How Games Communicate, Without Saying Anything
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
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Believe it or not, games are CONSTANTLY talking to us, not just through text or voice, but through the way they’re designed.
The Architect, fluent in thousands of languages from across the cosmos, is ready to give you a glimpse into just some of the ways that games can communicate with us, mostly without us even knowing.
You Saw:
DOOM (2016)
Metroid Prime (2002)
Sentinels of the Multiverse (2014)
HEARTBEAT (2018)
Metal Slug 3 (2000)
Phoenix Wright (2001)
HITMAN (2016)
Bioshock 2 (2010)
Cave Story (2004)
Splunkey (2012)
Donut County (2018)
A Hat In Time (2017)
Endless Legend (2014)
Two Point Hospital (2018)
Interesting Links:
Interesting breakdown of DOOM's Combat: www.gamasutra....
Metroid Prime Retrospective: www.eurogamer....
Interesting defence of Bioshock 2 which is for reals a bit rubbish- www.vice.com/e...
Level design is one of if not the most important part in most videogames and i feel it's overlooked because of how seamless it is when it's good.
Its one of those things you forget when its good, but totally stand out in a bad way when its not. Kinda like IT department in a company, or the cleaners.
I like to listen to developer commentary, so I did that in Portal 2. One audio cue I loved in particular was in the new area after the great fall. "We use thing thing to have the player look here, followed by this thing to get the player to look up this giant place here." When I heard that for the first time, was I in awe of how brilliantly it was done.
Now do I want to play through Portal 2 again in developer commentary.
It's also one of those qualities that don't get communicated well in screenshots. Or even all that well in gameplay footage really.
As someone who is making a game myself I need to learn how to properly design a level
03:12 "... now humans - *_you guys_* love doorways..."
what kind of creature are you?
A non-human
immortal space-being
A youtuber
I enjoy the fact that you’re playing “oh it’s you” in the background while saying it. That’s a nice bit of meta humour I just ruined by explaining the joke.
I'm liking this video so far, but I must nitpick: The protagonist of Bioshock 2 is named "Subject Delta".
This just in, you're right and I'm dumb.
Correction it's actually Scooba Steve
Or Johnny topside
🤓
all my British gaming analytical channels uploaded at once woohoo
I only have GMTK and this architect of games. Which ones do you have?
Same as Pranav here. Tell us more Ryan!
Tactical .
this was 5 days ago but did also writing on games upload something too?
Los heraldos del rey
Just stopping by to say that this video was recommended to us in our level design class to introduce basic concepts of the craft.
As a long time viewer of your channel, this made me happy :D
wait WHAT, no people actually learning how to make games should be listening to MY terrible ideas!
You are absolutly a gem to this world, every video is very indept and very well done. Please keep going and you'll grow giant!
There's a later section in Metroid Prime 3 that I think is much scarier. IIRC, its to go get the Seeker Launcher. The pathway is a relatively unblocked research station with several caged Metroids. At the end sits the Seeker Launcher that you can't open... except by removing the energy cell from the station next to it. This turns off all the lights and releases all the little buggers.
Overall, Metroid does an excellent job at kinda creeping you out in certain areas. The mysterious "Pirate Fear" track in Space Pirate areas make you feel like you have to watch your back for Space Pirates that are going to jump down on you. Couple that with the Pirates' growls and their combat theme, and I still feel a big on edge even after more playthroughs of old areas.
Personally I wouldn't be able to tell if Skylab or GFS Valhalla were more terrifying. The derelict ship gave me the creeps too, far more than the lab did.
This channel really reminds me of Mark Brown and Game Maker’s Toolkit channel. This is an awesome thing because both channels while similar analyze game design in their own two unique ways and communicates it in a great way.
Keep doing what you’re doing, you gained a sub today.
The amount of channels with this kind of quality content on game design/dev on UA-cam these days is great.
I want to reiterate. I do agree with this, but I mean that in a good way.
The two channels are similar, but they each have something different they focus and a different point of view, which gives some interesting contrast between both channels. I'm happy they are both here to watch :)
Mate just recently discovered your channel and binged a heap of videos in random order. Really enjoy what you do. Also. Love your praise of BS2 for like 4 minutes straight.
You've got such an underated channel mate, always top quality uploads! Coming up on 100k, you can do it! Can't believe more people don't know about or watch this
I thought someone was for sure going to quote William Dafoe in Boondocks saints re: "Symbology"
Went to the comments for this comment!
