When I think of the word disruption, I automatically think of historical events and how would these events turn out to be if decisions or actions taken were different. It is interesting that observing one of these events from 3rd person perspective when the event is over is much more different partaking it conceptually. I believe for the majority of the case, the people who helped to construct the historical events committed their actions unaware. They did not know their actions would be considered as significant blocks and the actions would be evaluated, criticized and taught in schools in a future time. In this sense, would their actions be different if they knew the results? Would they disrupt the reality shaped by the past if they were given a second chance? Would learning about similar historical events prevent the people from making the same mistakes? The game we want to build originates from these questions. The historical event we picked for the game is the Homestead Act. This game would be a single player decision-based game, branching according to the player’s responses. The story would evolve according to the actions of the player. However, the player would not have any clue about this historical event when he starts playing the game. The player would try to make logical decisions while unknowingly contributing to the virtual Homestead Act.

 

The design of the game was made with minimalistic tendencies. We did not want to confuse the player by bombarding him with information. Instead, the information was divided into several frames and was received by the player on demand without a time limit. First, an extensive story was written with several possible scenarios. These scenarios would then be divided into smaller pieces that could be conveyed through a single frame. Old paintings and photographs were edited and some text was added to create these frames. Each frame would increment the story a little bit more. Buttons would enable the player to make decisions and also continue the game whenever she wished. The scenario would be traversed according to the decisions of the player in one direction. It is important to note however that some decisions should merge into similar results to prevent the story from exponentially growing. Without such a merging, the story would be hard to manage and potentially the actual aim of the game would be difficult to achieve, which is making the player partake in the Homestead Act. The sound of the game could be the recordings of the text on the frame. Optionally, there could be a background music. The background would have a Western music that would fit the atmosphere of the game.

 

The final version of the game was satisfactory in the sense that the game looked cohesive and communicative. The final version of the game had the story, constantly, closely related to the actual aim of the game without spending time on side stories. It is arguable whether it would be a better approach to extend the game with more personal stories to bond the player with the characters. This version of the game is on point and throws the player into the middle of the Homestead Act right away. The final scenario includes romance to a great extent and considering the popularity of this genre, it is up to the players to decide if it is cliche or not. The playtesting yielded overall an adequate feedback. Some players claimed that the game was educational and that the story was fluid and kept them interested. These players admitted that they were surprised how the story got connected to an actual event. Other players voiced out the lack of connections they had with the characters. They claimed they felt like a 3rd person skimming through a slideshow of someone else’s life. Therefore, they did not feel like their decisions caused a catastrophe which means the scenario was not strong enough to make these players reevaluate themselves. This feedbacks indicates that the intended gameplay was somewhat accomplished to some extent. It highlights the fact that the shock effect was in place for some players. Overall, I conclude that there is a need to improve the story to enhance the relatability of the characters. 

 

The link to download the game is here

A colorful playground that grows with the imagination of individuals. Tangle is a welcoming space that proves what could be accomplished with a bundle of a thread. There are multiple poles on a stage stranded with colorful threads around, swarmed by their creators. People are having a good time with the company of music. The participants are mostly children who are observed by their worried parents for in case something goes wrong. Each child is given a bundle of a thread which they go around playing while tangling it around however they wish. The tangling usually starts by creating a knot on a random spot such as a pole, or another already existing thread. Then with the bundle of thread at hand, the navigation starts around the space. The thread travels twisting around the space on the direction the participant wishes. As a result, another thread takes its place next to many others enlarging the space a little bit more. Once the work with the thread is done, the participant starts playing around the space, socially interacting with the other participants. There is a constant movement in the space, a constant creation.  Such a mobility evolves the space into a more customized one by time. There are performers leading the flow of this growth. They are interacting with the participants to aid them to express themselves. Space is the fruit of expression, in this sense, it exhibits artistic value.

 

There is a deeper meaning behind the play. Space is not the result of only one individual’s ambition and decisions. The consequentiality in this regard cannot be credited to one person. It is the result of a group play, each individual participated. This, however, is different than multiple people painting together an art piece because the possible actions are much more random and the boundaries are much few. When a group is painting together it is much simpler for one to grasp what the other is doing, there is much less randomness involved. There is one dimension missing and it is much simpler to tell when the piece is complete which part of it was painted by whom. Another difference with the painting would be the aspect of interaction. The work of a child is constantly affected by one another. The way the thread will be incremented into the already existing art piece will be affected by the scattering of the children, the density of the already existing threads, the relative position of the children who like each other and who dislike each other. The social aspect of this play will greatly influence the art itself. A child who is going around with his thread will see his friend and change his direction, approaching towards him. On the contrary, he could get in a small argument with another child and move away from her. What makes Tangle an art piece is the fact that the space is molded by perpetual social interactions. When observed as a whole, Tangle is the art of a group but each step of this art is anonymously made.

