Gameplay Journal Entry #2

A game I have been playing this week is Hyper Light Drifter. This is a 2D top down rpg. It’s probably most popular for its unique pixel art style. The music for Hyper Light Drifter is also very distinct. The game is also compared to the likes of “Souls-like” platformers such as Cuphead, due to its difficulty. Hyper light was created with the GameMaker engine.

The GameMaker engine was designed to be friendly to non-coders. The engine uses a script based language called GML (Game Maker Language). GameMaker is mainly ustilized for the creation of 2D graphics. GameMaker allows compatibility with many platforms such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, HTML5, and many more giving it much extensibility. Due to its design being less technical, I feel GameMake allows for creative developers to express more freely. In my opinion when artists like game developers are not limited by their knowledge of a technical medium like a complicated game engine they can create more naturally. The relationship of the developer and engine impacts the creativity expressed. This is touched on in Lowood’s article, ”In other words, id’s creativity was expressed primarily through the game engine, and the provisions for modifying assets opened up possibilities for the kinds of creative expression that came to be called “player-generated” (or “user-generated”) content.”(Lowood Debugging game history: a critical lexicon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdgP7pSjv_0&list=PL5dr1EHvfwpM0iAsvZ8px0kKtS_4tO88a&index=2

Works Cited

Lowood, Henry. Debugging Game History: a Critical Lexicon. The MIT Press, 2016.