Game Designers In Detail is an interview series between a current NYU Game Center MFA student and a PRACTICE speaker. PRACTICE is the NYU Game Center’s annual conference that takes a close look at the concrete challenges of game design, creating a context for conversation among game designers of all types.
Eric Teo: What made you decide to create a scripting language in Else Heart.Break() and what unexpected things have you seen players done with the language?
Erik Svedäng: I wanted to explore the idea of programming as the “ultimate puzzle system”. In a lot of games the designer know most of all of the solutions to each puzzle, while programming allows for infinitely many crazy and unexpected solutions. Also, the feeling you get when your code finally works and does the right thing is exhilarating and was something that I wanted to let more people experience.
It has been very fun to see what people come up with in the game. The most common things are hacks that let them beat the game in a more efficient way, like programs for finding certain objects or moving to different positions with the least effort. My favourite things are the little personal touches though, like hacking a radio so that it speaks when you change the channel… or making the vending machine give out really strong beer!