Overview

The aim of this research to provide a framework for designers to integrate paradoxical game design as part of their game’s systems.

The reasoning behind paradoxical design being that it would potentially allow developers to design replayable gameplay experience utilising concepts of recursive subversion and contradiction, allowing for a novel experience similar to that of a rogue-like game. However, paradoxical game design differs in the sense that the player experiences an “uncanny valley” effect each time they restart the game, as the game playthough is almost similar but not quite as to what they expect.

Paradoxical Gameworld

In paradoxical world, when the game agent collides with a collectible, they are displaced from the current gameworld and teleported inside collision object. Furthermore, each successive attempt escape repeats the previous events, causing the game agent to get trapped deeper into consecutive gameworlds.

Paradoxical 3D Space

In a paradoxical three-dimensional space, the game agent experiences a paradoxical event where they are looped back to the same location they started from.

Paradoxical Player

In paradoxical death, the game agent’s death event leads towards a paradoxical scenario, where instead of reaching an end state the game agent possesses the object which caused its death .