Sid Meier once said that “A game is a series of interesting choices”.

Most really good games present many interesting choices to the player, but sadly, a lot of music games do not. In the early days of music games, such as Dance Dance Revolution, your basic choices were: hit the notes or fail. When Guitar Hero came around and introduced the concept of Star Power, it gave the players a new mechanic they could activate at will. It introduced a new element to the game, but it could usually only be activated 3 or 4 times during one song. If we compare these 3 to 4 actual choices during 5 minutes of gameplay to a game like Starcraft, where pro players perform somewhere around 300 to 400 actions per minute, it seems almost ridiculous.

The gameplay still captivates in both Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, even though you have a limited amount of choice. Some would argue it’s because of the interesting peripherals and the social element to these games, but a fun peripheral does not amount to a fun game. People seem to enjoy the single player mode as well, so I don’t think it’s just a social thing either.

I believe that these games capture the essence of flow in a unique and powerful way, putting their players in a trance-like flow-state during play. The concept of flow was introduced by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe happiness, and game designers have latched onto the idea, expanding upon it to encompass concepts like game and level design. For an excellent explanation of the concept, check out Jenova Chen’s MFA thesis. Jenova Chen is the lead designer at ThatGameCompany, and their game flOw captures the essence of the concept beautifully.

But what happens when you merge these two ideas and create a rhythm game with an abundance of choice which maintains the flow state of the player? That’s what we’re trying to find out with Umami.

When we’re designing levels for Umami flow and choice are the key concepts. Some level design decisions enforce the concept of flow, and others introduce different choices. I sure hope we get the right mix in the end.

That’s it for today, drop by next week for another inside look at Umami game design!