute a point, and it is the only voiced line in the entirety of the first four games. Later installments in the series began adding in voice acting for cutscenes, but “Objection!” remains the only voiced line outside of cutscenes. The voice line is played in tandem with a large comic style speech bubble covering the entire screen, which adds a lot of energy to the court. By making the court more lively, the player is more likely to get excited while playing the game.

Solving Mysteries … in Court!

Ace Attorney’s cases are best described as being similar to a mystery novel. The player is given a bunch of clues, but is constantly held in suspense until the true murderer is revealed. There often are red herrings and twists to keep the player constantly guessing who the true culprit is. The story, like mystery novels, is written to hook the player in and intrigue them, making the want to play more so they can solve the “mystery”. However, in contrast to mystery novels, where you just read about the mystery, one of the most compelling parts of Ace Attorney is that the player actually gets to “solve” the mystery. The story is linear and the solution is singular and preprogrammed, but the gameplay mechanic of finding contradictions and choosing the right evidence to present makes the player feel like they are the one solving the mystery. By making lawyering like solving a mystery, the games make players excited about the case and finding out the true culprit.

The main story, however, is more normal, with character development arcs and regular pacing, which serves to connects the cases together and tell an overarching story. By having a main story told by individual cases, the player is kept interested by the mystery elements and, at the same time, grows attached to the characters. Not only does this keep the player interested throughout one game, but it keeps them wanting more, which is one of the reasons why the Ace Attorney series as a whole is so popular.

Perpetual Underdog

In order to keep trials tense and thrilling, Ace Attorney puts the player in a constant back and forth battle with the opposition and keeps the player’s side in a constant state of near defeat. Not only do most trials start out with the player on the verge of losing the trial, but the opposition constantly shuts down any advantages the player gains and always seems to be several steps ahead. By keeping the player always losing, Ace Attorney keeps the player tense and excited. However, always being in a losing state is not very fun, which is why the player, through the finding contradictions mechanic, is able to push forward before being blown back. This back and forth repeats itself throughout every trial to keep the player feeling like they are moving forward yet constantly losing at the same time. This culminates in a final push, where the player finally proves the true culprit guilty and feels very accomplished having achieved a huge turnabout.

Conclusion

The Ace Attorney series is able to create riveting gameplay out of being a lawyer through a well-crafted blend of game mechanics, sound, story, and flow. By designing a mechanic that allows the player to feel like they are solving a mystery and writing mysteries for the player to solve, Ace Attorney keeps the player intrigued and wanting to see the resolution. Combined with the soundtrack and the seemingly constant losing state, the player is kept on the edge of their seat as they play through the trials, giving them a thrilling experience. The Ace Attorney series is very well put-together and the cohesiveness of all its systems is what makes it shine.