Minigames
Dispatch is a narrative driven story/strategy game developed by AdHoc Studio. The core gameplay for this focuses on dispatching heroes and ensuring you send the correct character with the relevant skill set to the correct job.
The hacking minigame
In dispatch there are occasional hacking minigames, with cyberware inspired and highly digital visuals. This aesthetic integrates well into our own gameworld, as much of incel cultures gameplay is within a web browser. The aim of these minigames is to solve logic based puzzles within a limited frame of time. Having a time limit reinforces the players sense of pressure and urgency whilst completing these minigames.
Objectives of dispatches minigames
- Identify patterns
- Rerouting and changing the paths
- Matching symbols
- Disabling anti virus by grabbing electrical current
Each core aspect of dispatches minigames are actually quite simple in nature, but they work well to create an urgent and engaging environment for the player. This is mostly due to the timeframe and the progression of these puzzles. Introducing different mechanics such as disabling an anti virus and then combining them all together for a more chaotic environment.
Considering the small size of our development team we want a way to produce these minigames that stays within our scope. We know we want engaging minigames, but we also know that oftentimes these require a considerable amount of extra work. But having smaller minigames and then combining them together to create a more chaotic environment for the player we can achieve this in a similar way to the dispatch development team.
Ori And The Blind Forest
Ori and the Blind Forest has a very distinctive art style, vibrant painterly visuals presented using a 2.5D artstyle. 2.5D combines both two dimensional artwork with three dimensional assets. When done corretly this creates depth and atmosphere whilst still having strong illustrations. This technique can significantly enhance the visual effect of a gameworld, and it isn’t a widely used style within the industry. This is an artstyle approach we have discussed for our own game. However, instead of continuously blending 2D and 3D together at the same time we aim to do this whilst also alternating between the two different styles depending on the tone and setting of out game.
This artstyle works for Ori and the Blind Forest because it enhances both its visual immersion and its narrative without taking away from its gameplay. This artstyle gives the world depth, the environments feel more alive and layers which is perfect for a platforming game such as this. The visual style not only looks stunning, but contributes to the overall depth and spacial understanding of the gameworld.
we hope to be able to employ a similar art style within our own Gameworld in an equally as affective way.
AdHoc Studio. (2025). Dispatch. [Online]. Steam. Last Updated: 22 Oct. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2592160/Dispatch/
Moon Studios, 2015. Ori and the Blind Forest. [Video game] Xbox One, Microsoft Windows. Published by Microsoft Studios.