Game Decisions 

This weeks post is about the discussion on game flow. The easiest way of describing it would be how the player proceeds through the game based on it's design flow. So if the game is a horror game, the expectations of that would be fairly high on the game flow, so it should be intense and challenge your skills, rather than too easy and not scary at all leaving the player bored of playing. The chart below explains this in a diagram quite well. 

The top main points to look at when creating a game and understanding the game flow would be

• Give the player a challenge within the game
• The player completes this challenge on a reasonable difficulty 
• To maintain the gameflow throughout

Maintaing the gameflow can be tricky, as this is what keeps the player hooked on the game and keeps playing. For game creators they need to pull it off quite well and a few games that do is the Resident Evil series. Each game released has had its up and downs but the storyline in Res 2,4,7 and 8 ranked up there for top res games (not all may agree), have been able to keep many fans with it's great gameflow. 

Being able to pull it off keeping the player, as they say "in the zone". Quite a few other games do pull this off like Drakes uncharted series, with the puzzles and treasures the main character is out to search for and The Last of Us series also, keeps the players engaged.

When considering the gameflow ideas these factors must be taken into account;

1. Does the game have any spikes?
2. Does the game have too many easy sections?
3. Does the player tasks get too repetitive?
4. Does the game introduce new skill sets?

If this is over done, the player can end up getting bored or frustrated if it is too easy or too hard. So many factors like mentioned above are to be taken into consideration.

A good video for this source to check out is on Game Design with Michael's page and also has a part two up also which is a good source.