WEEK 12 | Vidiot Game Review

Geez, where to begin with this one.  I don't know what possessed me to play this game. I wanted to play a game that was quick and easy, so I searched for "best free indie games" and this was high on the list.

Its kind of hard to do a review on a game that leaves you bamboozled, shaking your head going "WTF"?  Too many drugs for the makers of this game!

As far as I can ascertain,  players progress through a series of short, unrelated action sequences, interleaved between perplexing interludes and trivia games.  On one play through that lasted all of two minutes, I was presented with the following:

• a level were I had to weave in between pot holes on a road in order to outrun a wormhole chasing me
• followed by a cut scene were i was asked if I wanted to meet the devil.  I have no idea what the outcome of that was.
• followed immediately by a trivia question asking me what makes someone famous - money, power and dada???  I was still left clue less to the result of my answer.
• next I got a scene where the character had a jet pack on and I had to avoid walls as the character moved along a tunnel
• finally followed by a cut scene showing a monster and the question being presented - do you want to meet the monster, murder the monster and some other absurd option.  Now I know I definitely got this one wrong as the game ended.

For me, this game fails because I did could not recognise what the reaction was to my actions. The game gives little in the way of feedback except to warp the player into the next drug induced, psychedelic mind job level or cut scene. 

Players can choose a character at the start of the game, and modify the characters stats.  This is really just filler and serves absolutely no purpose in the game whatsoever.  The narrative is nonsensical, there is no clear goal except to mash buttons and hope that the flashing graphics stop before your head explodes.

I read some reviews about this game in order to see if ANYONE on the planet actually enjoyed it, and was to surprised to see that some people did.  From what I can gather though, it was because it is so unusual.  Maybe I have to be high to appreciate it?!!

Overall: WTF!?!?!?  No point.

WEEK 12 | Ass2 Game Design Progress

The group meet up on Saturday to further tweak the game based on the results of the play test performed by Nathan with his family.  Nathan recorded three play test videos, all of which provided excellent feedback on our game.  We noticed that the play testers came up with some game play that had not even been imagined by the group.  Some of the key things that we noticed were:

• Players chose to gather rations in their immediate area before venturing out further onto the game board, thus conflict was not entered into until well into the game.  This lead to us creating a new rule stating that rations cannot be placed in the vicinity of the players bases. This has now been marked on the prototype.
• it was interesting to see how players used the new 'army men' game pieces in conflict - one player came up to another to attack them and then turned the pieces to face each other as if dueling.  Goes to show how simple aesthetics can help immerse the players.
• Players would not choose to land on the barracks if there were plenty of rations on the board, as well as entering into conflict.  During one play test, Nathan removed all the rations to see how game play would be affected.  It was decided that the amount of rations placed on the board had to be balance to the amount of rounds played by the players, so that players got desperate for rations and entered risky situations (such as combat and the barracks).  Less rations were required than the amount of rounds selected.  
• The players reactions depending on the length of game play was recorded.  It was found that 10 rounds provided players with a well rounded game experience.  5 was perhaps to short, with 20 being much to long. 
• What happens when there is a draw?
• What happens when are no more rations left on the board?

This is only a very short list of the things that we picked up from the play test.  Thanks to Nathan!

After seeing the Death Race game, we felt that we could add a few more aesthetics to the game board.  It was originally thought that we had to create a prototype which could be marketed later on, thus having such things would not be a good idea.  But we have decided to add some barbed wire and a tank to the outskirts of the city, to add a sense of entrapment, thus amplifying the survival story.

On Thursday, the group worked on the presentation and the concept document.  Individual tasks during the week are:

• Leonie - Concept doc, finding a tank to put on the game board
• Nathan - first 5mins of presentation, barbed wire
• Michael - prototype demo for the presentation, houses for the game board, with holes drilled in them.

WEEK 11 | Plants vs. Zombies Review

I had to get zombies into this blog somewhere!

Plants vs. Zombies was the very first indie game that played, I didn't even know what an indie game was at that stage.  

As I'd only played more mainstream games, I was a little awestruck at how addictive, different and quirky this little game was. I was always under the impression that these kinds of games where for non-gamers and kids. To this day, I still play this game.  

