Game Design - Week 4

Zork I

Zork, a text based adventure game was released around 1977 - 1979. Made by a few members of the 'Dynamic Modelling Group'  at MIT, their goal was to create a game that distinguished itself by giving it's ability to tell a sophisticated story and provide a rich game world. 

An example starting screen for Zork

To move around the game world, the character must input verbs like 'move north' to move the character north. Other commands such as, look will show what's in the room (e.g. A desk with a note on it) or eat will have the player eat what it wants (very funny in some situations). 

It's probably for the best...

The game is only limited by the players imagination. The game doesn't hold your hand like most modern games, but instead tires to create situations you really need to think about.

From here, it can be said the core mechanic is the ability to move a character around the world through key words. The goal for the game wasn't clear and after over an hour of playing, no real progress was made; however, through further playing, it was discovered that to 'win', treasures had to be found throughout the world - 15 to be exact. 

The game also provides a move count, so for those veteran players, they have the choice to finish the game with the lowest possible moves. 

The game was incredibly challenging. Some commands wouldn't provide the results, 'go through window' was declined, so had to say 'climb through window' or climb down trapdoor was rejected, instead had to input down. Once the commands were easier to understand the game become more fluid.

The overlaying story wasn't super clear, apart from you started next to a mailbox, there wasn't a prelude to what was here. This wasn't necessarily a bad choice, as it added further mystery to the game.

Game Design - Week 3 Workshop

80's games

Asteroids

Asteroids, one of my favorite old school arcade games. You the character, are a small ship destined to forever destroy meteors. Fit with a gun which can explode the rocks into smaller fragments, you must clear the screen of all debris. Hitting an asteroid will result in a player loosing a life. With these being limited to 3, you must try achieve a high score without dying.

The core mechanic of the game revolves around the ability to move your ship with the arrows keys and shoot with space. Being able to move quickly and doge the asteroids is a big plus for the quick nature of the game. Shooting the gun makes a satisfying noise, but not as excellent as the sound of an asteroid breaking up.

The challenge of the game comes from the high amounts  of asteroids and the speed which your ship moves. The ability to increase the ship speed also provides excitement momentarily as you tried to avoid oncoming asteroids.

Moving past the screen edge moves you the the opposite side of the screen. Although a small thing, it can be surprisingly disorientating, and more often than not, results in a lost life or death. The ship also has the ability to move into hyperspace, giving a few seconds of invulnerability and moving the player to a random location on the screen.

Game Design - Week 2

Game Design - Week 2 Workshop

Game of pleasure

The game of pleasure was a simple point to point board game. The game pit each player in a race to the end to see who arrived at the strip club first. Movement through the board was based on the dice number rolled by the player. 

Example layout of board-game

Throughout the game, the player had a chance of landing on special spots - positively of negatively effecting the player. This can be seen in the diagram above (Red dots represent negative positions, while blue are positive)

This game can be analysed further by identifying the such ideas as the core mechanic, basic concept and the goal of the game.

Interactivity
The core mechanic of the game was simply to reach the finish. This was enhanced by the competitive nature of racing. 

Concept

The overlaying theme of the game is so make your way through the dangers or pleasures in a good night out in town. Are you lucky enough to score some drugs or unfortunately mugged - you'll have to play to find out!

Goal

The goal of the game is to arrive at the finish(strip club) before another player.

Challenge
Increased difficulty was created by place negative positions on the board. Landing on these spots would negatively effect the player, i.e move back the number shown on the dice. If you roll a double number, you must pick up the mystery card. These may provide both positive and negative effects on the player.

Unfortunately, the pacing of the game felt boring. With limited activity card it felt slow as several turns go by without anything occurring. Also, combing the positive and negative effect cards into 1 deck also provide better game-play.

Lunar Lander

Lunar lander, a game made in the 70s, is an arcade game where you pay as a 'Lunar Lander'. You only have one rocket that propels you around against the pull of gravity. Although a simple concept, the game is surprisingly addictive. The controls although clunky add the the charm and feel of the game, turning it into something a modern game could never be. 

The core mechanic of the game is the ability to fly by spamming the space bar, and to turn with the arrow keys. With limited fuel and a high chance to crash, these core mechanic becomes much more interesting. 

Landing on blue landing pads will give the player the points specified below them. Moving along further in the level increases the points given by pads. 

The goal of the game is to achieve the highest score possible. This allows for competition to be formed between players for the highest score.

The game is surprisingly difficult. With only 1 life and low lenience on landing speed, the game-play pushes you to be very cautious with how fast you're traveling and to always be aware of the current fuel levels.

Increased difficulty can be added via changing the gravity setting from Moon to either Earth or Jupiter. Increasing the difficulty does however improve the score of starting landing pads.