Blog Post 9: Course Reflection

I think my favorite thing I learned was that the same kinds of ideas and mechanics for games can be used across multiple mediums. I didn't know too much about games going into this class- I had a few favorite board games and videogames. I have such an appreciation for the MDA framework and thought that has to go into every aspect of the game. Coming from the animation/illustration background, it combines all the stuff I've learned and then some! You need story, artistry, technology, mechanics... it's one of the hardest and most rewarding things I've ever learned.

Although some of the readings were a bit complicated or wordy, they taught me a lot of valuable things. One of the most interesting discussions I remember from the class is actually defining what a game is. 

There were so many things that I didn’t even realize would factor into the definition, including not serious, not associated with material gain, voluntary, and uncertain. Although I don’t agree with everything it is still very thought provoking! I wrote about games a lot through these blog posts, I had a lot of fun with them. I also didn’t realize how easy it would be to make games- don’t get me wrong, it’s still challenging, but game maker studio was so user friendly and easy to understand that I feel confident I could make some more games over the summer if I wanted to!

This was my first time learning about games in an academic context and there are things I’ve learned that I am going to remember for the rest of my life. Thanks to Professor James Morgan and everyone in my class for an awesome semester! Have a great summer!

Blog Post 8: Final Project

My final project is going to be a video of me and my friends playing a game called One Night Ultimate Werewolf!

My inspiration came from Will Wheaton's Tabletop series. I've watched some Board Game let's plays but I had never seen one so comprehensive until I saw Will Wheaton's. He does a great job explaining the games without being too boring or just reciting the rules. He combines footage of the gameplay with cuts of the mechanics as they come up so that it's not just a bunch of rules at the beginning. It's engaging and interesting the whole time!

I figured I could work off of his model and play a game like the one I linked above. One Night Ultimate Werewolf is my choice because it's relatively easy to understand and doesn't involve too many mechanics. It can also be customized to be easier/harder depending on the cards you decide to include.

I have practiced the game and gotten a good group together. I believe we will have a team with a Werewolf, Seer, Robber, Drunk, Hunter, Masons, and Minion. It seemed to have a dynamic that was still interesting without being too simple or too complicated.

In my video, I plan on explaining the game but then giving the watchers the option of knowing who is who. I will either link to a different video or allow the viewer to click on the screen that will allow them to skip ahead past the "reveal." This is not something I have seen in youtube letsplays, sometimes I am in the mood to know what is going on and other times I want to watch the group dynamics and try to extrapolate the information myself.

Although I haven't filmed it yet, I am very excited to do this video and so are my friends! I plan on explaining some dynamics using the reference page on boardgamegeek. 

I'll update when I have the video made, thanks for reading!

Blog Post 7: INGRESS

Ingress is the coolest game I think I've ever downloaded on my iPhone (although I haven't downloaded that many games on my iPhone.) It uses a real-time GPS tracking system to let you move through space and find "Portals" that you can either strengthen or weaken, depending on your alliance. It is such a cool premise with a very simple execution. You tap the "portals" which are located where different pieces of art/history are around the world. Then you can link portals, destroy them, capture them, strengthen them, etc.

One highlight of the game today was when me and a huge team of blue were trying to get to a neutral portal. Once a portal is owned, it stays green or blue depending on who captures it. A neutral portal is either new, or has been destroyed so that it can be reclaimed. Well by the time I got to the neutral portal, a small team of green had conquered it. I lied to them, telling them I was green, and then walked around with them for a bit and finally took over the portal they had just made... as a SPY!

I believe that I got the right screenshot for when I took over the green portal. Honestly, I'm not sure.

I still don't know how to do that much in this game, and being Level 1 is frustrating because I feel like I can't destroy anything, I just have to play within the fields of blue. Today was really fun and I am going to continue to play this game on my own!

Blog Post 6: Final Corgiboard Game

I had the pleasure of working on corgiboard with Bowen Chan.

This has been a truly eye-opening experience! I never thought that in less than 2 months I could have made a functional videogame, but here I am. I'd like to explain the process of how we got to this point.

