When discussing the impact of choice, I also refer to This War of Mine. The options in this game do not manifest the outcome through branching plots, but continue to affect the player experience through long-term changes in character states. Choice does not bring clear success or failure, but a psychological burden that is recorded by the system and repeatedly fed back.

This design made me realize that the meaning of choices does not necessarily come from the difference in results, but from how the game system keeps “remembering” and amplifying these behaviors in the subsequent process.

Unlike This War of Mine, which guides players through a clear survival and moral context to understand choices, my project does not attempt to make ethical judgments about behavior, but rather focuses on how the system continues to interpret and misinterpret player behavior in the absence of a clear value position.

In my game, the player’s actions also do not trigger immediate clear consequences, but are translated by the system into a series of potentially misunderstood signals. These signals accumulate over subsequent feedback, making players realize that they are not pursuing an optimal solution, but are constantly being redefined by the system.

This War of Mine is not a mechanic template for me, but rather a case study that confirms that choices can be used as a long-term burden rather than an immediate result.

I didn’t experience Rue Valley in its entirety, and my progress didn’t progress much more than it did during the demo. But even in the early playthrough, it already gave me a clear reference to the structure. Unlike Disco Elysium, where the world unfolds through a lot of branching and inner dialogue, Rue Valley feels more like an experience of constant confinement: players make choices that don’t really open up new ends.

In Rue Valley, the density of choices is much greater than the number of endings. Players are frequently asked to make judgments, but these judgments are more about adjusting the path to the same ending than changing the ending itself. This structure made me realize that choice is not always about freedom, and sometimes it is more of a constant pressure that forces the player to keep moving within the boundaries set by the system. Even if the player chooses those options that are “incorrect” in the systemic sense, the game will still give an ending, only that ending often appears rushed or scribbled. This is not a reward for the player, but more of a confirmation: the system acknowledges your actions, but does not extend the world for them.

In the early days of Rue Valley’s release, many media outlets used “Disco Elysium-like” as its core promotional label. However, this analogy does not seem entirely valid in actual experience. Although there are similarities in visual style and the presentation of a large number of inner monologues, their structural differences in narrative freedom are obvious.

In Disco Elysium, players are always playing as a version of Harry. The characters themselves have clear backgrounds and limitations, but the player’s choices can continue to change the narrative direction and character state within this framework. Freedom does not come from “who I am”, but from “how I became this person”.

In contrast, Rue Valley allows players to customize the protagonist’s traits and make choices along the way, but these choices don’t really change the end of the story. The narrative is strongly confined to a limited ending, resulting in character customization staying more at the level of expression than at the level of structure. This gap also explains the dissatisfaction of some players: while encouraging players to make personalized judgments, the system does not respond to the narrative results.

This kind of feedback also prompted me to deal with the “boundaries of choice” more explicitly in my own projects. If the ending is predetermined, then this premise should be presented frankly by design, rather than creating the illusion of freedom through a large number of choices. Players can deviate from system expectations, but the way the system responds needs to be honest.

My project focuses more on the sense of advancement brought about by the choice itself than on branching narratives. My game also has a limited endgame, and the large number of choices is more about creating an experience of being forced to the end. Even if the player deliberately deviates from the path the system wants, the game will continue to move towards the ending, only in a more hasty way.

This is highly relevant to my own project. Rather than building complex branching narratives, I was more concerned with choosing how to structurally force the player forward. A limited ending is not a limitation, but a boundary; A plethora of choices exist within this boundary, creating constant decision-making pressure rather than true liberation.

“A Chamber of Stars” is not about growth or breakthroughs, but about a state that is less positively discussed in the creative process: the aging of talent and the feeling of powerlessness when inspiration dries up. The protagonist Starr is not a person who has just started creating, but a creator who has already gone through love, accumulation and peaks, and has begun to face self-doubt.