Disagree with the points made regarding mafia town, I view the areas main levels as 'surface noise' and the main thing I like about it is as a movement sandbox. The game is fun to control, so it's good to have somewhere to just run around without guidance (ignore the level goals). There is quite a bit that can be found by doing so, and I feel that can only be done in a busy environment. I was still finding new things in the level even having played the whole game several times over, and you need a maze-like setting to do that.
Chapter 4 by comparison is a hub and spoke of almost linier platforming sections. It dosn't have the same depth.
I love these videos. Especially since I am finally learning game development, this stuff will REEEAAALLY help me in the long run.
Congrats on starting game dev. Watching stuff like this will really help so keep it up.
Thank you. I hope to make great games in the future.
Hope you do well in the long run. Just start small - nobody makes Braid or Stardew Valley as their first solo project, and *nobody* makes the big budget games on their own, period. But it's good to see you're looking around for input from the more intellectual side of UA-cam.
Extra Credits will probably help a lot, if you haven't come across them yet.
Not to argue against you too much, but Is feel there's an alternate theory of level design where the feeling of being temporarily lost is a part of the game. You've played the Myst series, I assume? Each game, particularly the first 2, throws you into several environments of fairly considerable size without giving any obvious cues as to where you are and what you should be doing. The first game is both the best at this and the simplest, so I'll describe the main island from there.
You start on a dock. There are masts of a sunken ship to one side, and a door to the other, as well as a straight path. The door leads to a hologram projector that, at best, will give you a mysterious message that only bears a cursory explanation to what's going on.
Moving along the dock and then up into the island, you find an area with massive gears that don't do anything, a discarded letter (with the code to get that hologram message), an observatory that lets you view a specific point of sky for a 10 000 year period, a library where most of the books are burned, a full sized model space ship that doesn't open, a fountain with a sunken model boat in it, a series of pillars with random symbols on them, a cabin with a vault, a big tree in a brick enclosure, a power distribution system, and an offshore clocktower/lighthouse.
Closer inspection of some of these elements reveals that certain ones are connected - a power line from the underground power station to the space ship, for example, and the model ship in the fountain being oddly similar to the one in the docks, but you're largely clueless. There is a bit of obvious player direction being given with the library, in that there are 2 books on stands, the Red Book and the Blue Book, with pages of the same color sitting next to them. Clicking the page and then the book adds the page to the book, making the messages from those trapped within slightly clearer than before, though with the first page, that's slightly clearer than pure static and thus still largely incomprehensible. It does teach the primary progression mechanic of finding and returning pages to their respective books, but that's about all the direct handholding you're going to get.
Figuring out how to align the mountaintop observatory (which you'll only even know about if you've been looking around a bit and noticed the odd cylinder on top of the mountain) and access it is the first thing you have to do in order to get the clues to progress, but to a first time player, it's a pretty major accomplishment. Getting anything useful out of it is another matter. Some are relatively easy - the safe code for the cabin, the power rating for the generator, but those only get you a book of matches and an open door for the spaceship, respectively. You still need to figure out where to use those matches, and how to solve the bloody piano bullshit in the spaceship.(hint: if you're relatively tone deaf like me, look it up, because dear god that puzzle is not going to be kind to you.) There's also a time that corresponds to a clocktower and a code within that, and some dates and times that can be used with the 10000 year star observatory thing to get some star patterns. From there, you need to find one of a handful of unburned books that has the constellations and figure out which ones you saw (if you're not good at picking out constellations, might take you a bit). The only hint from that mountaintop observatory that actually opens access to another Age (world) on its own is the clocktower time and the code that goes within it, though even that requires a bit of solving, since the code input device is a little tricksy to use.
Most of the game progresses in much the same manner. Exploration, experimentation, and execution is the name of the game, here. And the first two stages take 99% of the time playing the game. You often feel lost in the worlds of Myst, the islands of Riven, and to a lesser extent, the worlds of the subsequent games. The reason they work is because the places are so damned interesting that you want to poke around them and see what happens anyway. And if you don't, you're probably not the person who would enjoy the games anyway.
I'm glad to finally see your channel growing ;-; it always felt like such an injustice that your videos didn't have more traction with the huge quality that they have, and now things seem to be starting to get in place ! so congratulation on your growth man, keep up the good content !
So hyped for your upcoming video on the Metroid Primes!
My god I’m so glad this channel exists. I really love your content and your editing and presentation is fantastic
It's a great channel
Huh. Mafia town I was navigating by the time I was done with the second mission. That last area had me constantly wondering where I was. Weird how we're opposite like that.
