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Playerless: One Button Adventure

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Playerless: One Button Adventure

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Discover Playerless, the game set in another game. Your character has become self-aware, you can only use one button to play, the AI has formed a sect - and the game engine is a physical mechanism. It’ll be fun!

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Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

Article: What makes the game memorable?

16 May, 2019

Since gaming had become a humongous and significant medium, developers compete in the quality of the details. Modern technology allows them to create games nearly as realistic as our world; make everything more natural, even if the applied features are, for us, so common that we do not even notice them in the real life anymore. In fact, the more tiny elements are included in the game, the more players are going to remember it, because they admire the particularity. To achieve this, creators need to design elements which perfectly fit the exact moment of gameplay; the goal is to make an obvious element in the right place while making it surprising at the same time.

For example, take a look at Spider-Man made by Insomniac Games. When your friendly neighborhood hero uses his communicator and gets exhausted from fighting or chasing a villain, we can hear how he draws his breaths more deeply. It’s a feature that some players may not pay any attention to, but those who do will be astounded by the developer’s attention to detail.

Let’s go for a quick journey into the past, back to 1998, when the first Half-Life was released. This game has been a revolutionary title for many reasons. And one of them still makes a huge impression today, despite the passing years. All the NPCs use sense of smell - when we’re accompanied by one of the friendly characters, they can comment on the odour of the enemy we have just killed. Initially, this surprising addition was overlooked by players, but now, almost 20 years after the launch of the game it’s been rediscovered leaving the community admire the game even more for such an innovation.

Another example of such feature can be found in Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth. To fuel the conflict, AI is taking an, opposing to the player’s, political direction to provoke it’s enemy on purpose. The gameplay becomes more and more interesting over time, because inconsistent ideologies keep on feeding the fire between the player and one’s virtual opponent.

Another innovation in gameplay was presented by both Devil May Cry and Bioshock developers, who shared the similar idea about crowd controlling enemies that are behind the players back. To simplify the gameplay, the antagonists that are not in the visual range of the player are slowed down. Thanks to this feature the player is unknowingly being reinforced, when they’re outnumbered or taken by surprise. This developer’s trick not only helps to survive a challenging quest, but also boosts the player’s self-confidence.

All of the examples above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to adding distinctive features to make a games memorable and forever entertaining. Sometimes the game creators may go even further in surprising their audience, even by altering the game basic principles.

When making a game that is broken on purpose (in a lore context, it works just fine!) the creator needs to decide what aspects make the title visibly broken but playable at the same time. Precisely for this reason, Playerless: One Button Adventure contains so many elements being a visual representation of the game code. Most of the NPCs are aware of the mayhem, others - due to the in-game errors - have become a part of this havoc. The player isn’t the main protagonist, but only plays a supporting role for a Debug Unit. At the same time, we experience the phenomenon of a game within a game – we play the Playerless, but during its gameplay, we enter another one. Repairing the game requires traveling beyond the frames of a common game world. We literally need to pierce the walls of the game code and find the right mechanisms to make the whole game work. This roots from our specific role within the game and the urge for fixing the player’s surrounding; without it none of the characters will survive within an unfinished game world, and they’re not even aware of incoming death.

Every single game production can become even more interesting thanks to the addition of all the small things that eventually make the whole world of game complete. Sometimes we might not even notice those details, especially during the very first playthrough. But it doesn’t change the fact that their presence makes the game feel even more real and complete. And that is what extends the player’s sympathy towards the title.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/711610/Playerless_One_Button_Adventure/

Playerless: One Button Adventure

Cancelled?

Is this game still in development?

Draug

11 Apr, 2022 @ 8:37pm

General Discussions

Article: Our perspective on secret features

5 Apr, 2019

Easter eggs have become an integral part of lots of games. Players love to explore the game’s world and some of them do it for a sole purpose of finding secret messages hidden by the creators. Those messages can practically relate to everything: other games or movies and sometimes even to real-life persons or events. Developers enjoy creating these secret features just as much as players enjoy hunting for them. That is the reason why we have put so many of them in our game.

Playerless: One Button Adventure may seem like a strong proving ground on the issue of hidden messages - it’s a game within a game after all. Therefore, our intention was to go beyond the boundaries of the plot by - easiest to say - allowing Easter eggs to live their own lives.

The game inside Playerless: One Button Adventure is visibly broken. You can tell that not only by noticeable errors but also by its code leaking to the surface. An avid programmer may notice this little tribute to their profession that enriches the regular gameplay. Focusing on the intentionally implemented bugs may lead the player to new discoveries, such as alternative paths or hidden rooms, so the game rewards attentive observation.

