Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade

Last updated

Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade
Developer(s) Double Jungle S.a.s. & Stefano Gualeni
Publisher(s) Double Jungle S.a.s.
Producer(s) Double Jungle S.a.s.
Designer(s) Stefano Gualeni
Programmer(s) Diego Zamprogno
Platform(s) iOS
ReleaseNovember the 28th, 2011
Genre(s) Casual, puzzle video game
Mode(s) Single player

Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade is an action puzzle video game designed by Stefano Gualeni. Developed between 2011 and 2012 by Double Jungle S.a.S. and Stefano Gualeni, [1] Gua-Le-Ni is the first commercially released casual video game that was designed and tuned with the support of biometric experiments.

Contents

Metaphor

Gua-Le-Ni takes place on the wooden desk of an old, befuddled British taxonomist. On his desk, lies a fantastic book: a bestiary populated by finely drawn creatures. As for the monsters of myths and folklores in general, the impossible creatures in Gua-Le-Ni are combinations of parts of real animals.

The goal of the two main game modes of Gua-Le-Ni is that of recognizing the modular components of the fantastic creatures and their relative order before one of them manages to flee from the page (which is the game's ‘game over’ condition). Essentially, the game challenges the player with pattern-recognition mechanics in the form of a taxonomic enterprise. Mentored by the old taxonomist, the player pursues this purpose by rotating, moving and spinning toy-cubes with pictures of animal parts printed on the six faces of the cubes.

Biometry

To complement a wider quality assurance campaign based on questionnaires, interviews, blind-testing and hard-core performance tests, the Dutch research team at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences ran an initial series of biometric tests on Gua-Le-Ni. The aim of these initial tests was to structure a game testing methodology incorporating the added perspective of biometry.

The first biometric analysis we ran on Gua-Le-Ni focused on its accessibility during the first few minutes of gameplay. The task that was assigned to the researchers was to determine biometrically the optimal speed of the game for the target audience indicated by the developers as soon as the player successfully completed the first tutorial. The game design goal in relation to the initial set of tests was that of achieving the feeling that the game was non-threatening and manageable at the most basic level of difficulty, hence likely resulting in an initially pleasant and positive experience for the casual audience the development team was designing for.

In terms of game logics, the initial speed of the game is determined by the initial walking speed of the beasts. In this sense, the results of the first test in terms of the walking speed of our bizarre creatures became a cornerstone for all the subsequent design decisions concerning the tuning of the speed and the complexity of the game.

A second series of tests was conducted two months after the initial experiments. The aim of this second series of tests was to understand how a player's performance develops during the first 10 minutes of gameplay.

An important point to clarify is that in the competitive version of the game, the walking speed of the paper creatures increases incrementally after a specific number of creatures have been correctly recognized. The idea behind this design parameter is that if our fantastic creatures are not properly fed, their actions become more frenzied as they grow hungrier in their search for food. In this phase of the testing, the development team wanted to find an ideal balance between the initial speed of the game and the rate of acceleration as players progressively gain skills during their advancement of the game. Specifically, we wanted to find answers to the following questions:

Philosophy

From a philosophical perspective, the concept of Gua-Le-Ni was inspired by David Hume’s philosophical understanding of what a ‘complex idea’ is, as well as by the very example he used to elucidate the concept in his 1738 A Treatise of Human Nature . According to Hume, most people can be said to possess the mental concept of a Pegasus. This is patently due, for the Scottish philosopher to the fact that it is common for human beings to be exposed to Greek mythology. This is ostensibly also the case in the present century, where the Pegasus can still be encountered in books as well as in modern remediations of its folklore. In general, the Pegasus is presented as a divine horse that could fly using its legendary eagle wings and in David Hume’s work, it is introduced as an example of an idea that is not caused by direct, worldly experience, but is nevertheless an idea that we all have familiarity with. Nobody can truthfully claim to have seen a Pegasus, to have ridden, smelled or touched it, and yet the Pegasus is an idea that humans can fantasize of, discuss, write legends about, et cetera.

