For this critical play, I played Nox Escape Adventure by Everbyte for iOS. Over the course of the game, the player uses a myriad of interaction loops and arcs to progress through the story and solve one mystery at a time. I think something that Nox does really well is providing a wide range of loops and arcs in terms of frequency, which provides the game with more than a simple point-and-click exercise. Overall, I think the loops and arcs are done well to support an evoked and embedded narrative within the game.
One of the first loops that the player is introduced to is the touch to interact mechanic. While there may be multiple points of interest, they may not all be used in a linear fashion, or even used at all. For example, when the player wakes up in the cell at the beginning, many there are a couple of POIs, but some of them are useless (the window), some of them are locked behind progression (the bars and lock), and some of them are immediately react (getting the bone pick out of the bucket). Through the feedback, the player can update their mental model to reflect the situation in a way that enhances the mystery aspect of the game, as it becomes clear that it is not a linear game, but rather in a true mystery sense, that there will be dead ends and parts that make sense only later down the line. Since this a very frequent loop, the game has made sure that it is easy to master (touching the phone screen is hopefully something that smartphone users are accustomed to).
Another loop is the inventory mechanic. The user is first introduced to it when collecting the bone from the pail to use later for picking the lock to the cell. This loop crucially updates the player’s mental model in a way that reflects the backtracking nature of the game: by having this inventory, players become aware that the game is also about finding spurious connections between otherwise completely isolated mini-puzzles within the game. This loop also helps with tightening the gameplay, as puzzles are more dependent on each other, and it feels more cohesive rather than a series of brain teasers. Since this is not as frequent as the touch to interact loop, this loop is slightly more abstracted, hidden away in a menu, or only to appear in places where an inventory item can be used.
Moving to an arc, I would consider the major plot points to be an arc. The game is also designed in a way where the arcs are chained together, like what was said in the reading, to engage the player further. Unlike a loop, an arc are simpler and do not require decision making. I think this is reflected in the fact that starting from the mental model, the user is already acquainted with the basic mechanics of the game, and thus can take the action immediately. Furthermore, there is no update to the mental model because of this action, the crucial that separates arcs from loops. While it may be counterintuitive to state something like this, I think when you apply Cook’s steps in stripping down the game to its core loops and arcs, these artifacts that only serve to advance the plot actually are “useless.” They, unlike other collectables, are there to reveal what the game is about, and do nothing in the grand scheme of actually completing the game mechanically. Thus, there is no updating that the user gains from interacting with these key items, even if it is the narrative centerpiece of the game. As this happens very infrequently, these disappear once the player reads through the dialogue. This phenomenon also shows that there is no mental model to be updated, as its ephemerality is reinforced by the gameplay.
As I stated in the first paragraph, I believe that this game has both an evoked and an embedded narrative, both bolstered by the loops and arcs. The evoked narrative comes from the preconceived notions regarding the setting as well as the touch to interact loop. First, the multiroom mansion with a cell paints an eerie picture, as there is often a haunted mansion archetype in the media. This is corroborated by the two loops, as touch to interact loop lets the player learn that not everything is or should be interactable, something that definitely is true when the player is plopped down in a creepy mansion with random axes (just one thankfully) thrown around. Thus, the player, even without the plot points, already develops an uneasy feeling from intruding into a place where they should not be and knowing that they probably shouldn’t be messing around with everything in the mansion.
The embedded narrative is the more obvious narrative. The story about childhood trauma is clear as day through the key items, something that is purely propped up by the arc I outlined two paragraphs above. It is true that this narrative could not exist entirely and still be a functional game, albeit a much shallower one about waking up randomly in a mansion, destroying and vandalizing property, refusing to elaborate, and leaving. However, having this narrative adds another layer to the gameplay, such as providing reasoning as to why the father’s study would be padlocked, etc.
