Being a Child Again Through Gameplay

While we love games for letting us fight monsters, master daring adventures and save the world, there is more to experience through gameplay than grind, power and heroism. This book is about the less common game characters and how they might prompt us to revisit our early years—it is about playable child perspectives. Various existing ones—ranging from very dark as in “Little Nightmares” over more realistic as in “The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit” to light and playful as in “Alba: A Wildlife Adventure”—are explored in detail, leading to the question: What does make a playable child perspective relatable to us adults? This question is met with a theory about the means that might help create this relatability as well as a game prototype about a family car ride experienced from the back seat.