According to Hume, the idea of a Pegasus does not fall under the category of simple ideas, which is to say ideas that can be simply derived by having sensory ‘impressions’ of the objects the idea corresponds to. The Pegasus but must therefore be recognized as a complex idea: a mental combination of elements and properties of which the human mind had previous experience of and eventually creatively combined in a new idea. In other words, a complex idea (the Pegasus) is a combination of two or more simple ideas (a horse and an eagle) or parts and properties thereof.

By means of fantastic beasts of the same combinatorial nature as Hume’s Pegasus, Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade challenges the players to twist the creative capabilities described in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding on their heads and use them as game mechanics: impossible paper beasts will parade across the screen (the page of a fantastic bestiary) only to be recognized as combinations of parts of existing animals. In other words, the main game mechanic of Gua-Le-Ni is a playful and interactive material interpretation of the Humean notion of ‘complex ideas’.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hippogriff</span> Legendary creature

The hippogriff, or sometimes spelled hippogryph, is a legendary creature with the front half of an eagle and the hind half of a horse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manticore</span> Mythological beast

The manticore or mantichore is a Persian legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx that proliferated in western European medieval art as well. It has the head of a human, the body of a lion and a tail of venomous spines similar to porcupine quills, while other depictions have it with the tail of a scorpion. There are some accounts that the spines can be launched like arrows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Werewolf fiction</span> Fantasy genre

Werewolf fiction denotes the portrayal of werewolves and other shapeshifting therianthropes, in the media of literature, drama, film, games and music. Werewolf literature includes folklore, legend, saga, fairy tales, Gothic and horror fiction, fantasy fiction and poetry. Such stories may be supernatural, symbolic or allegorical. A classic American cinematic example of the theme is The Wolf Man (1941) which in later films joins with the Frankenstein Monster and Count Dracula as one of the three famous icons of modern day horror. However, werewolf fiction is an exceptionally diverse genre, with ancient folkloric roots and manifold modern re-interpretations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xenomorph</span> Fictional extraterrestrial species from the Alien film series

The Xenomorph is a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species that serves as the title antagonist of the Alien and Alien vs. Predator franchises. The species made its debut in the film Alien (1979) and reappeared in the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997). The species returns in the prequel series, first with a predecessor in Prometheus (2012) and a further evolved form in Alien: Covenant (2017). It also featured in the crossover films Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), with the skull and tail of one of the creatures respectively appearing briefly in Predator 2 (1990) and The Predator (2018), as a protagonist in the video game Aliens vs. Predator (2010), and will return in the upcoming FX television series Alien (TBA). In addition, the Xenomorph appears in various literature and video game spin-offs from the franchises.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owlbear</span> Fictional monster from Dungeons & Dragons

An owlbear is a fictional creature originally created for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. An owlbear is depicted as a cross between a bear and an owl, which "hugs" like a bear and attacks with its beak. Inspired by a plastic toy made in Hong Kong, Gary Gygax created the owlbear and introduced the creature to the game in the 1975 Greyhawk supplement; the creature has since appeared in every subsequent edition of the game. Owlbears, or similar beasts, also appear in several other fantasy role-playing games, video games and other media.

<i>GURPS Witch World</i> Tabletop role-playing game

GURPS Witch World is a supplement published by Steve Jackson Games in 1989 for use with the GURPS {Generic Universal Role-Playing System) game rules that describes how to set a role-playing campaign in Andre Norton's Witch World.

Troll (<i>Dungeons & Dragons</i>) Fictional monster in Dungeons & Dragons

Trolls are fictional monsters in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.

<i>Walking with Beasts</i> British TV series or programme

Walking with Beasts, marketed as Walking with Prehistoric Beasts in North America, is a 2001 six-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery Channel, ProSieben and TV Asahi. The sequel to the 1999 miniseries Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Beasts explores the life in the Cenozoic era, after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, particularly focusing on the rise of the mammals to dominance. The UK version of the series is narrated by Kenneth Branagh, who also narrated Walking with Dinosaurs, and the US version is narrated by Stockard Channing.

The Enclave is a fictional organization appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Typically depicted as a group of dictatorially-minded scientists, the Enclave is best known for creating the characters Adam Warlock and Kismet.

