I went into this class thinking it would be an easy class. And I was right. It WAS an easy class, however I didn’t expect to have so much fun learning about game design and being proud of the games that I made. Everything I learned from being in class related to game design and gave me a new understanding of what developers have to go through.
One thing I learned by working on the final project is that even in game design there will be people that contribute more and there will be people that contribute less which is something that never crossed my mind for a “fun” topic like game design.
Designing my own games showed me many lessons about frequently play testing and asking for feedback. I learned the importance of good music, an overall theme, and consistent art styles. Without all three of those a game could only be considered “good” at best and with all THREE of those a game could really become fun to play.
It was worth the time to learn more about the hobby that I so dearly enjoy throughout this semester and I’ll always be able to say that I designed two radically different games.
Harry Potters Wizards Unite is a GPS walking game by Niantic, the makers of Pokemon Go. The game also uses the same mechanics with an energy system where you get more from inns . It has the same random encounter system by instead of capturing pokemon you instead cast spells to resolve problems or defeat enemies. These enemies are then noted into your book for study.
During my small time with the game I also discovered the game’s egg system that you need to walk around to unlock.
I joined the house of Ravenclaw and partnered with 3 other people in the same house and set off to find this game’s version of a raid.
Once we arrived, we were initially very confused with how to all join the same room to fight together. We discovered that we all had to complete a solo tutorial raid first. THEN we could all join the same room. But even that had troubles because the room automatically started the raid within seconds so we all had to join at the same time.
Once we were in, we were tasked to fight against some enemies by casting spells and defending. However we dont actually get to attack the same enemies at the same time. It simply is a series of one on ones that is sped up with the existence of other people.
Thus playing with peers is just for speed for raids and social company.
All in all it was Pokemon Go but for fans of Harry Potter instead. 3/10
In our simple game, we are a treasure chest collecting coins while simultaneously avoiding bombs and dodging lasers.
We start we our menu screen with an animated title that flashes and gleams along with a start button that will load our main game scene.
We control our treasure chest with wasd and arrow keys. This will teleport our character to set predetermined locations top, down, left, and right. This is how we will collect coins for score and dodge bombs and lasers. Score is increased by a factor of 100 everytime a coin is collected.
Should we fail to dodge a laser or go into a bomb, our character will explode in a ball of blue light.
Some other elements is the retry button that reloads the game to quickly restart it and an exit button that brings the player back to the main menu.
Some of the challenging parts of this project to program was the coin spawning logic as well as the laser shooting logic.
For the coin spawning logic, the coins had to be able to check for existing coin in location, spawn, de spawn after a time, and has a chance to become a bomb with a different function.
The laser shooting logic was especially difficult because the laser had to come in 4 different stages. First the before stage when nothing is happening other than a timer ticking down. Next is the warning stage with the red line indicating the real laser will come soon. Then the warning line has to de spawn and spawn the actual laser. Then the actual laser has to stay for a brief while before de spawning and putting us back in the cool down period.
One feature that I am proud about is the scaling difficulty. Every time a laser is fired, the next laser will come more quickly. This will continue up to a certain point where it becomes difficult to stay alive.
I am also proud to announce that there is no bugs in this game because of the lack of significant movement. That isn’t to say it didn’t have bugs BEFORE. Some bugs that were fixed was coins spawning on top of each other, multiple bombs spawning which lead to unwinnable situations, and the player not interacting with anything properly.
All code was produced by me and all art assets was produced by Li.
My role is the designer because I am doing the programming and as such have to implement everything we want. It makes sense that I would control what goes in or not.
Both players thought that what we have a fairly solid base. Movement came natural to both people as movement was controlled by both wasd and arrow keys.
However one player picked up on the movement instantly as he stated in the paper while another described not knowing what to do initially and suggested a menu to tell the player the controls.
One player gave a fantastic idea about giving a chance to spawn a bomb instead of a coin so the player has to be careful about where they move.
Another mechanic that we were already planning on adding is lasers that demand the player dodge correctly to survive. This coupled with coins being worth points could lead to a decently fun game about surviving.
If we have time we can add in a speed up mechanic that increases the game speed over time so that dodging lasers become more and more difficult.
Finally for scenes, we plan on having a main menu that would also describe the controls in it at the same time.
