How did I get into the idea of a non-violent game?

It started off with getting back into game playing with Breath of the Wild. The thing I really like about it is just how much you can do without fighting, and how far you can get without engaging in serious battles. Because I was really just rubbish at that bit. Sneaking around, solving puzzles, and teleporting away at the first sign of danger was my thing. At the point where I stopped playing, I’d got to the stage where there wasn’t much more I could do without taking on some major combat, and having watched it being played realised that if I did that then, just mooching around exploring the world would become a lot harder, and a lot less fun. So I put it down (and the Switch moved out), and I’ve not missed it. Although I still enjoy watching YouTube videos about it, because it is seriously a major creative work.

Following on from that, I was lent a PS3 to play Ni No Kuni, on a “If you liked that, you’ll like this.” And I bounced of it hard. Twice. Firstly, it’s trying to play out a linear story in an open world, and alternates between hard steers of what you need to do and leaving you bewildered as to what your next step should be. Breath of the Wild almost always gives you a choice of objectives, from the braid of the main quest, to non-trivial side-quests, to just showing you in the distance something you want to explore. Which I think is the genius of it. Secondly, and much more personally, I did not get to grips with the combat system. It felt like it demanded tactical decision making at button-mashing speed, and I never figured out how time stopped or started flowing. Or how to make best use of my team. Thirdly, combining the two, there are points in the game where in order to progress you need to grind up your levels in a series of fights. Which I found so tedious, and difficult, and obstructive of the plot, that facing another one of these was the point I gave up and returned the system.

After that experience, I started looking forward to playing Pine. It struck me that the developers were taking all the things I enjoyed in Breath of the Wild and seriously toning down the importance of combat. Which, combined with Ni No Kuni‘s insistence on fighting to progress, made me wonder just whether you could have an AAA game which didn’t involve violent conflict. The big gaming splash around then was Death Stranding, which was trying to pitch itself as all about co-operation but trailing with scenes of (presumably) the player sneaking around zapping people and blowing up trucks.

Ironically, when I did get to Pine (there’s another story there regarding the instability of Linux as a gaming platform) I started bouncing off the fact that I kept getting jumped on by randoms and killed in fights.

Thinking back to 8-bit days (which was the last time I tried writing a game) there is of course a world of difference, but one thing that struck me is how in many of the classic games (and/or games I loved) either all the violence is being inflicted on you, or you are fighting primarily defensively (or, at least, you can play the game that way). Consider Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Knight Lore – classic, brilliant games in which you have zero offensive capability. (Also the less well-known Alien 8, which is one of only two games I’ve ever completed.) Best of all from this perspective was Cyclone, in which there aren’t even any enemies, just an impersonally violent weather system (and the occasional jet which is travelling too fast to avoid mid-air collision if you’re not careful).

And that’s what I’m trying to capture. A game where you don’t have to inflict violence to progress, where you don’t have to be avoiding attacks all the time, but still gives you a satisfying challenge of a world to explore and quests to fulfil. Of course, I’m one person with barely a year’s gaming development experience, doing it in their spare time, so it’s going to be more than a little rough around the edges. In part it’s an experiment to see just how playable a modern game with this philosophy can be. But as with so many creative enterprises, this is primarily about producing something for me.