![]() “There’s a complementary emotion that’s running through the game as well, can sometimes help characters in finding their next steps: a feeling of community. It’s not all ennui and regret, either there’s another theme here, McCafferty says, and one he hopes players will take away with them once the final puzzle’s solved. Ten years and a lot of experimentation later, development on LOVE has reached its latter stages, and it’s shaping up to be a thought-provoking and refreshingly different kind of puzzle game. It’s quite the involved process, but tremendous fun.” And then, once it’s all together, each puzzle needs to be able to live alongside the other puzzles in the building. Each puzzle has to hit the correct feeling. We storyboard a puzzle, we implement it, we test, and we circle back around. “The process for the game design is iterative. The tenants’ interactions with each other, and the player’s ability to manipulate time to see their past actions, has required a great deal of planning, iteration, and storyboarding to plot out, McCafferty tells us. The game’s minimal aesthetic is complemented by the complexity going on behind the scenes. “Once words get involved, you’re just dictating to the players how they should feel.” It’s a design choice that “lets the player have their own experience within the narrative,” McCafferty says. Aside from a few words on the user interface, LOVE also eschews dialogue between its characters instead, you’ll grow to understand their relationships and shifting moods through their body language. LOVE’s emotional focus extends to its design, which takes low-poly models and a post-processing filter that gives its domestic scenes a diffuse, painterly look. “There are some wonderful instances where this isn’t the case, but by and large, games that try to tackle tougher emotions are still the exception rather than the rule.” “When we talk about the emotions we feel in games, we’re often too keen to lean into the same powerful-but-simple emotions that we might experience in a summer blockbuster. That piece of music led McCafferty to start thinking about how he could evoke similar emotions in a video game. “It’s a beautiful, haunting piece of music that blends melancholia, sadness, and optimism in a way that feels eerily familiar,” McCafferty says. That piece of music, Devils In My Head, eventually accompanied the game’s trailer. Once a puzzle is complete, your interpretation of what happened is yours and yours alone.”įor McCafferty, the initial inspiration for LOVE came a decade ago, when he first heard a song written by his friend Neil White. ![]() ![]() “Early players have described this story in a variety of ways, from being about two friends who had a falling out to being sisters that simply don’t stay in touch,” he says. Each puzzle in LOVE will take the residents to a place of peace with their experiences.”Įach of LOVE’s puzzles is intimately intertwined with its story and characters: one example McCafferty describes involves two childhood friends who’ve grown apart as the years have rolled on. ![]() “Everyone has experienced stories of love and regret, both romantic and otherwise – and we’ve all been in moments where we find ourselves stuck, unable to move on from the past. We’re not looking to reunite a prince with a princess. “We’re trying our best to keep these stories real. “We’re never undoing, or fixing, these people’s stories,” McCafferty explains. In line with the game’s gently melancholic tone, however, that sense of closure doesn’t necessarily mean a happy ending for the various people you meet in the game. By doing so, you’ll learn more about the game’s characters, and in time, give each of their stories closure. Taking its cue from classic point-and-click adventures, LOVE sees you interact with the tenants and various objects within the building to solve puzzles. ![]()
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