On 9/25, my partner Ethan Ly and I played a few games together. some games he played and I watched and some games I played and he watched. Of those games “Qwop”, “This is the only level”, and “A dance of fire and ice” stood out to me the most.
Qwop was a fun time falling down over and over again. Eventually after many tries, I was able to scoot just over the 30m mark. A mechanic was horizontal movement. An aesthetic of Qwop was challenge in moving the character
This is the only level was an unique experience about discovery as its aesthetic. While the level was always the same, the discovery comes from the new mechanics the player must learn every stage. One of its many mechanics is jumping.
A dance of fire and ice was my favorite game out of all the ones we played. One aesthetic was sense pleasure. It achieved this by syncing the bmp of the music with the orb movement. This makes it so that a perfect button press will always sync with the drum beats leading to a satisfying sensation.
Qwop and “This is the only level” both share the same aesthetic of challenge. It was about overcoming the difficulties of the game. While “This is the only level” has its challenge come mostly from the stage and “Qwop” comes mostly from the control, both is difficult in its own way.
In these games, when I was allowed to watch, I found that I was much more critical of the player because I was able to look ahead. I would see mistakes that the player makes and think that I wouldn’t make those mistakes.
However when I had to play myself, I didn’t have that luxury anymore. I had to be in the moment paying attention to the moment. My partner and I agreed that we both had similar experiences watching and playing.
The first prototype of this prototype which we will call “Draft Chess” for now started out as a very basic piece capture game. The objective was to capture all of your opponents pieces by landing on them just like chess. However the power of movement did not come from the pieces themselves but from cards. As such pieces are all equal to each other and you play cards in order to move them.
The core mechanic is grid movement and strategy.
1st Play Session
The first iteration we had each player simply draw 4 cards that the other player doesn’t know what they are. We also had the royal cards have special abilities. My partner and I found two big problems after playing through it. This first iteration had a problem with being a bit boring as there was no interaction in the card draw phase. The second problem was that the ace let you revive a piece which turned out to be too powerful and stalled out the game indefinitely.
!st Play Session. Simple card draw
2nd Session
The second session was when my partner and I branched off. At this point I implemented a card draft system where both players start with a single hidden card. Then six cards are laid face up on the table and both players take turns drafting a card. What this does it it creates strategy over what cards to you draft and “give” over to your opponent while still maintaining an element of surprise with the hidden card. Then both players take turns playing cards till they have one card left and then draft starts again. This solves the previous problem of not having enough interaction with the card drawing phase. We solved the revival problem by changing the effect of aces to allowing diagonal movement.
The feedback given to me for this iteration is the board seems a bit small and the first move is always forward. We also encountered a stalemate situation when both of us had one piece left and couldn’t capture the other. Also we had the same person always draft first and we decided it was a bit powerful.
2nd play session. Card drafting
3rd play session
The last play session I augmented the rules so that there are extra win conditions to prevent a tie. Should a player get a number of units equal greater than the opponents alive units in the opponent’s end zone then that player wins.
Additionally, if both players only own one one piece, then the player that can keep their single unit for 3 consecutive turns in their opponent’s end zone will win. Ties can also be called should both players agree.
Also I augmented the draft so that the person who drafts first will alternate between the two players.
This time my player said it was very fun and enjoyed the rng aspects of the game. He suggested adding in joker cards that allow you to search the deck for a specific card you want.
On 9/4/19 I played a game of Secret Hitler. The game consisted primarily of new players with only one other person that has played before. The game consists of two factions, the liberals and the fascists, and the first team to pass their required number of bills wins the game with the exception of a few special rules.
After explaining everything, we entered the pre game which is to have everyone close their eyes, have the fascists open their eyes to identify their team and reclose them. One player was confused over the order of events and asked “What do the fascists do?”. To me, this instantly meant he revealed his role as a fascist of which there are few and should stay hidden. I suggested restarting the game, however the one other person who has played before suggested that we continue and the other players agreed with him. I figured since we didn’t have a lot of time we could just continue. This will matter later. And thus the game started.
My role was the liberal and thus my responsibility was to either kill hitler or pass 5 liberal bills.
Because I had played the game many times, most of the table defaulted to listening to what I had to say. But instead of wielding this power take over the game, I took on a more advisory role to guide the new players.
