Sand Box

Have you ever heard about "Sand Box" game? If you think a game about a box with a bunch of sands, well, you're not completely wrong! That's what the "Sand Box" game literally means. A "Sand Box" is a game where people can freely create whatever they want (limited by imagination, of course) with the given mechanism, just like we usually did in a sand box, right?

A game can enhance experimental experience by combining mechanics with the objects. The mechanics should be simple so player can understand and explore it as free as they want. There're so many combination inside a "Sand Box" game, therefore it become so difficult to maintain all the possibilities. The developers only can maintain the basic combinations and anticipate the limit of their creations.

Any open world games are sand box, while not all sand box games are open world. What really means of a sand box is that player can roam freely and modify things without any specific goals. In this context, an open world game would be the most suitable example. In the open world game, player can roam freely wherever they want, interact with anything there, and have freedom to modify things without any specific goals. Even sometimes they didn't realize the game limitation because of it vastness.

When we talk about open world game, we think about creating our own "world". Sometimes, we want to create a "world" based on the "real world". For that purpose, we have to consider the player's expectation about the world itself, even for the smallest details. For example, if player realize that there aren't any season changes or the daylight system, they'll feel disturbed and this can lower the immersivities of the game. Even some games that creates a whole new world would still based on the current world so players can still comprehend that world.

#gamedesigntheory #sandbox #openworld