One game I used to love playing was the archery game on Wii Sports Resort.
At the technical level (both mechanics and dynamics), the player holds their remote in one hand and nunchuck in the other hand and presses a series of buttons to pull the “bowstring” back and aim the arrow to hit a target. The varying wind that impacts the path of the arrow and distances away from the target made the game difficult to master. As with archery in real life, the closer you get to the center of the target, the more points you can get. There were also hidden targets on the island that could most often not be seen but can be found in online tutorials for the game; these targets are difficult to find and hard to hit, but you could get extra points for doing so. Players’ turns did not impact each others’ but ultimately someone would come out on top in terms of points.
The core aesthetics at play are sensation, fantasy, challenge, and discovery. There are satisfying sounds that are played when you shoot the arrow and hit the target that make the game appealing on a sensory level; I can still remember the sounds vividly even though I haven’t played the game in years. The fantasy of this game revolves around the premise that you are on a resort island performing leisure activities at a high level. A key part of what makes the game fun is the challenge of hitting targets perfectly in the middle over several rounds. This is hard to master, even if you’ve played a perfect round before, because there are varying difficulty options you can choose. The discovery aspect was in the form of the hidden targets, as I also mentioned previously.
