The Joy of Succumbing to Inertia; Enabling a Deepfall into Trust

I derive joy from a game when I am swept up in it. 

I imagine this is widely appealing: you move among the art, and catch a glimmer going that way, so you trace its path, and follow it into strange territories, and those territories are brimming full, maybe inscrutable, but rewardingly loved out by whoever made them. Unnecessarily beautiful.

Unnecessarily beautiful.

This is, I think, what's essentially captivating about Breath of the Wild, Might and Magic, and Stardew Valley. 

Spanning geography in BotW and Might and Magic will put you in exhilarating locations, in front of chests and troves that feel as if they were hidden just for you. These games give you viscerally thrilling opportunities to safely observe titan creatures you have no hope of fighting. You'll discover artifacts and pieces to stories that you may not fully understand, and these make the world vivid to you, and real.

In Stardew, following some of your initial play-experience which feels more like the above, this exploration happens in the systems, which are just full of answers to your queries: what happens if I... oh, I guess I made duck mayonnaise; maybe if I fish when it's stormy, in this particular spot... ; I will make apricot wine; my character feels unhappy with their spouse, so I guess she'll divorce them, and try getting to know Elliott.

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Minecraft is good and awesome to people because it manages this to an incredible scale. The geographical side, it does through procedural generation, which is a key for us. What first captures the imagination in Minecraft are those caves that wind up going somewhere. Those places, below and above ground, that seem as natural and old as parts of the Earth. The building component of Minecraft is enormous and deep and designed, and achieves a lot of what the earlier paragraphs describe; but what's important about Minecraft to us is that this world generates observable wonders that make belonging among them a worthy thing to aspire to.

(Wildermyth does something different, but, I would argue, of a similar effect. It generates relatable characters who relate to their world and each other believably. It drills down to silly depths, sometimes, so that the player who delves there will be amazed and joyful.)

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These are experiences that happen because, as a player, and if you allow it, you're a ball. You can hold still on the hilltop, happily. But a wind may come and nudge you, get you wobbling. And then you may start rolling, and find yourself gaining speed, and realize you're on a slope. This is a slope the game has carved for you. It pours towards these wonders, among which you are happy to knock and spin, and get a little dirty. You eventually stop. The hand of god might pick you up and put you on your hilltop once more. Or, phrased more tenderly, a huge retriever brings you home. And that's also fine. Whatever makes you comfortable.

This is what we want to capture, I feel. And our ambition is to do it in a repeatable mode, through procedural generation, which will create many upon many such opportunities: to succumb to inertia, and trust that wherever you fall will be a place of depth and beauty, loved into being, that was always going to be there whether you found it or not.