Game Design

Story and Theming are so much more relevant than I thought

I am in love with Poke ALL Toads and I have made so many videos on it. In fact my playthrough series on it has recently finished.

One time, the developer has posted how the game looked with placeholder graphics.

The insane contrast here made me finally consider something, as someone who is fine playing games with terrible graphics:

(I am literally fine playing games like this for hours for fun just because of the gameplay)

The theming of this game plays such a big role in its popularity and quality. Even the title 'Poke ALL Toads' is an instant description of that hook regardless of what the genre was.

You could reskin this game to "Turn on ALL Turrets" with the same mechanics, but lose so much in the process. The characters don't even have a written story, just hints of personalities through excellent art. So much theorizing, characterization, and fanart.

In fact, there has been a developer that made a different game very inspired by Poke ALL Toads but with a more 'abstract' theming and it looks like this.

And a conversation between that developer (yanatus_vincere) and the Poke ALL Toads developer (Matra):

[4:53 PM] yanatus_vincere: oh, I know [Poke ALL Toads] from icely's video! this was a big inspiration for my game

[4:57 PM] Matra: haha Im flattered. Now it makes sense why the mechanics felt so familiar to me

One thing that is really fun to me is that the 3rd and 4th fairies in Poke All Toads are 'less interesting' mechanically, in a way that might even seem meandering and boring in a less-well-themed-game, as the 3rd fairy literally does nothing, and the 4th fairy can only walk and be controlled but also does nothing, is somehow actually charming due to the theme.

It's just so weird, because I remember thinking way less of story before. That is probably because it is very easy to skip lore and walls of text if they seem superfluous, and because for people like me and especially puzzle game players, enjoying abstract game mechanics 'is' the story. It doesn't seem odd because Minecraft and Terraria are not games that seem to be character-centric either.

But clearly story or even the hint of lore can also add unbelievable amounts to the game when done well. Let us think about some other games:

Helltaker

Helltaker, a viral free game with over 50,000 reviews, is of a genre that people find usually does not get viral - puzzle, sokoban (block pushing) with limited movecount, short game with only 10 levels. It does seem likely that the game's theming of a tsundere demon harem is the reason for its popularity.

A Little Perspective

The puzzle game A Little Perspective, did not have a story in its demo. It later got a narrative, somewhat connected to the idea of different perspectives, that expanded the feeling of lore and interest and broadness of what the game was about.

Other Games

Stray, where you play as a realistic cat in 3D. Games tend not to have realistic cats in 3D.
Another game with "Poke" in the title, Pokemon, which also has this appeal of cute characters, later a copied aspect by Palworld and Batomon Showdown.
While somehat overdone now, 'invisible narrator' style games like Portal and The Stanley Parable can turn basic looking rooms into facilities and offices with lore.
Much of Order of the Sinking Star's budget is a huge graphical upgrade to PuzzleScript games, turning 2D games with 5x5 sprites into 3D layouts with texture and detail and much more animation polish.
Matthew VanDevander, the inventor of Taiji (a sizable game that is like The Witness but in 2D, and was the first game to do that), said on a stream once, when referring to some other puzzle games that were 3D but could be converted to a 2D interface (like The Talos Principle but not only that), "It's 3D so you buy it". Despite this clearly being just a silly statement in some ways, the aspects in which this is true (which is 3D improving a sense of quality, vastness, etc.) this has rattled in my mind for over 7 years.I brought up the quote again in a more recent stream and Matthew has said "I don't even remember saying that" but I swear I am not hallucinating

Why does this matter?

I know it doesn't seem very puzzle-related, but this is a genre where people frequently lament a lower audience size, and have come up with thoughts about how to fix that, sometimes "betraying" the cause and not marketing their game as puzzle-centric. Often you could say that a game's mechanical hook wasn't interesting enough or was too abstract and not cool looking enough, which can be true, but I seem to see a lot less people talking about retheming.

I think the reasons you don't see much story or lore in games, is that it would seem to require art that people don't have the skill or budget to make, but also, I remember once being very nervous about my ability to make a good story, or write in character. In hindsight that was obviously:

Low life experience
Among other 16-year-old-writers, you can go a long way by copying inspirations (either shallowly copying cause "that's just what the genre does" and still managing to have surreal/otherworldly vibes, or creatively mixing but still copying)
Overawareness of lack of immersion of your own work as you are writing it (because you are writing it after all, versus experiencing it as a finished product)
Low confidence in making characters from thin air (this ties in to low life experience to me, but it may not be the case for others - that's because with low life experience your characters are often not going to have 'a point' or be trying to represent something new, you don't fully know how to do that, or even combine a bunch of motivations together to make a coherent whole)
Perfectionism (wanting every moment to be subversive or new somehow)

Now I am not nervous about saying these things. However, giving advice on this is tough, it would be like giving your entire life experience. So here is a motivator to be better at understanding things:

There are so many mystery novels where there are puzzles from "following the rules of real life" and analyzing events, and trying to predict where the story will go, which is a core life skill as well, if you don't have it you will be easily taken for a ride by manipulators good at spinning lies too. I just kind of never connected the idea, despite playing Ace Attorney and other mystery novels, games tend not to try to be both mechanically interesting gameplay AND storywise in different ways. Likely because story games can afford to have all its gameplay be about the story, but not think about how a gameplay game could be improved in its mystery with a little extra story.

There was a Baba levelpack with a story that, to me, was just a simple execution of "two movies one screen", and one of the reviewers who was judging this pack rated it 10/10 on that basis. That is a concept that I consider too prevalent and divisive in real life to be treating it as a novel concept, especially because it is so much more complex and multifaceted than the levelpack did, but it also made me realize there's a first time for everything and everyone, and not to forget about this when you are thinking about your audience.

I wish I was not so worried about making some embarrassing trash story, it is how you improve, but it's hard to wrestle with the feeling of wanting to make something excellent and then clearly not being cut out for it.

The Lesson

Clearly the maximal application of this philosophy is that your game's title should be an instant hook, 3D, natural-like graphics, great animation and polish, anthropomorphic animals and/or anime waifus, with mysteries and teases of future content all the time.

Is that just Genshin Impact