WEEK 6 | Fez Review

This weeks game review is the multiaward winning Xbox 360 game  - Fez.

This delightful game presents a unique gaming experience in its use of changing perspectives.  I'll admit that at first this feature had me stumped (yes, I had to google the walk through only 15secs into the demo!) but once the player gets used to it, it provides for some fun gameplay.  The level is presented as a 2D platformer, but infact it is a 3D world which the player can switch the perspective to reveal hidden areas, make jumps easier or to realign platforms.

INTERACTIVITY:  run, jump, climb, change the perspective (a movement in itself).  

SPATIAL ARENA:  3D platformer, viewed mostly as 2D.  The arena is set in a strange land made up of spires that the player can navigate around.

GOAL:  To collect pieces of a cubes that have shattered in order to stop the end of the world.  There are 64 cubes, but only 32 are needed to finish the game.

CHALLENGE:  The same as most platformers - make it to the end of the level.  The challenge here is the level cannot be completed without changing the perspectives to enable the character to reach inaccessible areas.  

STORY: Unfortunately the demo doesn't start with any story.  It basically starts with a glowing cube telling the player that they must find all the pieces of a shattered cube.  From what I have read, the player must piece together the story from engraving encountered along the way - the story of an ancient civilization.

AESTHETICS:  Simple, pixelly graphics.  Charming, fun design with a catchy soundtrack.  

Overall: A cute, colourful and totally captivating adventure game.

WEEK 5 | Nursery Rhyme Workshop

Our goal today was to take a nursery rhyme, then use its story to create a game.

We choose Humpty Dumpty, and adapted the story as follows:

Humpty Dumpy is an evil egg who rules his empire from the top of his wall.  There are many kings and their men (the players) who try to topple Humpty from his lofty throne.  It is a dangerous mission that the kings-men must embark on.  They have their own petty squabbles to deal with, plus the yoke attacks from Humpty himself, perched self assuredly upon his wall.  It is a race to the end to see which knight can topple the evil egg and become a hero to his nation.

We then proceeded to design our game following the next 7 steps:

1.  Define the SPACE
Boardgame style, set on the vertical side of a wall.  Players advance up the wall.

2.  List the objects
Player tokens, a wall to climb (gameboard), egg yoke splatters that the player slips on, vines that creep up the wall, action cards that the player draws when they land on a blue square.

3.  Define the player actions
Players can move along the board, determined by a dice roll.  Players can advance rapidly up vines, but can lose ground when landing on an egg yoke, which causes them to slide backwards.  Action cards force a player to either advance or backtrack.  

4.  List the RULES
 - Twin dice roll determines how far a player moves along the board
 - Players must climb a vine when it is landed upon
 - Players must slide down an egg yoke when landed upon
 - If another player lands on them, that player must go back to the last yoke and slide down it.
 - If a player lands on a blue square, they can pick up a card from the action pile.  Before a player draws their card however, they must choose whether they wish to perform the action on themselves or another player (they choose which player).  An action card may have a positive (advance) or negative effect (backtrack).  

5.  List the SKILLS
None really. 

6.  Clarify the unpredictable aspects
Without the action cards, this game was purely based on chance.  To give the player choice, we added the action cards and the rule that the player must choose who the action card is to effect.  While the card effects are still random, it gives the illusion that the player has some control over their fate.  It also makes for some interesting group interactions ie. revenge, ganging up on the leader.  

7.  SCREENSHOT
The vines are green, the egg yokes are orange.  The start is at the bottom and the finish is at the top.  

During our own play test, we added more vines, yokes and blue action squares as there were some slow parts to the game board.  On completion, we were happy with the final result.  It will be interesting to see the group interactions when the other groups play it.  Until next week...

WEEK 5 | Thomas Was Alone Review

                                   

This game is amazing!                                     

Thomas is a red rectangle.  He doesn't talk, he doesn't fight enemies, he doesn't do anything except jump (and he jumps 'well' I might add!).   This isn't a character you might say.  Well, in the few minutes I took to play the game, I fell in love with Thomas and his quadralateral entourage due to the charming, witty narrative performed by Danny Wallace (of Assassins Creed fame). 