At the beginning of the experience, I felt confused and almost gave up on playing. The game is not in a hurry to explain the rules or objectives to the player, and the narrative pacing appears loose. However, when the story touches on the passage of “unable to continue creating”, this confusion becomes clear. I realized that Starr’s confusion was not a narrative mistake, but a state that was deliberately preserved. The process of helplessness, stagnation, and repeated thinking about the meaning of creation is not unfamiliar to me. I also started creating because of love, and I also experienced a trough, and I repeatedly doubted the question of “why continue”.

In terms of mechanical design, the most obvious challenge in the game comes from the music game part. Rhythm and reaction constitute a relatively traditional test of skill, but it’s worth noting that the developers have provided both easy mode and the option to turn off death punishment. This choice makes it clear that the challenge is not meant to screen players or emphasize the skill itself, but rather exists as part of the narrative experience. Even if players are not good at music games, they will not be turned away.

This design orientation reinforces the positioning of A Chamber of Stars as a work centered on plot and exploration. The game does not reward players for “overcoming difficulties” but allows players to continue experiencing the character’s inner state with varying levels of engagement. Failure does not bring obvious punishment, and success does not lead to a definite transformation. Players are allowed to move on, but are not promised a breakthrough.

Unlike A Chamber of Stars, My Project doesn’t need to protect the narrative experience by turning off penalties or simplifying challenges. The reason for this is that my game didn’t have failure or skill testing as a core structure from the beginning.

The only necessary accessibility features in the game are save and read, which are not meant to reduce difficulty, but to allow players to repeatedly enter the same state at different points in time and re-understand their choices. The decryption level in the project only exists as a prelude to the plot, and does not contain restrictions on reaction speed or operation skills. Even if players can’t figure out the answer on their own, they can easily continue to progress through the community or strategy.

The Stanley Parable is often seen as a metagame, but its most disturbing way is actually simple: it refuses to let players actually leave. By transforming absences, rejections, and departures into trackable achievements, the game suggests that “not playing” is not an external state, but another form of engagement that the system has long foreseen.

One of the little details that struck me the most about this game is that there is an achievement on Steam called “Click on door 403 five times”, and after you actually knock on the door five times, the narrator will mock you for only looking at the achievement

When you feel that any operation is “playing” the game, you will find that the author has already said it in the game: “Press Esc, there is no other way to beat this game”

But do you think that quitting the game really stops playing? The game still has an achievement of “not playing games for 105 years”. That is, when you don’t play the game, you are actually still playing the game

The author of the game is not giving you the option to quit (completely quitting instead of just closing the game), but is taking away your right to define “quit” in advance. Because what it is saying is: as long as you are still in a relationship with the system, you are in its rules. Even if you don’t play, it’s a recorded behavior

And that “10 years without playing games” achievement is one of the scariest and smartest designs in the whole game in my opinion. It directly declares one thing: “non-participation” is not an external state of the system, but a way of participation that the system has long preset. You think you’re out of the game, but the system tells you, “You’ve just gone to the square I prepared for ‘not playing’.” ”

I think this almost completely coincides with the theme of my own project: behavior does not need to be “active”, nor does it need to be “intentional”, as long as it is seen by the system, it will be interpreted, codified, and justified. In my game, if players pursue a more complete gaming experience, they will be constantly pushed into worse situations by the system

Looking back at the early ideas for my own project, I found it difficult for me to get around McPixel. It’s not because of how complex it is by design, but because it almost fully fulfills my original idea of “pure entertainment”: no clear meaning, no stable logic, and still keeping players interested. The research on McPixel was more of a look back than an inspiration—trying to understand why I was drawn to this way of designing in the first place, and where that attraction came from.

In McPixel, failure does not assume a punitive function, but is designed as a watchable, experiential content. Each choice quickly leads to a clear outcome, regardless of whether that outcome is considered “successful” or not. This design frees failure from “mistakes”, making it a source of curiosity.

Because of this, even if players have successfully cleared the level, they will still actively return to the game to try those “failed” options, just to see what else happens. Here, the motivation to play is no longer to achieve a goal, but to explore all possible outcomes.

