Interactivity and immersion

Story and setting can make a game fascinating, but interactivity is what makes a game fun.

Too often I have enjoyed gorgeous graphics and alluring worldbuilding suggested by many great games, only to find that their beauty is just skin deep. The so-called "environmental storytelling" and "show don't tell" approach is great and still relevant, but surely I'm not the only one who longs to be able to reach in deeper and fiddle with many of the decorative objects in the game world, if only just to learn more about them via flavor text, or connect with the characters via their reactions and opinions about the objects.

My solution is to create a flexible interaction menu system that is easy to set up, and has the flexibility to add a label with flavor text, as well as easily configurable action options, equally accessible via mouse, keyboard or game controller hat buttons.

Naturally, these affordances should be curated such that not every piece of junk is interactable, but ideally only objects of interest that will support the narrative and enhance gameplay, as well as sustain and enrich the sense of immersion.