Our inspiration doesn’t come only from the game code. We wanted Playerless: One Button Adventure to easily engage every type of players, no matter if they are more passionate about computer science or culture. For the latter group, we have decided to transfer some themes from real-life to the virtual one. So watch closely; the works of art around you can tell you more about the characters than their actual actions.

When it comes down to the player’s surroundings of Playerless: One Button Adventure – many things are happening in the background. While developing the game, we took special effort to turn the player’s eye away from the beaten track and attract their attention to our clues. However, even despite the fast-paced gameplay dynamics, we have managed to create special moments in which the player has the opportunity to look at what seems to be just a simple background. Creation of hidden messages without highlighting them to the player was both a tough challenge and a very valuable lesson for us.

One of our current dreams (apart from making another successful game) is to hear that someone has found everything we managed to hide in our game, and enjoyed each one of their little discoveries.

Enjoy the hunt!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/711610/Playerless_One_Button_Adventure/

Playerless: One Button Adventure

Article: An immersive adventure for everyone

19 Mar, 2019

For the past thirty years, video games have been evolving in a way no one has ever dreamed of. Nobody expected them to be so much more than temporary entertainment. From today’s perspective, it makes them comparable to cinematography in the early years of its development, when its creators, the Lumière brothers, may have often been hearing: it’s not going to last long.

Luckily, video games have survived and nowadays we can fully appreciate them, sometimes even as works of computer art. Besides the artistic values, another crucial part of every game is immersion. It used to be a part of games from the very beginning. But does it still play the leading role, even after the development of the main medium?

First of all, let’s assume that immersion is an enormously subjective part of a video game. There are players that need a perfect plot to be absorbed, others will say that a visible development of their hero is something that keeps the flow going. Someone will find the simplicity of game mechanics immersive. Player’s preferences on what makes them feel like being part of a virtual world have been changing through the years because the gaming industry gave them a reason. For example – in the early eighties, players used to find the very first version of Elite realistic and also immersive, despite the fact that the graphics at the time were far from life-like. Today we can enjoy another part of this series (Elite: Dangerous), created in a meticulously detailed manner as if it was almost a copy of the existing cosmos and still some of the players will say it’s not even close to immersive at all.

So the creation of a perfectly absorbing world seems to be an impossible challenge because immersion is subjective as someone’s opinion, and everybody has their own definition of what makes them involved in the game.

Nevertheless, there’s a small hero growing in the gaming neighbourhood, and it’s very likely to change the general opinion on immersion subjectivity. It’s a huge responsibility to take part in that transition.

Our Playerless is an adventure that may seem fairly ordinary at a glance, but that what may later unravel as a positive shock during gameplay is something that we wanted to achieve. First of all – just like the title may suggest - the game requires one button to play. By limiting gameplay mechanics we wanted players to stay focused on the game itself. That’s why the controls needed to be as simple as possible. Secondly, it’s about breaking the fourth wall. A few of the Playerless’ characters are aware of the player's presence. Our goal was to make the players feel like they’re in the middle of an adventure. And they’re not alone during it!

Our main goal was to construct a plot that would engage the players to the point they feel like they have been in this world for a much longer time than their actual play-time. The game also shares numerous features with our existing world, making it a little bit more familiar to the player. Last, but not least, there is another game inside Playerless. Sadly, expanding this topic would spoil the game’s story, so we must leave it here and let you wait until you play it by yourself.

When developing One Button Adventure, we thought of it like a game exceptionally interesting and filled with fresh ideas. We wanted it to be very flexible when it comes to the immersion. Also, we wanted to stir discussion among players where everyone has a different view on a topic but everyone finds out their own valuable experience at the game’s very end. We wanted our players to simply absorb the game, and we hope we have achieved that.

We’re not only developers. We are players in the first place. And from the player perspective, we can say that Playerless is an intriguing and innovative title. We wanted it to be immersive on many levels, so we hope many types of gamers will be entertained with even more different flow preferences. Returning to the cinematography comparison: we are happy that games still remain an entertainment but for some also evolved into a hobby. The world would be an awfully empty place without various surprising ideas developed into a game that wait for us to be enjoyed. And we hope you will enjoy our's very soon.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/711610/Playerless_One_Button_Adventure/

Playerless: One Button Adventure

Pretty Hyped.

i haven been waiting for some time to play this Game and unravel the story. you dont see many games these Games focusing on what happens when the player finishes it or leaves. pretty hyped to Buy this Game and understand the story and see where it goes....