I was thinking about some things today and I began to wonder...

Shadow of the Colossus completely immerses you in a world that is so, so much bigger than your own character.
That feeling makes you feel like a part of that world.
Basically, the graphics make you a part of that world.

How can someone create such a feeling for a calculator game?
Also, tell me what calc games have immersed you.
What calc games have consumed you, mind, body, and soul?

As far as limitations with sprites and tilemaps are concerned, I think using a 1:1 environment is about as immersing as you can get. By this, I mean the environment must be to-scale - no little icons representing town and dungeon entrances. Every location would be integrated directly into one huge map. I'm currently making a few attempts at this with Rephaim and Lost Legends. (reprise)

Detail is also important. Rather than downcoding sprites and tiles that are already 4 bpp, you can try downcoding graphics that are at much higher bit-depths. You can almost achieve a water-color effect this way.



The graphics were downcoded from various sources - mostly PlayStation 1 and WonderSwan Color. Yup - I downcoded PSX graphics to 4 bpp. Wasn't easy, but it works.

The sprites are only 3-level, but that's because of the masking technique used, where the dark gray layer can be treated as transparent. It's a small sacrifice in detail that makes some things easier in the long-run.

I'm getting the feeling that storyline is a key element in this.

Also (although unfortunately on the calculator you don't see much of it) the music is a factor that really immerses me into a game as well.  It really sets the mood, often times even more than the backgrounds.  That's one of the reasons I loved Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana becasue those games had awesome music along with an excellent story line and great graphics.

I also think music plays a big role. For me, graphics won't do much of a difference, though. For me, awesome music can make me enjoy a simple/crappy game for quite a while. My favorite game music is Ys series, especially on the Turbografx-16/PCEngine with CD-ROM add-on and Star ocean series

As a basic rule, there is no basic rule Things like storyline, graphics, music, physics all play a key role, but you can still make an amazingly inversive game and exclude some of those.  I dont think there is a catch all rule, and i personally dont try to make games by a formula, I think it just works better if you know what you want, and you just make it fun.