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.