10 Games That Use Audiovisual Feedback in Creative Ways
During a creative programming class, the subject of creative visual design in games came up. Inspired by the discussion that ensued, I decided to list the games in my library that use sights and sounds in creative ways, either by manipulating the medium in unexpected manners or as a result of player actions.
BIT.TRIP BEAT
BIT.TRIP BEAT takes a simple premise and turns it into a player-driven chiptune orchestra. The game, at its core, is single-player Pong: the player controls a paddle and must use it to hit various incoming "pellets" that have different properties, such as bouncing multiple times, moving diagonally or in a wave pattern, or stopping in the middle of the screen for a brief moment. The big hook is that each pellet plays a sound when hit, and they're organized in such a way that hitting them all creates a tune. Perform really well, and the base soundtrack gets progressively richer and more layered. The end result is the player feeling like they're doing more than just hitting pellets, they're playing a song together with the game.
BIT.TRIP RUNNER
BEAT's more famous sibling, RUNNER follows the same concept of turning player actions into music, and applies it to a runner game. Controlling Commander Video, you must jump, slides, kicks, blocks, among other actions to avoid obstacles that each play a note when you successfully pass them.
Crypt of the Necrodancer
Crypt of the Necrodancer is a procedurally generated roguelike with a musical twist: everything in the dungeon, including the player, must move to the rhythm of the song. every step you take, attack you make, or item you pick up must be in sync with the music. You can even play the game in one of those dance mats used to play Dance Dance Revolution and other similar games. And yes, it does let you use your own music as the soundtrack, although the original soundtrack is pretty good in itself.
FEZ
One of the Indie Dev Darlings, FEZ is a tough game to explain, but once you see it in action, it all makes sense. FEZ is a 2D game set in a 3D world, and you must rotate your view to alter the landscape. Maybe if you rotate, that wall that's blocking your path is actually really far away, or maybe there was a path that you couldn't see before. This core mechanic is used in increasingly unique ways as you explore the game's world.
INK
INK is a fairly simple platformer, but with one key difference: the whole level is invisible. To handle that, you ooze rainbow-colored ink everywhere you touch, and you splash ink everywhere with every double jump and death. This leads death to actually have a lasting positive effect, as at the very least you can see more of the level now, and the levels become a beautiful mess of paint splatters.
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
The one game on this list I don't own, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes deserves a special mention for playing around with the medium itself. KTaNE is a multiplayer Virtual Reality game, where one player wears the VR goggles (or uses a laptop if you don't have one) to view a bomb and interact with it in an attempt to defuse it, while the other players are handed a thick manual full of very specific instructions on how to defuse bombs. Without being able to show the bomb to his helpers, the player with the goggles must try to describe the bomb and the other players must try to find the correct information based on that description, and relay it before time runs out, or before too many mistakes are made. KTaNE is a prime example of a videogame that extrapolates the limitations and makes the most of the medium it adopted to create a unique experience.
LUFTRAUSERS
Luftrausers is a highly polished shoot'em up with plenty of interesting mechanics and design choices, but the part of it that is relevant to this article is how its soundtrack works. You can tune your plane with different parts, each of which is "responsible" for one of the track's three layers. This means that each loadout produces a unique soundtrack, each one different, but more impressively, still cohesive.
Monaco
Monaco is a top-down heist game. In it, you can only see what's going on in your line of sight, everything else is hidden. The interesting part though is that the "fog's" texture is actually an accurate blueprint of the building you're breaking into, so while you don't know what's happening in that one locked room, or who's in there, you know all the doors and windows that lead into it, creating a unique art style that also serves a mechanical purpose.
Okami
Okami is a gorgeous action-adventure game based on Japanese mythology and follows an art style that resembles Nankin ink and watercolor. You control the wolf goddess Amaterasu, and learn special powers along the way that aid you in your adventure. To use those powers, you must turn the screen into a "canvas" and draw with a paintbrush the power's symbol (a straight line for a slash, a circle with a line for a bomb, etc). The sensation of painting a bomb or a gust of wind in the game makes using otherwise common abilities into a fun and unique experience in itself.
Splatoon
Splatoon is the kind of game that could only have come out of the sentence "Nintendo is making a competitive shooter". There are dozens of videos and articles on how its design creates a unique, synergetic flow to your actions, like this one, so I'll keep it mostly descriptive. In Splatoon, two teams of squid/kid hybrids known as inklings battle in a game of paintball. The twist is, winning isn't measured by kills, but by how much of the map is covered in your team's paint color. Painting also has extra benefits: your opponent's paint damages and slows you down, while your own paint lets you submerge to move faster, recharge your weapon, and move more stealthily through the map, even climbing walls. The game becomes a frantic swap between shooting ink and moving while under it, trying to cover areas your opponents painted with your own ink before the timer runs out.