From a purely entertainment standpoint, the McPixel’s appeal does not come from complex systems or narratives, but from extreme compression of the cost of failure. Players are constantly making choices in a very short period of time, and even if they lose, there is little frustration. This low-risk, high-feedback structure encourages players to experiment freely without understanding or mastering any rules.

At the same time, the game deliberately abandons stable causal logic, so that players no longer try to find the “right solution”, but focus on the accident and absurdity themselves. This design shifts the entertainment experience from “understanding systems” to “accepting uncertainty,” allowing games to remain engaging without providing meaning.

In McPixel, players are also faced with a set of options that cover different levels of intuition, and the system does not indicate in advance which one is “recognized”. This design made me realize that the reason why players choose those options that look normal is not induced, but because these options are inherently within the realm of human thinking.

Looking back at the early options designs, I realized that there was a non-intentional similarity between them and the McPixel. I didn’t explicitly distinguish between “normal” or “abnormal” options at first, but allowed different knee-jerk reactions to exist side by side. For example, when dealing with the same problem, the system presents both obviously unreasonable options and what seems reasonable, or even the most correct. This side-by-side is not intended to create inversions or mislead players, but rather a direct modeling of a real thinking path. When people face problems, they often think of absurd and reasonable possibilities at the same time, rather than completing the screening at the beginning.

This observation has had a lasting impact on my project. Rather than guiding players to make specific choices by design, I am more concerned about whether the system can accommodate and respond to these real and chaotic thinking paths. These seemingly reasonable options do not mean that they will be affirmed by the system, but rather that players will gradually realize that the system may not interpret their behavior consistently after making a serious judgment.

In the process of experimenting with sound design, I gradually realized that digital audio is not a complete reproduction of real sound, but a recording method based on thresholds and trade-offs. Concepts such as bit depth and noise floor led me to understand sound as “the part that is allowed to exist”. Digital audio’s “bit depth” and “sample rate” are essentially mathematical filters that only allow vibrations that fit its quantization ladder to pass through.

This can be linked to media theory (such as Kittler’s “media determinism”): what we hear is never the sound itself, but the part of the medium that allows it to pass through. Just like photography is not the world, but the reaction of film or sensors to light (see “Man with a Movie Camera” in my Sight & Sound module).

You can explore: In our creations, can we actively exploit these “limitations” (e.g., deliberately use low-fidelity, introduce digital clipping) to create a new aesthetic reality that belongs to the digital medium itself?

For example, in some environments where there is no clear source of low frequencies, the low-frequency pads are not designed to simulate reality, but to maintain perceptual integrity. This approach does not follow real cause and effect, but follows perceptual logic, echoing the “rational interpretation” of player behavior by the system in the game. The explosion in space (which should be silent in reality) is to meet the audience’s narrative expectations for “impact”. The subtle sounds deliberately created in ASMR or ambient music speak directly to the subconscious mind, following the logic of emotions and bodies rather than physical logic.

The “immersion” or “credibility” in game research comes from the system responding to player behavior with a self-consistent logic, even if this logic does not hold in reality.

Sounds as feedback systems, such as UI sounds in games (menu selection sounds, “ding” sounds for obtaining items) are pure perceptual logic, they have no source of reality, but they build a sense of immediacy and satisfaction of operation. This is similar to my low-frequency pad: it exists to maintain the integrity of an internal world.

The interactive mixing and Wwise/FMOD engine of modern games liberates sound from “fixed recordings” to “malleable system components”. Sounds change according to the state of the game (health, distance, mood), which in itself is a continuous rationalization process of perception by the system.

Excellent sound design is not so much about “recording the world” as about designing the listener’s cognitive path. Sound designers are not real-world recorders, but architects of perceiving the world. We use the threshold of media, the laws of cognition, and the logic of the system to construct a kind of “experiential reality”. This reality is not attached to the physical, but to the coherence of experience and the effectiveness of emotions.