I’ll be speaking of OneShot again, apologies poor grader.
OneShot is a puzzle adventure game in which the player guides the protagonist through a dark world in hopes of restoring its sun and bringing life back to the world. Stripping down the game to its barebones, it very much resembles the ‘loop arc sandwich’ that Dan Cook discusses. The core gameplay loop/skill set tree that the player builds up doesn’t change much throughout the game. However, progressing from one portion of the game to the next takes the form of an arc: a player learns why exactly their actions in the prior parts mattered, and they move on to the next part of the game and/or their life.
To apply it more specifically, each ‘loop’ is one of OneShot’s three levels/environments, where nothing much changes: players search for clues, talk to NPCS/the protagonist, collect items, combine and use items, etc…. Each arc is in the level transitioning to the next, which often includes cutscenes, dialogue, and other information that inform the player of the decaying world and remind them of their ultimate mission and their eventual difficult decision.
