Mini-game #1 Proccess and Reflection

The first minigame had emergent gameplay as a prerequisite. One of us came up very quickly with the idea that the core mechanic could be using the player's "corpse" as a platform to navigate on. We initially planned to go with level design that made players die by way of fatal object contact so that their "dead" bodies would create platforms over these fatal surfaces. It didn't take us very long, however, to realize that this would simply be a prolonged and redundant form of pathway creation and would feel like a chore to the player. We subsequently experimented with the idea of having distanced platforms mid-air that the player had to bridge to get across, but that idea didn't give nearly enough complexity to the game to make it exciting. After some brainstorming, we eventually arrived at the idea "what if our bodies could BE the mid-air platforms?"

The first stages in the development process involved color coded zones that allowed for only specific kinds or rotations. For instance, in the green zone, the player character could only rotate by 90 degrees to be either vertical (tall) or horizontal, while in the blue zone, the player could only have 45 degree clockwise or anti-clockwise rotation from a vertical stance. We entertained the idea that the zones would switch color every time the player dies but that made the game needlessly complex and we abandoned the idea on paper itself.

To create an interesting challenge for players while creating emergence, we came up with the idea of having barren patches i.e., patches in the game space without color zones where rigid horizontal platforms already existed, so the player would have to figure out a way to get onto them only via the neighboring color zones. The platforms would hold either game score or currency. We got as far as integrating these platforms in one of our initial prototypes, but due to the color zones not being workable code-wise, we decided to space them much farther apart and  get rid of the color zones altogether. What we ended up with was a game space that was to be scaled vertically more than horizontally, and with increased emergence since the players now got to create whichever platform the wanted. We noticed, however, that horizontal and vertical corpses didn't serve as very progressive platforms for the player's navigational needs, so we decided to have just 2 distinct 45 degree rotation options to create corpses with. By enabling player motion mid-air post jump off of one of the corpse platforms, we made sure that players have the luxury to change upward trajectory as and when it suits them. The trail renderer was instrumental in helping players realize what they were doing, since before that it was unclear due to the fast pace of the game and the camera's rapid motion. To add a bit of juice to the game, and as additional identification, we colored the two different roatations of corpses purple and green , so players know the platforms their heading towards by association rather by observation and can react faster to them.

Post Mortem

Our thought process started off standing in the coffee line, looking at people who were concealing their insecurities in laughably obvious ways. We considered how guessing what they are concealing would make for an interesting mechanic. That is essentially how our second game was born, the one where both players are given 2 insecurities and an excess of accessories to conceal those insecurities and distract from them. Producing that game was very economical on time, since we just had to write up cards for insecurities and a separate set of cards for the accessories that can be used to conceal said insecurities. Some of these “accessories” were ridiculous household objects like buckets and toilet paper so that players would have to get creative and improvise. This was also meant to encourage emergent gameplay.

 Unfortunately, we didn’t consider that some players would be so bad at drawing that their interpretations of how these accessories could be used weren’t clear to their opponents. We had considered that it might be too tedious to have to draw each accessory, so we though of making drawn cut-outs of the accessories with human body templates, such that players can place those accessories on any body part that is supposed to be an “insecurity, and even parts that aren’t (as diversions). However, that would eliminate room for improvisation, so we decided against it. If we were to develop the game digitally however, with 2d assets that take different forms to wrap around the body parts that they are hovered over, it would certainly eliminate the problem of not being able to draw clearly and the alternative of not being able to improvise.

Our first game was the one where two players play the roles of a pair of siblings heading to prom and having encounters that give them insecurities as well as other encounters that reward them with assets to cover up those insecurities. The aim of the game is to beat the other player to prom, and since each player has only 20 rolls, the one to get through all their rolls first wins. Players miss a turn if they have an NPC encounter with one or more of their insecurities exposed. The idea for this game originated as an extrapolation of the initial concept of concealing insecurities. We found gross and unrealistic caricatures of common accidents hilarious, and thought that if we make the insecurities like that, it would enhance the humor factor in our game. We relied very heavily on pop culture reference for the same, most of which are very seasonal, so our game won't be as funny in even a year or two, but we went with it nevertheless because we found it amusing for the present. The mechanic for our insecurities to be caught on by way of chance or dice roll was discussed and experimented with, but since we had to produce the cards ourselves (which there weren't too many of), we thought that having blank rolls that didn't force the player to pick up cards would make our game too uneventful. Since binary rolls are essentially the same as coin tosses, for the sake of efficiency, we decided to use a coin instead of a die. We even discussed making the siblings' "journey" over a game board with token movement, but found it to be meaningless since our intention was to force the player to pick a card one way or the other in every turn to keep the game exciting. Consequently, for the same reasons as stated previously, we chucked the game board idea, since it made no mechanical difference to the game and only added aesthetic work to our schedule. So, we decided that we'll make the roll consequence binary (either pick up an insecurity or an NPC that will either provide a resource or make you skip a turn). 

The idea for NPC cards to have multiple effects, often completely opposite ones (such as either help you conceal an insecurity or make you skip a turn) added an element of chance to what is essentially a forced card draw. The fact that in certain cases players get to choose to earn "Karma" to immunize themselves from one future insecurity or snatch the character's accessory was meant to add some element of strategy. Unfortunately, we didn't playtest it long enough in class to see this mechanic in action. The one thing we definitely learnt from is scope. Even though we liked our game, it was too long and complicated for the class, and thinking about factors such as presentation time and audience would be a better place to start off for us henceforth. Another thing we'd change if we could would be the distribution of NPC types. We didn't refer to or record any statistics to help us determine the best ratio of helpful to deterrent cards, which affected one of our pre-class playtests adversely. Players could go on to pick unhelpful cards consecutively a large number of times, and that was in spite of us shuffling the cards. As a future precaution, it will be important for us to Use dummy cards or stand-ins just for some plain statistical analysis that we could build our final assets on. Another thing that we found sort of,but not completely to be a problem is the game's audience appeal. It was too specific to adolescents of September 2016, and if we could find a way to make the cards funnier to a wider audience in as ironic and satirical a way, we would, evenif it complicates the mechanics a little more.