Quickly allegiances were made and accusations thrown. Whos fascists, whos liberal. At some point, a special power was used so identify the party affiliation of a player privately. And thus more accusations were made.
Some players played it quietly and went with the flow, others took charge and shifted blame. The fascists threw confusion into the mix and eventually the time to kill another player came.
The argument was loud and rambunctious; reasons to kill were thin. Almost everyone gave input and in hindsight, the fascists did a lot to influence who got killed. In the end a liberal was shot which we didn’t know at the time.
Liberal bill gets pass and fascists bills get passed over and over. And the game comes down to a final turn. One liberal bill would win the game. One fascist bill would lose the game. Decisions have to be made quickly as there was maybe 5 minutes left in the class. The other person who has played the game before elects me as his chancellor. Me, in the shortness of time quickly agreed. Oh how naive I was. I was passed given two bills facedown and I had to pick one to make law.
They were both fascist bills. I was played. The person who was in the government with me in the final turn was a fascist the whole time! Not only that, he was hitler! He was the player in the beginning that advocated to not restart the game upon finding out a player revealed themselves as fascist. The reason he did so was because Hitler doesn’t know who his teammates are. Thus he swindled himself an advantage early.
Well played Hitler, well played
A play by play of each round:
Round 1: I self elect myself as president with the claim its because I knew how to play and thus someone has to start as president. I ask around who wants to be my chancellor. Noone responds thus I pick someone quiet. We get elected in easily as theres no info yet and I pass my chancellor a split to test who he is. He plays it safe and passes a liberal bill
Round 2: A different pair get elected as congress. The president messes up play and reveals a fascist card at this point, I knew he was a fascist. Together, they pass a fascist bill.
Round 3: People start getting the hang of it. We start counting the liberal cards in the deck. A congress gets elected and passes a liberal bill
Round 4: Things get interesting. The congress gets elected and passes a fascist bill. This means the president gets to look at the party affiliation of someone at the table. He calls out Lok as a fascist. This meant we have our first opposition
Round 5: The person who got called fascist gets elected chancellor again. He passes a fascist bill once more. This makes it twice that Lok passed a fascist bill. He claims it because statistically we are more likely to draw fascist which is true
Round 6: Lok because president and elects someone chancellor. This gives him another chance to pass fascist. There is more and more table discussion going on every round. Alliance lines are being drawn between a couple members of the table
Round 7: I get elected chancellor and i was forced to pass a fascist bill. This meant my president can choose to kill someone. After MANY minutes of debating, he finally chooses to try to kill hitler and not a confirmed fascist. The person we killed turned out NOT to be hitler. And the game goes on
Round 8: We vote no on two congresses because of a lack of trust. The next time we pass but just barely. They also ended up passing a fascist bill. The person they choose to kill was NOT hitler and the game continues.
Round 9: Time is running really short and we play faster. Lok becomes president and elects me. In my hurry to finish the final round and get out of here, I vote yes and the entire table votes yes. Lok passes me two fascist bills and the fascist wins the game.
Located on the Internet Arcade, Bull fight had a sharp red background with text outlined in black. That combined with its title bull FIGHT, led me to believe it was a game involving more action than not. The first thing that I did was I browsed down to the instructions and read them. Then I scrolled back up to the game screen and I noticed that the insert coin/player1/2 box was almost in the center of the screen. This blocked valuable visual space. There was no possible way to move the box either too.
Regardless I pressed onward determined to play the game. The controls were arrow keys to move and ctrl and alt for certain actions. However what pressing alt does is that it redirects focus to your browsers option tabs at the top. Once that happens, any arrow key input would be controlling the options table at the top. Alt also turned out to be the attacking key in the game which made it unplayable.
However upon switching browsers this problem didn’t crop up anymore and full screening the game would make the insert coin box disappear and would be in the far left corner once I unfullscreened.
As far as gameplay went, it involved positioning your flag with your ctrl key, waiting for the bull the charge past you, then stabbing it with perfect timing. If the bull ever managed to charge directly at you or managed to pivot after going through your flag, this would kill your character. This happened to me many times. The window for the stab is tight and you must be close to the bull in order to stab it. This would increase your risk of getting gorged. Apparently there were many stages but I couldn’t even get past the first one.
Overall it was a decent experience. The downsides being that there are problems with being emulated and as such either need to be put up with or solved. A perk however is not needing coins to play.
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