Vivianna Mo

The games we played were Tokaido, Scrabble, and Chicken Cha Cha Cha. Each game was very different in terms of gameplay and mechanics. Tokaido was fun because of the art and mechanics because there was no dice rolling involved. Scrabble was a very classic game that was easy to understand, but in terms of “fun” became boring after a while because we couldn’t come up with any more words. Finally, Chicken Cha Cha Cha was a simple but chaotic game because of the competitiveness and easy to understand rules. So out of all three of these games, I think Chicken Cha Cha Cha was my favorite because the rules were so easy to follow.

Chicken Cha Cha Cha is a memory game where in order to win, one player has to collect all the other player’s tail feathers.The main mechanics were dice rolling memory matching. To move, a player would roll the dice and then if they want to keep moving they would need to match the tile in front to roll again. If there is a player in front of them, they would need to match the that tile in order to steal the feather. The most fun experience was matching the tiles, since it’s unexpected and surprising when we do get a match, especially if it’s to steal another player’s feather. This was also the emergent game experience; since the rules are simple, it is up to the player to create the experience and make it interesting through matching the tiles (or failing to do so). From the reading, the author makes a point that the mechanics should be consistent,  and replayable. So by making the game not a traditional board, it allows for more randomization thus increasing replayability. Furthermore, since this game had the most simple rules out of the three, it created a simple but emergent gameplay. We were able to play multiple rounds in about 30 minutes, and each round there was a different outcome.

Traditional board games often consist of rolling a dice and moving on a path. This relates to gameplay in video games, where you can move forward to advance in the game. Along the way there are often challenges that you have to overcome, and that is the same for board games. Both video games and board games are a process of learning and revealing a story as you move on in the game.

WHERE is the idea from? – [In this blog, your team should provide a game design idea after discussions.  This idea should be derived from life experience]

The idea of this game is from our group members frequently indulging in boba drinks (with one who used to work at a boba shop), which made us think about the adjustability of boba orders allowing everyone to essentially build their own “perfect” cup of boba. To make things more interesting, we wanted to set the scene of our game inside a boba shop, with the players being workers and completing a series of challenges to construct a customer’s order.

WHAT does the game look like? – [descripting as much as you can]

The concept of the game is that the players are boba shop workers and have to be the first person to complete their boba order. This game can have up to 4 players. The game will consist of cards and a traditional board. Before the game starts, each player chooses 4 order cards, drawn randomly, which represents the boba recipe they have to create. The recipe includes:

• • Milk tea flavor (oolong, black, matcha, jasmine)
  • Toppings (boba, jelly, read bean, pudding)
  • Ice level (0, 1, 2, 3)
  • Sugar Level (0, 1, 2, 3)

Then they will have to draw a milk tea flavor and topping. The ice and sugar level will be represented with cubes that each player can collect or discard during the gameplay. During the game, players have to keep their order a secret and try to craft their recipe without the opponents’ discovering what their order is. Players can steal from each other through challenges such as:

• • Rock paper scissors
  • Roll a dice and see who gets the larger number 
  • Guess what flavor/topping/ice level/sugar level the other person has (but keep it between you two) 
  • If you guess that player’s entire order correctly, they get eliminated 

The board will be a circle so players can loop around. The tiles on the board will include components like challenge or swap/take/return an item from/to the inventory. Players will move along the board by rolling a dice and they are represented by a player piece.

Board game components list:

• • Order cards
  • Player pieces
  • Challenge cards
  • Board
  • Ice cubes
  • Sugar cubes
  • Recipe card

WHAT are the materials you need to craft it?

Paper, dice, player characters

For this week’s progress, we wanted to focus on completing the level design and implementing all the challenges, which are the four monsters, into the game. Last week all we had was a demo of the first challenge the character would encounter. 

Continue reading “CGDD W5 – 2D Game Progress Report”

Limbo is a 2D puzzle-platform horror/scary game where you play as a little boy who wakes up in a forest trying to escape from different challenges and dangers. There are many ways the boy can die, from getting caught in bear traps, to being stabbed by a spider, to drowning.

