Salutogenic design principles can enhance a wide diversity of games. The following examples demonstrate how comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness manifest in different games.
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Salutogenic Game Design: A Primer
Salutogenic game design helps you build experiences that cultivate resilience, healthy coping, and joyful engagement.
Minecraft
- Comprehensibility — Minecraft has relatively simple rules that are easy to grasp, yet the possibilities are nearly endless. Players develop an understanding of the game world while retaining open-ended choices.
- Manageability — Offers numerous ways to tackle challenges. Resources can be gathered and transformed creatively, and the difficulty can often be adjusted, accommodating a range of playstyles and skill levels.
- Meaningfulness — The core act of creation is intrinsically rewarding. Setting goals, tackling projects, and sharing outcomes create a sense of purpose and personal accomplishment.
GRIS
- Comprehensibility — GRIS uses color, shapes, and environmental design to communicate meaning and guide the player without heavy reliance on text tutorials. New abilities and mechanics are introduced at a steady pace, allowing players to internalize the game’s unique world and its rules.
- Manageability — As Gris regains her abilities, players acquire tools to navigate increasingly complex environments and puzzles. Challenges rely primarily on the player’s understanding of mechanics, while elements like helpful creatures or shifting platforms assist the player so they don’t feel stuck for long.
- Meaningfulness — The progression through colors and landscapes mirrors emotional stages of healing, creating a resonate sense of personal journey for players. Overcoming obstacles, especially towards the end, reinforces the player’s ability to regain strength and inner voice, leading to a deeply cathartic experience.
Animal Crossing
- Comprehensibility — Animal Crossing presents a clear social system and daily routine, offering a predictable world where players find comfort and understanding.
- Manageability — Emphasizes a relaxed experience with low-pressure tasks. While goals exist, players retain significant freedom over pacing and pursuits, allowing them to define an experience that is manageable and desirable for them.
- Meaningfulness — Cultivates meaningful interactions with characters, the development of a personalized space, and a sense of belonging within a welcoming community.
Stardew Valley
- Comprehensibility — Core concepts are introduced gradually, allowing players to master tasks and systems at their own pace.
- Manageability — Prioritizes choice and self-management with a multitude of viable ways to achieve success, from farming to relationships.
- Meaningfulness — Allows players to create a fulfilling virtual life based on their priorities and find value in restoring the town, exploring relationships, or reaching personal goals.
Don’t Starve Together
- Comprehensibility — Don’t Starve Together offers a clear-cut goal (don’t starve!), but mastering resource management and crafting involves careful observation and experimentation.
- Manageability — Multiple paths to success. Difficulty curve often ramps up slowly, allowing players to adapt and devise new tactics.
- Meaningfulness — Perseverance rewards players with uncovering the world’s mysteries, expanding their base, and conquering a hostile environment, as well as a sense of camaraderie and shared experience.
Journey
- Comprehensibility — Journey delivers a clear overarching goal with a clear, intuitive interface. Yet the mechanics and symbolism within the world still allow for thoughtful interpretation.
- Manageability — Focuses on simple controls and exploration, while challenges encourage experimentation and perseverance.
- Meaningfulness — Fosters reflection, connection (through wordless cooperation with other players), and a sense of awe toward a shared journey.
Rocket League
- Comprehensibility — The basic concept of Rocket League (football / soccer with cars) is easy to grasp, but the skill ceiling for advanced mechanics is incredibly high.
- Manageability — Players have freedom to develop their own playstyles and strategies, allowing for personalized approaches to the same challenge.
- Meaningfulness — The thrill of victory, sense of progression through competitive ranks, and the joy of pulling off difficult maneuvers make for a rewarding experience.
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