The salamander is an amphibian of the order Urodela which, as with many real creatures, often has been ascribed fantastic and sometimes occult qualities by pre-modern authors not possessed by the real organism. The legendary salamander is often depicted as a typical salamander in shape with a lizard-like form, but is usually ascribed an affinity with fire, sometimes specifically elemental fire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stefano Gualeni</span> Italian philosopher and game designer

Stefano Gualeni is an Italian philosopher, associate professor, and game designer who has created interactable websites and video games such as Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths,Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade, and Something Something Soup Something.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Necromorph</span> Fictional undead creatures in the multimedia franchise Dead Space

Necromorph is the term for a collective of fictional undead creatures in the science fiction horror multimedia franchise Dead Space by Electronic Arts, introduced in the 2008 comic book series of the same name. Within the series, the Necromorphs are constructed from reanimated corpses and come in multiple forms of various shapes and sizes. They are violent creatures driven to murder and infect all life within their vicinity by a signal emitted from mysterious alien artifacts known as Markers.

<i>Gyromancer</i> 2009 video game

Gyromancer is a puzzle and role-playing video game developed by PopCap Games in collaboration with Square Enix. The player moves through a map of an enchanted forest, battling monsters using their own summoned monsters through a puzzle-game battle based on PopCap's Bejeweled Twist. In these battles, the player rotates groups of four in a grid of gems to line up three or more jewels of the same color; when enough lines have been created damage is dealt to the enemy. Between battles, a story is told through a series of cutscenes, while the player and the summoned monsters gain experience and power using role-playing elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legendary creature</span> Supernatural animal

A legendary creature is a type of fantasy entity, typically a hybrid, that has not been proven and that is described in folklore, but may be featured in historical accounts before modernity.

<i>Les Chimères</i> (painting) Unfinished painting by Gustave Moreau

Les Chimères or The Chimaeras is an unfinished painting executed in 1884 by the French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (1826–1898). It depicts a large forest scene wherein various nude women are associated with sundry figures from classical and medieval mythology—not only the titular chimeras, but also centaurs, winged creatures, fawns, minotaurs, etc. The painting is a philosophical meditation on what Moreau saw as the elemental nature of Woman, depicting the internal yearnings and dreams of women through complex mythological symbolism. Moreau abandoned the work shortly after his mother's death to work on the darker polyptych La Vie de l'Humanité, considered one of his masterpieces.

<i>Maléfices</i> French horror tabletop role-playing game

Maléfices, subtitled "The roleplaying game with the scent of sulphur", was published by Jeux Descartes in 1985 as the first original French-language horror role-playing game. Three editions, 13 adventures and a bestiary have been published, and a fourth edition is being developed.

<i>Pegasus Bridge</i> (video game) 1987 video game

Pegasus Bridge is a turn-based strategy video game developed and published by Personal Software Services. It was released exclusively in the United Kingdom for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 in 1987. It is the ninth installment of the Wargamers series. The game is set during the landings in Normandy on D-Day in the Second World War and revolves around the British 6th Airborne Division's attempts to secure a bridge over the Caen Canal.

<i>Something Something Soup Something</i> 2017 browser video game

Something Something Soup Something is a free browser video game and "interactive thought experiment" developed by Stefano Gualeni and his team at the Institute of Digital Games. It was released in late 2017. In the game, the player must decide whether or not things are, in their opinion, soup. The game is inspired on the work of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and on the linguistic experiments of Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn B. Mervis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gargoyle (monster)</span> A fantasy creature inspired by the architectural Gargoyle element

The gargoyle is a fantasy and horror monster inspired by the gargoyle architectural element. While they were believed in mythology to frighten away evil spirits, the idea of such statues physically coming to life is a more recent notion. Like golems, they are usually made of magically animated or transformed stone, but have animal or chimera traits and are often guardians of a place such as a cathedral or castle. They can also be depicted as vessels for demonic possession or as a living species resembling statues.

<i>Wily Beast and Weakest Creature</i> 2019 video game

Touhou Kikeijuu ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature is the 17th main game in the Touhou Project and the 24th game overall. It was announced on ZUN's blog on April 17, 2019. A playable demo was released on May 5, at Reitaisai 16, and the full version was released at Comiket and on Steam on August 12.

References