Desert Child is a game with some explosive action, but also some stretches of downtime.

Now, that’s something that might sound horrid to some people, see below:

In the video above, Downtime is kind of defined as being time the player spends grinding toward an objective with little room for player choice, and/or which could be done faster. I think there’s a problem with that definition, since that covers the story campaigns of like 12 Call of Duty games, but also because it doesn’t take into account games that use downtime to give the player a breather.

In Desert Child, as you repair your bike, buy new parts, eat lunch, and explore the city, the game plays music, and creates little dynamic sights to see. It’s downtime, but it’s not Downtime.

Lots of games use downtime as a reprieve from the mad action that’s in the screenshots on the back of the box. The best example is Shadow of the Colossus. Watch the video below and tell me the game is better without the riding between locations.

Shadow of the Colossus benefits from having a slow build up to each encounter. Riding into the domain of each new colossus slowly gives you information about the beast you are about to encounter, with cues in the environment cluing you into what you might expect from it.

Another example that I love is Kingdom. Downtime plays a significant role in the game, stressing the ever increasing size and instability of your kingdom. As you ride from one side of the screen to the other, you’ll encounter your loyal subjects, who may throw massive amounts of tax money at you, reminding you that you obviously haven’t been over this way in a long time.

But it doesn’t even have to go that far. Not everything needs some mechanical purpose in a game. Maybe the creator just wanted what you were doing to take a while. Downtime can just be a necessary buffer between bombastic action scenes.

Take Hotline Miami, where brief visits to pizza parlors and videostores give you a moment to dry your sweaty palms between murder sprees.

I think Desert Child falls somewhere between Hotline Miami’s breathing room, and Stardew Valley’s super-dense hub town. I mean, that’s what I’m going for. We’ll see if that’s actually the case when the game comes out.

That’s all really, I just wanted to defend wasting player’s time in the name of artistry.

:D