The basic premise is you must plant plants of varying sorts to stop a zombie horde that are trying to enter your house to eat your brain.  In order to plant plants, you need sun, which is collected from sunflowers.  The player must plant enough sunflowers in order to plant more plants, but leave enough room for offensive and defensive plants as shown in the picture above.  

The biggest draw card for me was the story and quirky characters.  There are many types of zombie attackers, each with their own backstory and special offenses/defenses.  Certain zombies require certain plants to destroy them. 

When you break down the mechanics, they are very simple - collect sun, plant plants.  Thwart the zombies!  Extra challenge is added with the addition of zombie waves at least twice during each level.  Also, each stage adds extra things into the yard like a pool, tomb stones etc.  

The game never gets dull, with the designers always throwing in different zombies as the difficulty increases. The levels also change, the night mode and rooftop being the biggest differences.  In night mode, you can't plant sunflowers so you must obtain sunlight in different ways and the types of plants you can plant are different.  The same goes for the rooftop as the bullets must be lobbed because of the slop of the roof.

There are also different modes the player can choose to vary game play, such as vs. mode where two players can go head to head.  Players can even have their own garden that acts like a tamagochie, where plants can be grown, watered, feed and money collected.

The aesthetics are colorful and cheery, making this a fun zombie game, not a dark scary one.  Kids can definitely enjoy this one.  

Overall:  A fun, highly successful game, as evidenced by it winning over 30 game of the year awards.  

• Simple mechanics,
• quirky story and characters
• fun, colorful aesthetics
• lots of varied game modes
• simple controls
• coop or vs mode encourages social gaming

WEEK 11 | Game Design Progress

Everyone presented their finished prototype tasks set by the group last week.  

Nathan:  Did an awesome job on the round counter, using a flip calender.  He used coffee stained paper as the flip pages, which has now set the theme/aesthetics for the rest of the prototype.  It gives it a rough, scavengy feel to it.

Leonie:  Made a game board, using coffee stained and burned cardboard, with drawn on tiles using crayon.  The character stats have been stuck onto the board using brown paper, in keeping with Nathan's rustic theme.  I also made some game pieces, three for each player, all with holes in them for carrying rations.

Michael:  Came up with the War Event cards, complete with stories for the actions.  He also designed some new ration counter wheels, which we may end up scrapping unfortunately.   We all really liked how the new game pieces simplified keeping track of the rations (by actually putting them on the pieces themselves) and how they gave a really good immediate visual representation of the players currently carried resources.  We would like to have a similar setup for each of the players bases, where they can stick all their collected resources into the top of their base, instead of using a wheel to record the number of rations.  We found the simple additional of a visual representation of resources added so much to the feel of the game, and has greatly aided the task of keeping track of resources.  Perhaps this may have fixed the resource tracking problem we were experiencing in our original game design.  Oh well, too late in the game to go back to that now.

This week, we drew a few flowcharts of the game, which helped us discover some outcomes that we had not encountered during our play testing eg. What happens when there is no more food on the game board but plenty of rounds left to play?? What if the game ends on two players having the same amount of food?

We wrote down all the rules and started to flesh out the final story.  Tonight, Nathan is going to play test the game with his family who have not played it before, using the rules that we completed today.  This will also allow us to see if our written rules are understandable or could be improved.  

The group is going to meet on Saturday to work on the Design Document.  Tasks for people during the week:

• Digital copy of flowchart
• House pieces with holes drilled in them to store rations
• Ideas for the final story

WEEK 10 | Ass 2 Game Design Progress

A better week this week.  We all left feeling happy with our progress, and with a list of things each member had to do before next week.

My hat is off to Michael for saving the day and enlightening us with his game idea which we all decided to go with.  We play tested it and tweaked it and this is the basics:

-  Players still have to go around the board collecting food
-  Goal is to have the most food at the end of the game
-  the end of the game is determined by the players eg.  end after 10 turns
-  each player has three game pieces now, one for Tatiana, one as Dasha and one as the father of the family
-  each player piece has different stats

Character                     Combat                Movement                 Carry capacity
Father                           +2 to dice roll       1                                 1
Dasha                           normal                   -1                               3
Tatiana                         normal                   + 3                              1

-  on a turn, the player rolls the dice and moves accordingly around the board
-  the player collects food with a game piece but then must get the food back to their base for that food to count towards the players tally
- if a player crosses the path of another player, there is a combat situation.  This is solved through the use of a dice roll, the player with the highest dice roll wins, causing the loser to drop all their food and sending them to their sin bin which is back at their base.  The player must wait in the sin bin for a whole turn before being moved to their base.  
-  The middle tile is a risk/reward square where the player draws a random card that will most likely give a bonus to the player.  There is a small percentage that the player will receive a negative effect.  There is the additional risk that another player will come along, sending the first player back to their sin bin.

