Note: Dead Space, Halo: Reach, and Stray spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned!
Welcome back everyone to another blog post! When we typically think of emotional experiences in video games, we think of the story. We think of Spartans dying in Reach, finding out Isaac’s girlfriend has been dead all along in Dead Space, the triumphant feeling of saving Hyrule. Oftentimes we take for granted the emotional experiences the player has through gameplay or progression.
This time we’ll be lightly touching on how games create specific emotions in players via gameplay. I’ll be using Stray as my example to guide us along. Throughout the game, interactions between the player character and their environment change over time and influence the emotions they feel. This can most easily be noticed when dealing with Zurks.
What are Zurks?
Zurks are small creatures which consume everything in their path. They chase and jump on the player character, a cat,, latching on, and slowing them down. If enough of them attach, or the cat has one of them on them for long enough, the player character dies.
Introducing the Zurks
The player encounters Zurks early on in the game. Initially, they hide as the player comes across a few at a time. Not long after is a quick cutscene showing the cat encountering a large group and hissing at them. As they chase the cat, the cat runs away before giving the player control. This establishes these things are trouble, and should be avoided.
The player is chased by dozens of the creatures while sprinting through a fairly linear path. Eventually, the player jumps a gap and makes it to safety.
Emotions: Danger, fear, terror, panic, stress
Let’s step through where each of these emotions are established, and reinforced.
Danger is established in the cutscene. We see the cat stand in a scared pose, hissing, followed by the Zurks chasing after the cat. Before the player is given control, we’ve learned these things are bad news and should be avoided.
All of the emotions are further reinforced when the player is given control and the chase begins, as now they are an active participant in fleeing and trying to survive the swarms.. When the Zurks start pouring out of windows and doorways, this adds to the stress and fear of the player. But where it kicks it up to nine is when the Zurks inevitably jump on the player, the gushy noise of them latching on, the reddening screen, and the player is told to mash a button to save themselves. This brings panic and terror. Panic because you need to react quickly or you will die,and terror for the same reasons.
This is what the experience of dealing with Zurks is like in the first quarter of the game. And the developers do an excellent job of scaling this so it’s not the same running from point A to point B every time. For instance, there is a point in the game where the player needs to wait for an elevator to come down and Zurks start spawning. But, unlike the previous encounters, there is no one direction to run. They need to use the platforming skills and speed to dodge and run around an arena, trying to outsmart the endless hoard until the elevator comes down.
But the Zurks are not overused, allowing the player time to breathe and for the later encounters to still create similar levels of emotion. And, after all that stress and feeling of facing a voracious, unstoppable enemy, the player eventually is given a way to combat the Zurks.
Protection
After encountering Doc, one of the mechanical inhabitants in the game, he mentions he has a device, called a Defluxor, that can kill Zurks. He tasks the player with going outside to fix a fuse box to charge the weapon. Upon doing so, the area is flooded with Zurks, just as the player has seen and fled from many times before. But, this time, Doc is standing in a window blasting them.
Emotions: Safety, Security, Relief
The player feels safer because Doc is protecting them. They don’t feel powerful yet as it is an NPC controlling the weapon, but there is some relief as these creatures which have been a terror up to this point are now killable.
Fighting Back
Not long after that segment, the player is given a mini-Defluxor which also causes the Zurks to explode. It can only be activated for a limited time before it breaks and is offline for a small amount of time. If the players don’t use up all of its charge, it recharges when not in use. Doc has some Zurks in a cage which the player is able to test the device on, but there are multiple safe sections after earning it for the player to test their new toy. This helps to build confidence and prepare them for later.
Emotions: Power, Strength, Revenge, Confidence
The ability to easily fight back against scary enemies makes them less scary. Even more so if they are suddenly easy to kill. There is also joy in taking revenge on the player’s recently immortal hunters. The player no longer feels weak and vulnerable, but powerful and confident. The player is no longer prey for the Zurks, they are now the hunter!
Reintroducing Fear
Doc decides that he can return to the city now with the player’s help. The player must now escort him back to the city. There are two parts to how fear is reintroduced, one from a story perspective, and one from a mechanical perspective. From the story perspective, players have built a relationship with Doc by this point. They want to get Doc back safely, especially since he helped the player overcome these troublesome creatures. But Doc can’t defend himself, so it’s up to the player to make sure Doc doesn’t get devoured by the Zurks, something that happens if the player doesn’t move quickly enough after leaving him alone. The first part of this reintroduced fear is fear for another rather than for themselves.
Emotions: Fear & Power
The second is that the beam, while controlled by the player, can overheat. While the player will still feel powerful while the beam is active, the designers just need to send a particularly large spaced out hoard at the player to force the player to overheat their Defluxor. This results in the Defluxor having to recharge for a few seconds, during this time any unkilled Zurks are rushing the player causing that earlier feeling of fear for themselves to resurface. This kind of push and pull of feeling powerful one moment and panicked the next continues for some time, until the player surpasses all the Zurk areas and the Mobile Defluxor breaks permanently.
End
As you can see, the designers of Stray expertly crafted an emotional rollercoaster with the Zurks through gameplay. First terrifying, then not scary, and finally existing in a push and pull relationship. The first two parts of this relationship with enemies are actually reflective of how most games introduce and create fun relationships with enemies. For example, the , Blue Elites in Halo are the tougher, scarier enemy at the beginning, and, by the end, they are generic enemies while something else has taken their place. Role-playing games with level mechanics, from Dungeons and Dragons to Pokemon s have the same thing but are even more straightforward. It’s terrifying when the player first encounters a high level enemy, but after the player character is twenty levels above them the foe may seem like a joke.
In most games though, to get to that final step takes a little bit of extra design work since it’s no longer only about the enemy, but how the enemy is positioned, placed, interacts etc. A blob of Zurks in the endgame doesn’t create that push and pull relationship, but a group spaced out while running at you does. It forces the player to think a little more about the engagement than just blast the enemy.. This available level of complexity in terms of encounters, though perhaps not recognized consciously by a player, allows the designers to craft emotional experiences through gameplay even without things normally thought of as vital story elements.
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