Before we made any assets or anything, we familiarized ourselves with GameMakerStudio. Unfortunately, it only runs on windows, but if you can get an virtual machine running on your mac, it does the job as well. It's an extremely user-friendly and powerful engine for making 2D games! I was so pleased with how it functioned. After doing some tutorials in class and familiarizing ourselves with it in our own time, we got into our groups and brainstormed. I noticed both me and my partner liked skateboarding, so I suggested we do a game about skateboarding dogs. It was an instant "yes."

I spent the next couple of weeks making game assets in photoshop. I pixelized them and we were able to just scale them up in game maker. Originally I had sent timed .gifs of my animations but we ended up needing to import the frames individually as .pngs. The sidewalk has the illusion of scrolling even though it is just an image. We programmed the obstacles to move; it was a bit of a guess and check since the sidewalk was a little arbitrary.

Although I had a family emergency and I had to take a week from school to visit home, I still had a blast on the project and Bowen really pulled through and helped me out in the end. He handled both programming and some last-minute graphics!

I look forward to making more games in the future and I am so happy I am equipped with this knowledge.


You can download the game here!

Blog Post 5: Corgiboard

Corgiboard is an adorably exciting game where you are a skateboarding corgi. Your goal is to avoid obstacles like cracks and ice cream cones until you eventually make it home and reach your best friend! 

My job in this game is to make the art and produce the game. I made all of the little animations...

as well as all of the little game assets!

I wanted it to be in a cute pixel style with an 8-bit music track. I am also the producer, so it's my job to keep track of the assets and programming and make sure it's all done on time!

Our main question was whether the movement feels natural/ whether the hit box is too big. Since the sidewalk animation is constant, we needed to match up the corgi movement and the cracks so that it all felt natural. I think there was a little bit of a disconnect there. 

The comments on the game addressed a few issues. Everyone really liked the art (yay!) but some main suggestions were:

- add instructions / control buttons
- longer level
- cramped sidewalk area

- add jumping

- points for tricks!

It was a little rough for our first pass but I'm confident that if we fix the issues, it will be a very enjoyable game! Even with the problems, people kept wanting to play it because it was so cute. Yay!

You can download and play the game here!

BP4: Video Game Lab

I absolutely loved the games that we played in class. I used to frequent the website casualgirlgamer which has a huge breadth of in-browser flash games, so I'd played a good number of the games on the list. Because of that, I decided to try to play some games I'd never played before.

First up was a game called Don't Shit Your Pants.

If you didn't gather it from the title, the object of the game is to not shit your pants. It's a text based game, so the controls aren't quite apparent. There's also a timer. You basically have to type in a bunch of commands until something works. What's cool is there are a bunch of different endings. From just standing there and shitting your pants, to taking your pants off and shitting on the ground, to sitting on the toilet but still having your pants on. There are literally dozen of endings for you to unlock, each one of them rewarding and slightly disturbing. 

The next game I'd like to talk about is QWOP. 

QWOP is the hardest f*cking game with the most frustrating mechanics I've ever seen. In this way, it has an inherent charm. It is so bad and frustrating that you want to keep playing it, which is something that I pretty much never see in any games. I don't even know if that can be considered a mechanic. It is what it is. You are a runner and you control the thighs and calves by using the letters QWO and P. You try to make it as far as you can. That's about it.

This Is The Only Level is the last game I am going to write about.

Though there is only "one level" of the game, the "stages" of the level continually change. While the space mostly stays the same, something is always changing after you get from A to B: the way you move, or the way the gravity works or the elements within the level behaves, etc. It's wonderfully frustrating and hilarious. Sometimes you have to be really clever about it too (I remember one of the stages was called something like "isn't this refreshing?" You had to refresh the page in order to continue.

I really love these games and the spins they take on classic genres. They're very satirical in a way, and it makes them all the more enjoyable. I would definitely recommend any of these to anyone who enjoys playing games. 