Continue reading “CGDD W5 – Playing Response”

Chapter 4 “How to Fail Video Games” in the book The Art of Failure: An Essay of the Pain of Playing Video Games by Jesper Juul discusses the role of failure in video games. Compared to real life, video games use failure as a way to enhance gameplay and provide incentives for the player to succeed. While failing is frustrating, it also adds to the overall experience and enjoyment of playing games. In order to succeed, there must be some kind of failure in the game, whether it’s losing a battle, not finding all the hidden collectables, or dying.

Continue reading “CGDD W5 – Reading Response”

LEVEL STRUCTURE AND CHALLENGES

Since our game is based on the anime Made in Abyss, we decided to structure the game level on the map of the Abyss, where one level would be four layers. The goal is for the character Reg to reach the fourth layer where his friend Nanachi is. For the gameplay time to be about 20 minutes long, each layer will take about 5 minutes to complete. The level of challenge will increase the deeper the character goes into the Abyss. Each layer has a corresponding monster, which again increases in difficulty. 

Continue reading “CGDD W4 – 2D Game Structure”

For this assignment I decided to recreate a stacking game, where a cube is dropped from the top and you have to time the drop in order to continuously stack the cube. It is an endless game, so the only way to lose is if the boxes fall over and you didn’t stack it successfully. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a fake game ad of this particular game, but I found an example of the game (it’s called Tower Stack on Facebook):

Continue reading “CGDD 02 – Fake Game”

VARIABLES

Create 5 different types of variables and print them out in the console window.

 

Continue reading “CGDD 01 – Unity C# Challenges”

To first understand the relationship between gameplay and learning, we have to define what gameplay is exactly. In my understanding, gameplay is the way players interact with the game, the mechanics of the game, where there are certain rules and direction that the player must follow in order to reach the end goal of the game. In most games, the end result to win something or resolve a conflict. When playing games, there’s often a process of learning involved, especially when it is a new game. The initial learning stage is getting the controls right and understanding the rules of the game. Depending on the type of video game, I think that learning goes beyond just understanding the mechanics of the game. Games with a story allows players to also learn more about the characters and form connections with them. I feel like this process is also another aspect of the relationship between gameplay and learning.

 

Take the game It Takes Two for example. It is a co-op game where the two characters are on the verge of divorce and they magically get turned into dolls, so the goal is for the players to go through different challenges and tasks in order to return the characters to their human form. The gameplay in this is so vast; there are so many different mechanics within this one game that you have to learn along the way. There are different chapters in the game and each chapter has a theme to it. But even in these chapters there’s more than one way you can interact with the game. There’s also hidden mini-games within each chapter. So each time there’s a new skill, players have to learn the mechanics and slowly get better at it.

Besides the actual game mechanics, you also get to learn more about the character and the story through the gameplay. For instance, the final two chapters of the game are about the characters’ passions. For Cody, it was his love for gardening, while May (the other character) it was singing. The gameplay correlates with the passion of the players, so for May she could use her singing as an ability to defeat and solve challenges in that chapter.

One of the most notable books about game and play is Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga. This book isn’t necessarily on video games, but on how play is a part of human culture. Many books about video games reference Huizinga.

However, the book I want to talk about is called Reality is broken : why games make us better and how they can change the world. Actually,  my first semester capstone research was on video games, but particularly around the idea of escapism and social connectivity through playing video games. I didn’t really research about the fundamentals of video games such as gameplay, but through some of the readings I concluded that video games can be used as a experience and way of learning. In the book I mentioned, it raises the point of how games can be used to improve reality. In particular, the things we learn through games can be applied in real life. To connect back to gameplay, the actions done in games are things we learn and can apply to real life.

The main idea in chapter 5, “Stronger Social Connectivity” is about how games that involve cooperation can strengthen relationships in real life, which also goes back to the game I mentioned before. So gameplay involving teamwork and coordinating with other players can improve people’s abilities to work together to solve a problem. Therefore, players not only learn how to collaborate in game, but also in reality, which is a necessarily skill to have.

To conclude, gameplay and learning go hand in hand. For some games, the learning process isn’t necessarily continuous, but it is still a process. Additionally, the learning aspect is not just about the mechanics of the game, but also learning about the characters and narrative of the game.