  

STORY:  Thomas comes alive and the narrator tells us that Thomas's first thought is that he is alone.  That is is.  He knows nothing else at this stage.  The opening screen at the start of the game eluded to the fact that Thomas is an AI.  There are no instructions on what to do gameplay wise, so the story and gameplay really complement each other - both you and Thomas are learning the ropes so to speak.  As he learns more about his surroundings, the surroundings become more complex and the challenge is increased (in fact the narrator actually comments on this).  He meets other quadralaterals that have their own personalities, but do not speak.  

CONCEPT:  Play the game to determine what Thomas is and where he is.........basically discover the meaning of Thomas' life (the meaning/goal of the game as well).  Or just play because its cute, funny and heartwarming.  Each level has 'portals' for each character which they must all be touching to complete the level.    Each new level delivers more narrative and furthers the storyline and character development.

  

MECHANICS:  Use each characters special skill (float, jump, fit into tight spaces) to work together to line up each character with 'portals' in each level.  This completes the level.  

SETTING:  Digital world? Made up of black walls and some black boxes 

 

SPATIAL ARENA:  Platformer

Overall:  Loved this game and thoroughly recommend it to my fellow classmates to illustrate how a narrative and characters can totally make a game.  This game reminds me a lot of portal - simple mechanics but cute story.

WEEK 4 | Workshop Escape Game

Well, we are most of the way through creating our escape game.  

THEME:  Animals escaping from a zoo
STORY:  An 'event' has occured that causes some animals to escape from their cages at the zoo.  These three animals (each one controlled by a player) have to progress around the game board, exploring rooms and collecting items to enable them to escape out of the one of three gates in the zoo fence.  
MECHANICS:  Dice rolls determine movement.  Players search rooms at the zoo on the gameboard.  Players pickup items in order to perform an action or progress the story.  Not all the animals can be in the same room as each other (eg. lion attacks the monkey).

Unfortunately we did not get time to playtest our design.  Next weeks class will be focused on our own playtesting, game refinement and then a final playtest with another group.

WEEK 4 | Secret of Monkey Island

            Guybrush :  My name's Guybrush Threepwood. I'm new in town.
            Pirate :       Guybrush Threepwood? Ha ha ha!!! That's the stupidest name I've ever heard!
            Guybrush :   I don't know... I kind of like 'Guybrush.'
            Pirate  :       But it's not even a name!
            Guybrush :  Well, what's YOUR name?
            Pirate   :      My name is Mancomb Seepgood.

Ahhh....LucasArts games.......how I have missed you!  I love these point and click adventure games (think Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Monkey Islands).  From their intuitive, interesting puzzles to their over the top, humourous stories, its a formula that makes for UNFORGETTABLE gaming experiences.  
I am really wanting to download all the old adventure games now and play them all...but duty calls...one must study and write blogs!  So, in a nutshell:


STORY:  Awesome story about a guy called Guybrush Threepwood and his desire to become a pirate.  It has a love story, ghost pirates, wedding crashing, and voodoo.  The game is divided into 'Chapters' which in effect divides the game into several major goals to be performed in a sequence to progress through the story.  Each chapter is then broken up into minor goals/puzzles (collect certain objects to complete a puzzle, like opening a gate to a new area).
I love the humour in the story/dialogue which is a different spin on the usual perception of pirates being serious roughians.  
AESTHETICS:  I actually found an article online saying that atmosphere was based on that of

 the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride.  The graphics are now very dated, but succeed in drawing in the player into the world of pirates.  Everything is over the top to add to the humour and light hearted nature of the story (drunk pirates swinging from the pub chandalier).  


MECHANICS:  walk, explore, collect items and solve puzzles.  WALK, TALK TO, USE, OPEN  =  solve puzzles  =  progress in the story.  The player has to choose what action to perform in the scene - open, use, pickup, lookat etc objects in the game, which in turn gives the player instant feedback as to the result of the feedback - you picked up the item, conversation with character that leads to hints or further story.  

TECHNOLOGY:  2D colour graphics, but highly detailed for its time I thought.  Its graphics have since been updated in 2009 with the release of the Special Edition, which also featured voice overs.  This goes to show that the mechanics, story and aethetics were a successful game formula, and that the change in just the technology side of things makes it a viable product in todays market as well.  