BP3: Paper Prototype

When we were told to make a paper prototype of a game, I knew I wanted to use the "randomly generated playing field" mechanic, like in Betrayal at House on The Hill. I also wanted to use an element of lying/deceit, so that the game relies not only on luck but on user involvement and participation. This aspect was later scrapped due to unnecessary complication, but it's there for the first part.

Since I never titled this game, I'm going to go ahead and call it:
SUPER SEXY TOTALLY FUN CARD GAME (S.S.T.F.C.G. for short. I did not run this name by my partner before writing this post. Sorry Michael.)

We used a standard deck of cards, with J=11, Q=12, K=13, A=1,14 (depending on circumstance)
Joker is a wild card, but that is not discussed until Version 3.


Version 1 of my game worked well for a group larger than two. 9 cards are laid out in front of your game pieces, face down, representing the "playing field." The goal was to start from the first card and make it all the way to the end card. Each player has 5 cards in their hands, and must draw a card at the beginning of their turn and discard a card at the end. The discard pile is FACE DOWN. You may only flip over the next "tile" on the playing field if it is directly in front of you, otherwise it is to remain a mystery. This ensures that the victor cannot "plan" their hands too carefully, and that the loser has an advantage while catching up, because they can see the playing tiles that have already been upturned.

Please ignore the booze on the desk.

In order to advance, you must play either the same suit as the card in front of you OR the same number. If it is the same suit, you may advance one. If it is the same number, you may advance two spaces. You will place your card face down on the discard pile and announce the exact suit/number of your played card. At any time, you may lie about your card. If nobody calls you out, you may move forward. If you ARE called out, you must move backward the amount that you were claiming to move forward. If someone calls you out and they are wrong, they must move back the amount of spaces you claimed.

At any time you may also sacrifice two cards in order to move forward. These cards are permanently lost from your hand, meaning your hand will always have less cards than the starting number.
If you cannot play (and don't feel like lying or sacrificing two cards) you may simply discard and hope the next card you draw is applicable.

Since you have the ability to move backward OR forward, you start close to the middle with 4 cards "behind" you, in case you get a stroke of bad luck.

The game worked well enough but with only two people, calling them out or lying was really just a stab in the dark; there was not nearly enough information to go off of. Also, the games were kind of short since the "playing field" was not very long and you could move two spots in a turn. So we modified it.


Version 2 of the game still involved a face-down game board, but with totally different rules.

Bicycle calls this their "Pandamonium" series of playing cards. Get it?

 In this version, six cards were ahead of the players. You had six cards in your hands at all times. There were three discard piles, the main pile with one discard, and our two individual discard piles. You still had to draw as many cards as it took to get your hand to 6, but you were able to take from top of the discard piles as long as they were not your own.

In order to advance, you needed two cards that would exactly equal the sum of the upturned card. The suit of the cards you play does not matter. There was no lying or deceit. First to the end wins.
This version worked out alright, it was definitely better for two players, but still felt a little clunky. I came up with a solution that would make things a little harder in...


Version 3 is the final version of the game. In this version there are only five main tiles, and one discard pile for everybody. You begin with six cards. You draw a card at the beginning of your turn, and if you can play, play two cards, if not, discard. Jokers are wild and can count as any number. If a joker is upturned as a game tile, it is replaced by the next card in the stack. Also, jokers cannot be drawn from the discard pile once played.

In order to advance, you must play the sum of two cards for a red suit, but the difference of two cards for a black suit. The suit of the cards still does not matter. This adds a whole new element to the game. Since advancing means playing two cards, your hand gets smaller every round until you only have three cards to work with for the last tile. This made the game very challenging and made people extra careful about their discards. 

3+2 is 5, so we would be able to play these two cards and advance. Isn't math fun?!

The last version was much less convoluted and after altering it with my in-class teammmate and playing it with my roommates, it was the one we ended up with. It is not too challenging for adults, but I could imagine a parent playing this game with their child learning how to add/subtract. Hope you get a sense of the game now! Thanks for reading!

Love,
Maaike