Great video bro !!
Pretty sure the red barrel trope is because we ended up painting containers with explosives in them red to easily say "Do not drop this" or "do not have fire near by" which I am pretty sure was the trascontenarial railroad was responsible for due to the difference in their workers languages.
Nice to see Bioshock 2 get some love. Its my personal fave and it gets over looked so often
Queen Vanessa was insanely scary. Had I played that as a kid, I would have gotten nightmares for weeks.
They don't do a huge amount with truly nonverbal communication, but Into the Breach does a great job at using indirect cues to inspire players to keep improving. Things like how the different leaders respond differently to player failure and the comments from the civilians remind you that you are heroes, humanity's last line of defense. You need to act like it. And a hundred people could die if you forget that the blast psion is still there.
I would really love to see an analysis like this about Lucah: Born of a Dream because that game uses very little visually yet manages to handle itself pretty well. It certainly has some moments that are frustratingly difficult to understand, so I would be interested to see an in depth look into what works and what doesn't.
Boi, it’s “signifier” not “sign.” The signifier and signified are the two parts that make up a sign. Someone needs to brush up on their semiotics :P
That.
couldn't it also be "sign" & "signee" from my understanding it's just another version of your's ;) thou i could be wrong :D
@@shadowmaster335 Since 'yours' isn't spelled with an apostrophe and though has a gh on the end, I don't think you're in a position to give English advice.
@@markmayonnaise1163 this is a 6month old comment but i just want to say, stfu and don't be a dickhead
It's obvious he doesn't look into much or care about increasing subscribers seeing as he added political commentary
This feeling definantly resonated with me when playing Octopath Traveler that game got so much emotion out of me and I really felt like I was travelling on a great journey.
A Hat in Time is great, but it does have those weird idiosyncrasies; like in the Stage 3 boss battle with the Snatcher where he refuses to turn blue (and thus vulnerable) until you smack him with a blue potion. This makes sense when the stage 1 boss (and maybe the Toilet of Doom) turn blue to signal vulnerability, but the Stage 2 boss and Final Boss never turn blue and can just be attacked after their own attacks. It feels like it could have been much more clever if the turning blue mechanic and blue potions had been better established by that point.
One might say that it's better to experience games first hand rather than watching videos that explain them... but I often completely miss the point of the game when I play it by myself. I am so focused in passing the immediate challenges, that connecting the dots of a hidden message or bigger puzzle is usually beyond me. And it actually makes everything less fun to me
Man love the videos!
Oh and amazing end card
I'm fascinated by games that (try to) communicate as much as possible without using actual language. Loved "Brothers tale of two sons" and "Hyper Light Drifter" for example. Wish more games would utilize the interactivity of the medium even more to engage players.
13:07 amnesia’s got nothing on that
Ironicaly Metroid Prime has the ability to make me lost all the time and at this point I have spent more time trying to find the things I need to find than I have spent playing the game
I personally found alpine skyline to be one of the most frustrating levels to navigate. because in a few places, the same color is used for different islands, I found locating the time rifts incredibly frustrating, it almost made me stop continuing the game because I found them so aggravating to find, i only lucked into two of them without even realizing it. Going just from point a to point b in the level is fine, and the way it sets up each island in advance is nice, but i spent 20 minutes trying to get to one island that just wasn't available until later, and then another 20 minutes going back and forth trying to find the last island i haven't gone to yet.
Because of the way the zip lines wind around I found it very confusing to get my orientation and figure out where the other islands were in relation to the one i was. "Ok, i'm on this yellow island, and i came here from the south... but I think i want to get to that red island to the east... but if i take the south exit, it takes me back west.....
Exellent video bro!
your videos are so great. thank you for your contributions
again high quality video :D love your stuff keep it up :)
You should have talked about playdead’s inside... it has no text... no voice lines... I think it would have worked well in this video... btw your a great UA-camr! Keep it up!
I really need to watch both Metroid Prime and Hat in Time sometime. they both seem pretty cool, and I got turned off by the Mafia Town level a bit so it's good to know it improves later on!
Don't watch a Hat in Time; play it. It is so much fun! (Plus free PC DLC Thursday!)
subprogram32 I just completed a hat in time and it is a ton of fun, I can’t wait for the dlc
My laptop cannot run Hat In Time I think though. :(
Please give the Metroid Prime soundtrack a listen.
edit: Its the music in the background of this video. Good choice Adam.
You should play games.