Overall:  I LOVE this game.  This started it all for me!  Day of the Tentacle and the Monkey Island games are some of the very few games that I would still enjoy playing even though their technology is vastly outdated.  In fact, the game has been made into a special edition (2009) where the graphics have been improved and voice overs added.  Their stories, witty dialogue, outrageous characters make for a delightful and fun experience.  

WEEK 3 | Play testing another groups territorial game

Pirate Game

Goal:  To capture islands (worth varied points) to gain the highest score in a set time limit

Basic rules:  

• 4 players each have 5 game tokens
• On each turn, a player roles a single dice.  They can then move one or more of their tokens to equal the amount thrown on the dice
• If the player lands on an island, they then gain the islands points until the island is contested by another player
• If an enemy lands on your island, you have a dice battle.  If you have 3 tokens on the island, you get three chances to beat the enemies highest dice roll.  

Core Mechanics:  Move one or more tokens, either nothing will happen, you will capture an island or battle it out for an island.  

Genre:  strategy

Concept:  pirates on the sea, no more needs to be said really!

Spacial arena:  top down of an ocean, filled with islands.  Each game grid that a token can move on is a 'sailing' route to an island.

Challenge:   to capture an island with enough game tokens to win a battle with the enemy; to capture enough islands to have the highest score.  If we had more time to play, we would have been able to determined an optimum strategy - move the tokens around singularly and try to capture more bases (and take the chance that you beat the enemy with only one dice roll), or move your tokens around in two groups, thereby having enough dice rolls to beat any enemies, but yet still being able to capture more than one island.  

SUGGESTIONS:

1. Have the game end on a random time limit or by a set number of turns
2. Have more focus on defending ones base which has the most points on it
3. Have something to take the focus of capturing only the middle islands which everyone seems to go for
4. Have a time limit that a player needs to occupy an island for, before they automatically get  that islands points predominately (they no longer need to hold it to have those points)

Overall:  I liked this game.  Unfortunately we didn't get enough time to play it, so I can't comment too much on it.  Obviously it took a few rounds to get our pieces in a position to battle it out (challenge) and we were just starting to get into it when we had to swap games.  If suggestion 4 were implemented, I think the challenge and pace of the game would make for an even more enjoyable experience.  Well done guys!

WEEK 3 | Territorial Acquisition Game Workshop

WORKSHOP AIM:  Design a game where players start with assets X at point A and must finish with the most assets / land to be declared winner

1.  Concept / theme / narrative:  We came up with lots ideas eg.  Mutant frogs after lilly pads in a pond, vampires after blood (in the form of humans!!).  But as Colin mentioned, choosing a well know concept automatically sets up a narrative eg.  If you have a pirate game, its pretty much a given that you'll be after treasure.  Mutant frogs ??? Meh.

Since our group had all recently been watching Sci Fi, we settled on a space theme, with warring factions/races contesting resources/planets.  

2.  Game mechanics:  This was tough.  We knew that there would be a competition for resources, but we had to decide whether we wanted the game pieces to be able to move around the board or whether they were to be strategically placed and left.  Additionally, how the capture the enemies resources would take place and ultimately what the game board would look like.  There were some really good ideas eg. from travelling through worm holes to move pieces around the board so as to capture enemy territory, to space connect-four to our final design of having 6 planets divided up into 6 territories.  And our ideas kept getting more and more complicated.  We got to the stage were we really had to dumb it down.

Final design - the core mechanic is to place a game token on a planets territory, with the intention of placing as many pieces of your colour on that planet to capture it.  

GAMEPLAY:  

• Best played with 4 players, each with a handful of tokens, a different colour for each player
• Each territory is marked with a particular resource eg. gold, water, minions, unuptoniam and coal.
• There is a deck of cards, one card for each resource as well as three "wild" cards eg. Nuke a territory (remove an enemies token), persuadatron (trade places with another player) and something like Hostile takeover where you can take over one enemies game token.
• On each turn, a player draws from the shuffled card deck. 
•  If they get a resource card, then they place one of their tokens on any ONE of the territories marked with that resource
• If a wildcard is drawn, you follow its instructions eg. remove an enemies token
• A planet is captured when a player has control of 4 adjoining territories on the planet.

3.  Conflict - Conflict is presented when deciding which planet to try and capture or which enemy to try and thwart.  At first I thought this game might be too simple and boring, but when we actually play tested it ourselves, we had a lot of fun.   The social element is what makes this game enjoyable, so it should definitely be played with a minimum of four players.  There is so much enjoyment in pissing of your competitor by thwarting him at every opportunity in his aim to take over the world!!  

