For this project, the main aim of my game was simplicity. The game is very block based, as we can see that everything is designed in a square or rectangular shape. In terms of the theme ëscape”, it quite fits the description because essentially the main aim of the game is to escape from purple “bully” blocks that will kill you upon collision with them. The main character is a small green square that needs to navigate around a red maze and reach a safe spot, which is a yellow square. To move around, you need to press the arrow keys that corresponds to the direction of the keys (left, right, up and down). I chose this particular type of gameplay as it involves a bit of strategic movement in order to avoid the bully blocks, as they move at a faster speed than the actual player. You get 3 lives, and if your 3 lives are up, then the game is over and you need to restart (which involves refreshing the webpage). You are restricted from playing out of bounds, because the maze walls also take away one life from you upon contact. This may contribute to situations in real life because often we find ourselves in negative situations and we need to find ways to avoid the source of negativity without being caught or trapped by the negativity, hence the description of “escape”.

I designed this game based on an earlier game that my brother and I developed as children using a child-friendly game engine. The interface and controls are  similar, but this version is much simpler as it requires more programming in a language that I’m not very familiar with. The design of this game is pretty much based on blocks, squares, and rectangular shaped objects, very much like the older version that we’ve designed. During the process of designing the game, I would save and test the game every time id add a few lines of code, just to make sure that the game was working properly. creating the maze itself was probably the longest process of designing the level, as each wall in the maze required a separate sprite with located on a different position. The speed of the bully blocks were also altered several times to make the game a little more difficult.

Looking back at the game now, I feel quite pleased with it, but at the same time disappointed. I was hoping I could make a few more levels, but that proved to be quite difficult for me. Also, during my latest test of the game, there seems to be an error in the code which prevents the game from actually running, and I wasn’t able to figure out what was causing the bug. Another issue that I felt a little frustrated with was the concept of mobility in the game. Initially, I was hoping I could find the code that would allow the character to move at a constant speed as the player hold down a button, but I was not able to do that. With more time, I probably would have focused on designing more levels and tried to experiment with more sophisticated types of movements and characteristics that each of the sprites could have had.

An artefact is something that is created by a person that can be utilised and interacted with, wether it is digitally or physically. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, the author describes an artefact as “not stable”and something that changes over time”. I’d like to think that the game I designed is an artefact in that sense because 9 years ago, the game I designed with my brother had a different interface, different ways of movement, it was more complex and  was inspired by different thing. The game I have to present today is a very toned down version of what my brother and I created, hence, the claim that my game is open for changes, editing, adding and taking away certain aspects and all of that is okay, because I believe that this is how many games (or artefacts) have been treated in the past, and I would love to see many different versions and interpretations of this in the future.

Here is a link to my game 🙂

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1-ogPkq3oWa92GH480UzSTFwCujel9ma4