Great video, I love analysis of level design.
Is it bad that i’ve never even touched almost all of the games you talk about on this channel, and some i’ve never even heard of despite how classic or “everyone must play this”-worthy it is?
Not at all - everyone has their taste in games, and Adam's is more esoteric than most. He likes the experimental, the different, the unique. All the special little children. The thing he does well is in presenting enough background to make his point have the context it needs even if you've not played the game.
Excellent job with explaining how developers use the environment to catch the players attention in Metroid Prime, instead of just guiding the player where to go with a checkpoint.
Checkpoints are so PS1
4:00 as a repeat player, I still get tripped up by that sometimes.
"From the title, know in advance that Metroid is one of the greatest game that tell it story without saying anything"
*Start with a metroid music*
I knew it !
Awesome video as ever ^_^
6:12: "We're playing as a creature of incredible power."
While I like Bioshock 2, I can't help but feel that it starts you off on the wrong foot. My first impression of the game was,
*Game:* "You are a Big Daddy, here is your drill arm."
*Me:* "Yeah! All right! Here we g-...wait, did that random splicer just kill me in three shots from a pistol?"
Despite what the game looks like and what it tells you upfront, I still felt just as vulnerable and wimpy as the unarmored protagonist from the first game, and it was the combat itself that reinforced that. I didn't really succeed in the game until I lost the mindset of "I am a hulking brute", and adopted, "I am a lone, scared survivor."
"You humans love arches"? Anything you'd like to share, Adam?
Adam: "I, too, as a human-person, like the arches. I'm human! I'm human!"
Yes, yes, archways are very appealing to my eyes, that are embedded in my human skull! I certainly don't see through eye stalks, like a zognoid would!
You can just sprinkle enemies on the way so as long as there is something to kill you are going the right way
Can someone please translate the code at the end
I have no idea how.
It's a link to a youtube video. Here: ua-cam.com/video/dQw4w9WgXcQ/v-deo.html
How did I get caught by this I wrote the damn code
*It says:*
"Did you actually go
through the effort of
translating this?
wow. I'm impressed."
@Adam Millard: I also got caught by it, right after decoding it. :/
I'm at a loss for words, I didn't expect anyone to fall for it.
I didn't know how much I missed it before clicking the link ^^;
DW Adam, I stopped playing anything but card games two or three years ago. I just watch game design / analysis videos now.
This needs to be adressed more to the game devs. Level design is very important.
am i the only one that was stuck in dead space the first time you get to zero gravity?
i also got stuck in cave story
I think there was a Banjo Kazooie mod that I saw someone stream once called Banjo Dreamie that had the most obtuse level design ever when I compared it to Banjo Kazooie proper. It was never communicated what ways you could take to the items because notes were the main collectables instead of breadcrumbs, a lot of jumps look impossible and it overall just makes you feel lost. Plus there are no obvious things saying "You can't go here yet" because nothing is properly taught to the player, as opposed to BK proper.
2:18 Sssssssymbolism, Detective Alapopskalius.
>dont stand in fire
>dont jump on spiny
YOURE NO BOSS OF ME! >:(
Great video as always, though you're Subject Delta in Bioshock 2. You *fight* Subject Alphas in the late game.
Hi Adam,
I really enjoy your videos.
Currently I am studying movie and TV in Germany to become a game director.
Since there is no actually way to study it, I am forced to study the normal(movie) art of direction. So your videos help me to find connections I didn't see for myself.
Where do you get your informations from by the way? Are there books you can recommend?
Greeting from Germany
Chris
Right, I should finish Metroid prime 2 once^^
I started playing it a few years ago but after the holidays I never continued
11:10 what, you never get to the Xenoresearch lab on Elysia in Prime 3?
Hey, your videos are really interesting. I have noticed that you have used scenes from Warframe a few times. Any chance we will see it star in a future video? Thanks regardless.
Sooo... your not going to talk about big doors before boss rooms? Darn.
Great video.
Thanks for uploading.
Have you any plans to review Supcom & FAF?
Did you do a whole video on nonverbal communication in games without mentioning the master of this this technique Dark Souls? Well the other master of this technique aside of metroid
Okeh, my instincts tell me to go up the hallwa-
*lightning strikes*
Q. Vanessa: WHO DARES ENTER MY HOME!?
Me: uhhhh
*Queen Vanessa slowly emerges and makes haste*
Me: oh fuck no nononon NOPE NOPE AAAAAAAA
She has no weakness and literally gives you a _heart attack_
Great video as usual Adam! Here I am late to viewing as usual even though I have an early head start.