4.  Play testing by an outside group - On the whole, the new group enjoyed the game.  Their game started very differently from ours - theirs was very slow and quite frankly, frustratingly boring.  Its main failing was the lack of more resource cards in the deck, thereby leading to a higher chance of getting a wildcard.  On their play-through, the group picked up mainly wildcards in the first few rounds.  This led to limited game play as most players didn't even have tokens on the board.  It was noted that during this slow period of play that the players movements to grab their cards for their turn were slow and unenthusiastic.   

Once play progressed however, the speed of game play increased as players got more tokens on the board and the competition increased.  We began to see the same kind of social interactions that our group experienced on our play-through eg.  laughing, friendly competitive banter, fists in the air.  Players would start targeting the last player who screwed them over, resulting in some fun gameplay strategy.  The players liked the lack of dice needed in the game and they kept playing after the testing was complete, which is always a good sign.

SUGGESTIONS MADE:

• If all the minerals are taken on the board, have something else happen than just choosing another card
• Having the mineral and wildcards in separate piles.  On a turn, a player is given the choice of picking up a mineral and placing their token appropriately, or they can take the risk by taking a wildcard (there would have to be the addition of a negative effect card).  **REALLY GOOD IDEA!!

WEEK 3 | Zelda Review

I was looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about with Zelda.  Even though I'm an 80's baby, I am ashamed to admit that I have never played any of the Zelda's.  

Unfortunately, again there were no instructions on what the keys were, there were hardware issues (the popup info boxes would cut off the first two lines of text sometimes) which lead me to walk off in disgust.  I didn't even complete the first mission of finding the bomb bag.  I found the bag, then took it back to the wizard, who would then say I don't have the bomb bag.  I'd find it again and repeat this vicious cycle.

Overall:  Zelda....how I hate thee!  

WEEK 3 | Spy Vs Spy Review

Released in 1984, this two player, split screen game was based on a MAD Magazine comic strip, featuring two spies trying to kill each other (think Coyote and Road Runner!).   The basic premise behind it is to kill the other player (whether it be the computer or another person) using a variety of traps and weapons as many times as possible while trying to collect all the items needed to finish the round before the timer runs out.  

The game is set in an Embassy made up of a series of interconnecting rooms laid out in a grid pattern.  Player 1's game play is viewed from the front of the room and takes place in the top screen, with Player 2's in the bottom screen.  




The basic mechanics are moving around, fighting and using objects in the scene to search/place traps.  The feedback given when searching is:

• have the player spring a trap and subsequently die in a comical way
• the player finds an item to use
• or the player finds nothing (you can't reward the player all the time - boring!).  

The challenge is to search the rooms as quickly as possible before your opponent has a chance to set traps in the objects that you are searching, and for you to set traps along the way too.   The added difficulty is presented through each players timer, which decreases by 30secs with each death.

The only story given is in the title itself and the characters reactions to setting a trap (sniggering!).  I loved the slapstick nature of the kills - ie electrocution or explosion leading to the character turning into an angel and floating off to heaven, as it gives the game a cute, quirky feel to it.  

Overall:  I struggled at first to understand how to play, even in the training mode which gives absolutely NO TRAINING at all! That's one thing I've found while play testing these older games actually, that while there are a smaller amount of keys utilised with these older games, I'm finding them harder to play than the modern games.  This may be due to: 

• hardware issues - most games play too fast, and the sound some of the features don't work properly
• a lack of instructions or in-game training
• or I'm just not used to them!  

Well, I almost packed it in, but persevered and was rewarded with a few minutes of delightful distraction from work.  This game style is great for varied game play, as the outcome relies on the cunning and skill of your opponent.  

WEEK 2 | Adventure(Colossal Cave) Review

I haven’t played any text based games before, so I choose this, the first text adventure ever made (1975). 

Interactivity – Move 1 grid in a N, S, E, W direction.  Get a story about the players surroundings.  Move on or take action (take something, attack, open, use)

Concept/Arena/Story – set in a series of caves involving bears, dwarves, dragons and trolls.  I only played a small amount of the game, but I wasn’t given a story behind why the player is in the caves or what the goal of the story is.  I think it is this very fact that leads one to want to keep playing to see what happens.  The genre (Interactive Fiction) allows the player to be a co-creator of the fiction and leaves a lot to the player’s imagination.  Later versions of this game displayed an image with the scene descriptions. 

