For my Walking Sim critical play, I decided to play Journey. Journey is a game made by Thatgamecompany in 2012, and its target audience is anyone ages 6 and above.
I didn’t know anything about this game, however the introduction into the game really stuck with me. As soon as I clicked on “New Journey”, I felt as if I was teleported into a movie scene. The game brings you to the “first level” where you need to find a way to reach some pillars in the distance. What the game designers did really well was to attract the player’s attention through light. The shinier the object, the more of a desire the player will have to reach for it. This allowed me to understand the basic mechanic of the game, which involved going anywhere that had light. This mechanic allowed me to explore the world I was in while also knowing where to go, which is incredibly smart in design because the agency is given to the user. This reminds me of the “Embedded Narrative” type in Narrative Architecture, and how the game becomes a story once the player creates meaning from the plot.
Two subtle buttons pop up at the bottom of the screen; this teaches you that you need to move in the game!
Another element of Walking Sim structure games that I noticed being incredibly special is the idea of not only exploration but also deduction through walking. In the second round of Journey, there were three tall pillars in front of the final door, which was elevated and impossible to reach. After seeing how one bridge is created (by finding a waving flag and tapping on it), the player is able to deduce that in order to reach the end of the round, they need to find other waving flags which would create the remaining parts of the bridge. This shows that walking and exploration allows for the player to understand the components they need to achieve in order to complete the round, even without instructions. However, I also noticed that the game would provide hints to the player to help them along the way. For example, as seen below, the scattered flags were also flying and placed around the blocks which I needed to tap on in order to make the bridge. This design enables the designer to provide subtle hints without ruining the experience of exploration. I find this super smart in addition to the use of light as a source of direction.
The scattered flags are sources of direction for the player
Another way in which walking tells the story is through each checkpoint during the game. On top of the mystical background music, Journey implements narrative checkpoints which allows for the player to unlock different scenes of a movie. For example, the mysterious figure I once saw in round 2 now contained a face in round 3. This progression in the narrative plot increases the player’s desire to continue exploring, further highlighting how walking is not only a tool for exploration in the magic circle, but also a tool for narrative progression. In other words, the player is walking towards the next scene and they contain full agency of the situation.
Face of the mysterious figure unlocked!
In section, we played a game involving sexiness, muscles, and magic (I forgot the name but you get the gist). It was somewhat like a narrative game where you had to come up with explanations to why you would lose or win each combat round. Compared to the game in section, Journey is not at all violent, but the suspense you get from discovering unknown places greatly surpasses the anxiety you feel when playing another violent game. The exclusion of violent elements in Walking Sims enables the player to explore a space more deeply without being intimidated by some random creature. This allows for more opportunities of exploratory narration, whereas I would imagine a more aggressive Walking Sim to be more focused on following the narrative plot and aiming to escape from danger. This shows that Walking Sim games are incredibly malleable to the content they want to display, and that the pace at which one walks can also change depending on the situation. Overall, enabling a player to walk as a tool of exploring a game allows for infinite ways of playing and can make the player feel much more aligned with the game. This is super useful for game designers who want players that stick!
