Week 5 – Calm – Game Design Post-Mortem

Glaxor 0 Comments

Play Here

What went well? Is the theme well represented?

I actually built something this week. I feel that the theme of “calm” is fairly well represented. I worked some very rudimentary enemy AI into the game, which was a first for these projects. I used assets from one of the first Phaser tutorials to build this game.

What went wrong? Could the game better represent the theme?

I built this game within the course of about 3 hours. I originally pulled the theme “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” which is a theme I’m still excited to build a game for, but I don’t think I’m ready for it yet. I spent most of the week kind of freaking out about what to do and eventually got to the point where I just needed to choose a different theme if I was going to get anything done for this week. The last thing I wanted to do was go another week without actually building anything playable.

What did you learn?

Some themes are harder to scope down than others, but that may be because I already have a pre-conception of what I’d like to build for those themes. It may also be that some of the themes are more complicated than others.

I also learned that a vaguely ‘smart’ AI can be pulled off with some fairly simple code. I hope to explore more complicated versions of NPC AI in the coming weeks. Game design is difficult, limiting myself to week long projects makes it much more so. I’m hoping I can continue to find little things to try out within the course of a week.

 

Week 4 – Grief – Post Mortem

Glaxor 0 Comments

I failed to produce an interactive piece for week 4. The theme was emotionally taxing for me to work with and I avoided it for a good part of the week. When I finally sketched out a design in my notebook I clamped up and stopped working on it, avoiding the whole thing until the deadline had passed.

Video Game Design sketch - Grief - Game a week 4What went well? Is the theme well represented?

Almost nothing went well. I think if I were to actually make the game I sketched that it could be a good representation of the theme, but that didn’t happen. I have an interesting idea that I might be able to do something with in the future, but maybe not.

What went wrong?

To design for a theme I think it is important to reflect on that theme. Sometimes self-reflection can be paralyzing. I spent a lot of time reflecting, then deflecting, then avoiding.

I also think that the scope of the project I finally came up with was too large for the time I had left to execute within. But then I didn’t really try, so I can’t be sure. I do think that I need more practice in reducing the scope of the games I’m making to fit within the time frame I’ve allotted for these projects.

What did you learn?

Painting can be cerebral, especially the act of designing a painting. Video game design is always cerebral. I can paint when I’m feeling strong emotions, when I can’t necessarily think straight. I can also write in that state, though the style would be something more like a stream of consciousness than prose. The product would feel more primal. But when building video games, if I can’t think, if I can’t reason, I can’t get much to happen on the screen.

 

Week 4 – Grief

Glaxor 0 Comments

Plutchik wheel grief, sadness, pensivenessWhat is the first thing you thought of after reading the prompt for this week?

Grief is an emotion I haven’t really tried to think about, or that I’ve tried not to think about. It’s difficult to articulate and a very personal thing. I certainly have experienced grief in my life, but I don’t talk to others of my experiences with grief. So I suppose the first thing I thought was that this theme is going to be trouble.

Can you think of a situation that you’ve been in that made you feel grief?

Yes.

Can you think of any art, movies, literature or music that illustrate the theme?

About Schmidt and The Salton Sea are two films that I feel illustrate a feeling of grief. I Hung My Head by Johnny Cash is a song that I think illustrates grief.

How will you try to illustrate this theme in a video game?

I don’t know. I think I’ll avoid using color, I’ll stick to grayscale. I don’t know if an abstract mechanic will work at all. I think there may need to be more precise representation of objects than I’ve been using in the previous games.

Week 3 – Courage – Post-mortem

Glaxor 0 Comments

PLAY HERE

What went well? Is the theme well represented?

I essentially got all of the elements I had thought of in the initial design into the game. This past week had been a pretty busy week, especially the weekend when I usually have time for this project. The fact that I actually built the game and was able to post it before midnight Sunday one thing that went well here.

What went wrong? Could the game better represent the theme?

Courage is a tough theme, I think. I had trouble with it pretty much from the start. I’m not sure the game I made this week represents courage very well at all, but I’m also not sure what else I might have done that would be a better representation of the theme.

I didn’t have time for play testing with my family this week, so the version I’ve posted is pretty much the first iteration on the design I came up with toward the beginning of the week. The game is not fun, it’s just a score collector. You can get precisely the score needed to win by taking no risk, or you could get a slightly better score (or possibly lose) if you take risks. But there’s no real incentive to try to do better than the bare minimum. I can see a lot of problems with the design, but improvements are eluding me.

What did you learn?

This week’s project had me think a lot about what I think courage is and I learned that it is complicated. I think to really do the theme justice would require a more complicated game than what I’ve built here. I think there needs to be more of a set up, something for the player to get attached to and be willing to take risks to protect.

Week 3 – Courage

Glaxor 0 Comments
Cowardly Lion's Courage Medal from the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz.

Photo attribution: The MagicImage Collection of Hollywood Memorabilia

What is courage? Is there a difference between courageous acts and acts undertaken because of our basic need to survive? It seems to me that an act which could potentially sacrifice the actor’s security (in person, status, or property) but could potentially produce a benefit to themselves or others is a courageous act. The final ratio of the sacrifice to the possible benefit would determine whether their actions are courage or folly. Though an outcome ultimately beneficial to the actor is not necessary for the act to be courageous.

What is the first thing you thought of after reading the prompt for this week?

“Oh shit.”

Seriously, this seems like a tougher theme than the previous two. The first two themes were emotions. With fear and vigilance I tried to set up situations which would encourage those feelings in the player, but how do you promote a feeling of courage? Courage is a behavior, specifically a behavior that is counter to what we would expect when someone is experiencing fear. So my first thought when I pulled this week’s theme out of the old lunch box was, “How am I going to pull this off?”

Can you think of a situation that you’ve been in that made you feel courageous?

Not really, no. I don’t always take the path of least resistance, but I don’t think of myself as courageous. I think that if there were any times in my life when I did something courageous, It wasn’t accompanied by a feeling of courage, it was accompanied by a feeling of fear and whatever courageous act I committed simply helped to abate that fear.

Can you think of any art, movies, literature or music that illustrate the theme?

Well, there are plenty of examples in history of courage and the art, films, literature and music that depict or celebrate courageous historical figures. Aside from that I would say that most movies play on courage at least a little bit as most narratives require it from their characters at some point.

Week 3 - Courage - Design Sketch

Added Tuesday, 10:46pm

How will you try to illustrate this theme in a video game?

I’m still not sure. It’s Tuesday after 9pm as I finish this post and I’ve been thinking of a system where the player has the option of taking a safe path where they are guaranteed points and safety, but they have the option to put themselves in harm’s way to collect tokens of an unknown value. I think I’ll doodle in my notebook for a while and see what I come up with.

Read the post-mortem for this courage game and play it here.