We are all happy with the game, but know that unfortunately the game has lost some of its emotion through the loss of the sacrifice system in the original game idea.  

The tasks assigned to each group member this week is as follows:

-  gameboard (Leonie)
-  powerup cards (Michael)
-  turn calendar (Nathan)
-  game pieces (Leonie)
-  resource wheels (Michael)

WEEK 9 | Ass2 Game Design Progress

We are kind of tearing our hair out at the moment.  We have identified some problems with the original game that we would like to change or improve.  The biggest one being the complexity of keeping track of all a players food (resources):

•  how much of that food they have used to move around the board
•  how much food they collect on each move
•  how much food is allocated to them at the end of each round
•  how much food they use to feed their family after each turn

We could also argue that the original idea works, but we feel would be more suitable as a digital game, and the resource management system would be taken care automatically by the computer.  

On our play through,  it was noticed that most players were experiencing frustration with keeping track of everything, resulting in gameplay that was not fun.  We also found that we were fairly limited with what we could do by using the 'survival' genre.

The group decided to scrap the whole game and start anew.  We attempted changing the genre to race to the end and a quest.  We came up with a few redesigned game boards and many different mechanics.

This all resulted in us realising that we all really loved the idea of having to keep family members alive.  We all felt that this added to the emotion of the game and we struggled to incorporate this into the new styles of our game.  We also struggled to keep the storyline.  

After todays session, we set each member the task of coming up with game ideas over the recess week.  Nathan really wants to keep with the original game idea, but improve the resource management side of things. I don't know what I want, but will work on new game ideas that incorporate the family system.  Michael seems interested in a new game altogether.  

After the holidays, hopefully we can exchange ideas and come up with either an improved design on the original game idea, or a completely new game.  Fingers crossed!!

WEEK 11 | Borderlands 2 Game Review

Mechanics:  This is a role-playing shooter where players run, shoot and collect some of the gazillion guns available.  The goal of the game is to find the vault and this is accomplished by completing story line missions that move the player closer to the end goal.  The story line missions can range from finding key characters and performing missions for them in exchange for information or keys to exploring levels finding key items.

The game features a character modification/upgrade system which rewards players for earning game experience points.  The character upgrades allows the player to become stronger and to perform new moves/abilities that add to the game play.  Its also plays an important role of being a 'boasting' element during social play, which is another fantastic feature of BL2.  

The game allows for coop split-screen or coop online play which further enhances the success of the game.  I know from my personal experience, the allure of this game for me is the ability to play with my partner at home through coop split-screen   To date, I have not played it by myself, and that goes for BL1 as well.  

One of the features that sets BL2 apart from other games I feel, is the availability of a 'gazillion guns'!!  I have woken a few times after playing this game before bed, thinking about what kind of guns I can find on my next playthrough (scary I know!).  Even though the game has a monetary system using actual money and eridian, the gun system kind of acts like a monetary system also.  Players go around finding new guns, the use of different guns in turn leads to players earning awards (1000 kills with a pistol etc) which can be exchanged for character upgrades.  

I could go on forever talking about all the other mechanics in the game.........but that would take ....forever!

Story:  There are rumors of an even larger vault that exists on planet Pandora, where a warrior sleeps who will obey the command of any who awaken it.  Pandora is now ruled by the tyrant Handsome Jack, who's aim is to find the vault and use the Warrior for his own evil purposes. 

Enter four vault hunters which players can choose to play as.  The hunters must now beat Jack to finding the vault in order to stop Jacks takeover of Pandora. 

Aesthetics:  The cell shading of the game is a fantastic feature that really sets it apart from other games.  In BL1, the designers only switched to cell shading at the last minute, but which lead to what they believe is a more fun, quirky gameplay experience.  

The music  and sounds are done very well.  Of special note is all the different audio for each of the 'gazillion' guns in the game.  

Overall:  Excellent social game that has long play-ability and is very addictive through the use of the 'gazillion gun' system.