Goal – to explore and play out the story.  There is no scoring system as far as I could tell. 

Challenge – Some scenes have enemies that the player needs to deal with to advance ie.  Throwing a bear at a troll to scare it away.  Others have puzzles that must be solved in order to continue ie. Locked doors/grates and finding a water bottle, filling it, then watering a bean stalk to climb.  The biggest challenge was spatial awareness. I ended up having to download a game map so I could I see were everything was.  Also, I got quite frustrated with the commands.  The website where I played the game only listed about 6-8 commands so I got stuck early on at a locked grate that I couldn’t open on those commands alone.  I had to look up another site that gave more commands.  This site again, didn’t even list all the commands, I found even more on yet another site. 

Overall :  Frustrating as hell (I kept getting lost, not knowing the damn commands), but I kept wanting to go back to see what happened!  Who doesn’t want to throw eggs and bears at trolls! 

WEEK 2 | Race to the End Workshop

CTF (Capture the flag) – Playing another groups Race to End game

This is a simple game requiring four players.  The basic rules are:

• There are four bases on the board, one in each corner.
• Players each have one colour.  The circular token is their game piece, the pins are their flags.
• In turns, players roll one dice to determine how many spaces they can move their game piece.
• Movement around the board can be in any direction.
• If a player lands on another player’s base, they have taken that players flag.
• On their next move, the capturing player must then get the stolen flag back to their own base to complete the flag capture. 
• If a player is on another player’s base (taking the flag) and another player lands on that base, the new player takes possession of the flag and moves the previous player back to their own base. 

These are additional rules regarding stealing back ones stolen flag and two players landing on the same space, but we never encountered these conditions during two game plays.

This was a simple interesting game where the core mechanic was to move a game piece around a board.  The goal was to capture someone else’s flag and get it back to one’s own base.  The interactivity was: 

• land on a unoccupied, none base space and nothing happens. 
• land on another players base, you take their flag
• land on a space occupied by another player who has stolen your flag, you reclaim your flag

The only story behind the game was the notion of the flag itself.  This could have just been called a ‘TOKEN’, but a flag increased the element of drama, as one could imagine the players as warring factions for example.  The added challenges added were the extra rules regarding landing on the same space as an opposing player and stealing back a flag or two players (without stolen flags in hand) dice dueling to see who would be sent back to their base.  

Suggestions for improvement:

• Increasing the challenge and competition by ending the game on last man standing instead of the first flag capture.  A disadvantage of this however could alienate players who have been removed from the game in the early stages of the game. 
• More spaces on the board to increase the duration of gameplay and competition.  This wouldn’t be needed if players were playing for last man standing, in order to keep gameplay short, so dead players don’t walk away.
• Option of team play – diagonally opposing sides can team up.  The option of cashing in a captured flag to bring back a dead team mate.

If this was to be made into a digital game, more story could be added, and the game set in a specific arena.  Eg.  Set in space, with 4 warring races.  Or each base could be an island, the player piece a Viking ship, out to loot other players islands. 

Overall : A fun game.  I’d play again!

WEEK 2 | Canabalt Review

Simple game where the single core mechanic is to JUMP.  The interactivity is the player jumping at the correct time (jumping from one building’s roof to another) with the game responding by increasing the players running speed.  This leads to accomplishing the games goal quicker which is obtaining a high score, represented by the total distance run by the player.

The scene is set on a city’s rooftops, with the city shown being invaded by mechs in the background, and the player seemingly running away from danger.  There is no story or narrative given besides what is effectively conveyed by the grayscale background scenery – mechs bombing the city skyline.  Additionally a cool, yet somewhat annoying feature (think epileptic fits) is the screen shaking at random time intervals to give the illusion of urgency and danger. 

The player is presented with the added challenge of having to avoid obstacles set in the players’ path (barrels, chairs, mechs, and pigeons) and having varying gaps to jump between buildings.

Overall : a very simple game concept, but executed effectively through the use of great aesthetics to provide a fun little game to occupy someone for a day.