The Lenses of Surprise, Fun, and Curiosity

        Playing games is all about satisfying your curiosity, or just to have fun.  Gamers play games because games are fun, or maybe they were just curious about a game and wanted to try it out.  I know that there have been numerous occasions where I wanted to play a certain game because I was curious about it.
The lenses of surprise, fun, and curiosity are essential for a game.  If a game is not fun, it will not be very popular.  If a game doesn't have a curiosity factor that makes the gamer want to keep playing, it will not be very successful.  Without surprise, a game can quickly become tedious.

The Lens of Surprise:

Rise will not have a considerate amount of surprises as it is mostly a straightforward game.  Some surprise factors that might be put into Rise would be variation of enemy types.  What I am thinking is to make the player kill specific types of enemies in  a certain way.  So there will be different enemy types, and the player will have to come up with a strategy to kill each one in a specific manner.
The story might have a couple of unexpected twists that might put Roman, the antagonist, into further peril.  As of now, I'm unsure whether that might happen or not.

The Lens of Fun:  

As I mentioned earlier, a game without any fun, will not be played by many people.  The fun parts of Rise include killing enemies and shooting stuff.  In this day and age, many games include shooting and blowing up stuff.  Today's gamers expect some kind of action in a game for it to be fun.  Therefore, I made Rise to be an action/adventure game.
Some elements that might make the game funner would be a different array of weapons, bloody graphics, and more overall action in the game.

The Lens of Curiosity:

A gamer continues to play a game for many reasons.  Some of those reasons can be that the game is entertaining, or that the gamer is curious as to how the story will end.  To hook the player, I would want them to ask themselves “What is going to happen next?”  If a player keeps asking that question, he/she will want to keep playing the game.  I want Rise to be able to put that question into a player's mind.