Aw man i love metal slug
Adam, I really love your videos, but you have to work on your articulation. Your research and your ideas are top notch, but how to deliver them is sometimes a little hard to understand at first listen. You are but a small step away from being a awesome channel to being the best channel about gaming right now. Not everyone is a native english speaker, keep in mind that many people can't just easily cope with British- or other accents. This is a 100% constructively meant critique! Keep up the outstanding work!
It would also be nice to have closed captions, but that's mostly because I love closed captions.
4:56 but you never ended up doing the prime video :(
Magmoor Caverns Theme FTW!
Bioshock 2 deserves more love.
god Bioshock 2 was so much better than 1,... Still need to finish either of Prime games, love the 2d metroids
Hmm..I don't see it. I mean for one second I was confused about the red, but it only lasted one second. It's not like every time it happened I was confused. And you praise alpine skyline, but that level was the least fun to explore for some reason.
Delta! Subject Deltaaaa! Other than that, good video.
I have to strongly disagree with your analysis of Alpha for Bioshock 2. I agree in that the sound design is fantastic for showing Alpha in pain, but saying that it shows that this Big Daddy is pitiable, and implied that the previous Big Daddies were not. All Big Daddies were worthy of pity, though. They were mindless, heavy, droning machines that symbolized the fall of Rapture as a whole, lurching and hunched over as they moved from a complete lack of motivation or soul. The Big Daddy was always a metaphor of how far Rapture had fallen and was on the verge of completely falling apart, all the way back in Bioshock 1.
02:38 I just played that level for the first time! (Just bought doom)
5:20 hold up people don't like Bioshock 2? Excuse me? It's the best in the series in my opinion, I have a lot more fun playing a big daddy than either of the human characters in the series, story isn't as good as the first game but game play wise it is superb.
pretty sure your concept of signified is wrong. the signified is what is intended, not what is interpreted.
edit: it isn't first person vs seccond person
The more you know!
How can you talk about this topic, but not about Half Life or Portal? Basically the masters of visual Tutorials/Story Telling
Because those games have already been talked about to death
@@randomguy6679 That´s true tho. Still like this topic ^^
I feel like the gay cop in Boondock Saints.... its Symbolism.
I got lost so many times in Metroid Prime than A Hat in Time. Not to mention Metroid Prime bosses are bullet sponges
Someones salty
game at 0:34?
Not really connected to the video - but what happened to the Hellblade video?
I forgot about it, but Hellblade is getting a big mention in the next one actually!
Great to hear! And btw - a great video as usual, very insightful and full of interesting ideas.
For another brilliant example of how to guide and prime the player for the experience to come check out NieR: Automata's most excellent "tutorial"
So level designers... should understand basic design? Can't argue with that.
oh yes!
Whats the game at 8:21 ?
That would be HEARTBEAT, it's a little indie rpg that's not fully out yet but is really good!
@@ArchitectofGames Thanks, I was wondering because there's is not so much information on it.
It's made on RPG maker, but it really stands out! The demo is out now and you can find it on itch.io
@@Rexodiak Yeah, I downloaded it and play some of it and its freaking awesome!
Gud work smert men
is it mean if i were to call u Mark Brown junior?
It's a little mean to Mark, I've got a long way to go before I'm GMTK-level quality!
Dang, System Shock 2 would've been perfect for this subject.
Kasra Azad and Playdead’s Inside... it has no text except for the title... it doesn’t have any voice lines either... it tells its story by sounds and visuals.
How much of this is research and how much is your own take on the topic?
I'd say it's about half and half. I make an effort to keep things within the realms of my own observation, but I do a lot of outside reading/viewing on topics and games I'm not totally familiar with, such as the composition techniques that get used in Metroid Prime.
10:00 Oh, yes, hentai taught me a lot about the usefulness of the non-verbal communication..
(Sorry)
Van Tuz ñphñplo
Van Tuz y ñ ñ ñooo
Van Tuz y si es el mejor
but i still got more confused playing metroid prime and feel its too tedious than a hat in time.
How was metroid prime more confusing for you?
15:38
Translation anybody?
Can confirm... i played Bioshock 2 before 1 and I thought it was awesome.
Tbh I can't stand the first one...🤷♀️😬
CAVE STORY O_O lol
Epic
Cave Story yay! Such an amazing game.
Help I subscribe bell like commented! I did it in the wrong order! What do I do now?
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nice one.