<p>Gameplay has always been the most prominent feature of any game—which is only natural, since it’s what the whole medium focuses on. However, a few developers intend to do away with it entirely in their game The Astronauts—instead focusing on things such as the plot, graphics, and subverting any death consequences. The goal is ultimately to make an easier experience and cut out all of the difficulty associated with reaching the final boss or unlocking an extra cut scene, which brings me to our point—without gameplay, what is there left to a game? Is it really something we should be reworking?</p>
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<p>Anyone who’s played a classic SNES game can probably relate to the developer and understand why difficulty might be jarring to a player. More difficult levels can keep a player from progressing through a game for days or weeks, depending on their determination, which can have incredibly adverse effects such as forgetting the plot or any key elements that weren’t used in the difficult level. The ambience of the game may also change from serious to frustrating and back to neutral again, ruining the feeling that developers wanted you to have at that point in the plot.</p>
<p>However, taking out gameplay entirely and choosing not to focus on things as simple as ‘walking, swimming, or riding a horse’ essentially makes the game into a movie. Even Heavy Rain, a game which borrowed heavily from the cinema industry and was made to be more of an experience than a game, was filled with quicktime events and scenes where your control over the character mattered. Although it had clear inspiration from movies, it was also clearly a game and had plenty of parts where button mashing was a bit difficult in its cut scenes.</p>
<p>That’s not even mentioning that there’s a whole genre of games dedicated to making the game difficult, with titles such as Super Meat Boy and Limbo pushing the limits of how long a gamer can stay in the game. Or how subverted plots and graphics were prominent at the start of gaming, making the sole purpose of gaming the difficulty of each gaming level. Taking out the difficulty, skill, and motor skills of a game leaves you something which no longer resembles a game at all—and calling it a visual novel might still be pressing it.</p>
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<p>There’s no way of knowing what the developers of the Astronaut were thinking when they decided to do away with gameplay until the game actually releases. Whether they are actually just revamping a gameplay experience or truly doing away with it entirely is still unknown. Seeing developers actually pull this off would be interesting, but unfortunately a game without gameplay isn’t much of a game, and would probably be considered a movie or interactive novel at best. While those mediums are effective at conveying a message, with no gameplay, they lose some of the immersion that games give. While we wait for the game’s release, we can only wonder how exactly to play a game without gameplay.</p>

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