 

The anonymity of the children could be challenged by a simple question. Once done with tangling the thread and lost track of it, could any of the children exactly tell which thread belonged to them? The answer to this question reveals an assertion. The value given to their own contribution is dominated by their willingness to be a part of the group. This assertion is helpful in explaining the anonymity. The condition of anonymity is the result of the attitude the children have towards the space. They are not there to create art, they are there to play and have fun. This makes them more unaware of their navigation through the space so their lack of artistic intent creates a more artistic space. That is because space grows more in the direction of social interactions the children are having rather than an artistic purpose. The performers have a vital role in such a shaping of the space because of their reserved social role as guides. The performers have direct control over what part of the space will be populated. The scattering of the children is greatly influenced by the actions of the performers. They can drag the attention to themselves with an interesting proposition such as let us pretend this thread is a sea. They can minorly affect the perceptions of the children of the space via inventing mini-games inside the already existing game. They can say that the floor is lava and the navigation of the children will be completely different. Children will try climbing to the thread not to step to the lava. The actions of the performers in this regard have an influence on the finalized art piece that is the space with colorful threads lying around.

 

In terms of the experience, Tangle provides an opportunity for trading ideas and creations. For a child, Tangle space is different than a basic playground because it was partially built by him. On the contrary, it optionally offers the exact opposite too! As a play, Tangle achieves to create a feeling of freedom to contribute without being judged. There is a form of relief to know that no one could ever tell which part of the space was crafted by you if you do not want to share that information. A participant could agree to move a thread in a planned fashion in company with another participant or he could do it alone in peace. In this way, the imagination of the participants, mostly children as mentioned before, are not limited with their social phobias or introvert characters. There is a room for play for everyone.

 

Tangle is successful in bringing out the creative and expressive sides of its participants. I can confirm this as a participant myself. The positive aspect of this expression is that it is unconscious and totally the result of the participants’ social interaction. Each incrementation is unique, there are no two threads that take the same path. Overall, I believe Tangle manages to create a successful play environment paved with social interaction, guidance, and a little bit imagination.

 

Dogukan Avci

Dragonfable is an RPG game that has a mixed timeline, the majority of the game takes place in the middle ages, however, there are robots and aliens on the game too. The game is the story of a hero divided into three books and as the game progresses the main story moves forward. The main theme of the game is to get strong enough for progressing the story. The player initially picks a class from the three: mage, rogue, warrior. Experience points enable the player to level up and get stronger. There are multiple elements that make a player strong such as the quality of the equipment (ring, shoes, armor, helmet, sword cape, etc.), distribution of the player stats, and the style of play. The player decides where to spend the stat points gained through leveling up and he can change his class to an advanced one once he progresses enough into the game. There are side quests where a random piece drops, completing enough of these build up a strong character. The player can evolve her character in a direction that she wants through these various actions.

There are various known locations in the game while also many undiscovered areas. Traveling is easy from some locations when we are riding a half eagle-half lion:

The space of the game is simplified by dividing locations into several areas, and the player’s movement is accomplished by moving to different sections of the room like moving to the left section or moving up to the section upwards of the area. Sometimes there are signboards giving information about navigating the map. The player cannot change the room freely because there are usually barricades in the parts where the map ends. For example:

The player cannot move to the left right now because there is a teleport machine, and he cannot move upwards because there is a bush; so the limiting of the navigation is justified through the usage of game elements. Space in the game has a realistic scent to it, the objects and the buildings around the map are realistic. There are also flying islands and such other objects that ignore the law of physics, though most the motion in the game is realistic. The game managed to feed its fictional aspect with these unrealistic objects while also not chopping its root with reality completely so the player is not lost.

The magic concept is strong and is used smartly so the flying island or the teleportation or the undead soldiers are justified while also conveying the theme nicely. There are regular people just like in the real world, but there is also magic that is not a part of the real world. This difference creates another space altering the known traditional rules like death or gravity while keeping others like time, communication through talking, breathing. These changes take the player away from the regular boring world and introduce a more limitless space where the player can freeze a gnome or ride a dragon.

The time concept in the game is interesting. There is no day or night but the events occur in one direction. The game characters evolve and change only between the different chapters. The player does not need to feed herself or go to sleep, so there are no humanly needs. The time moves forward on big leaps but rarely, only on each chapter.

The main theme of the game is to escape. My interpretation of escape is the feeling of being trapped and isolated. Escape requires movement of course, so the player should be able to navigate the play area. The atmosphere should inspire the feeling of isolation by outnumbering the player by unpredictable threats. Threats should be scattered evenly to minimize the safe zones to the player, providing the ultimate danger zone. This atmosphere should offer at least one way out so that the player can escape rather than stay and survive. This escape zone could be an area designated at the beginning of the game. To make the escape even more realistic, the player actions should have immediate consequences that cannot be taken back. The actions should trigger results that modify the play area so more effort goes into planning them. Player movement is the only possible action in the game so the player’s movement could be used to achieve such a modification. The feeling of being trapped should be obvious to the player once the game starts. The player should be completely sure that the designated escape zone is the only way out. The mentioned aspects are constant throughout the game however the game should not end once the escape is achieved. The randomness of the scenario should be adopted to not bore the player with the same threats while still keeping the necessary elements in place to not give the impression the rules are different. The game objects have to be simple geometric shapes so my plan is to construct everything via rectangles, differentiating the different elements through the use of color and size, and possibly feedback to actions.

 

Highlighting the play area was done by setting walls around the space. Walls shape the strategy of the player by limiting the plan of action to the game space while also conveying the aforementioned feeling of being trapped. The player movement should occur on the keyboard and be consisted of traditional movement, up and sides. However, the player should not be able to move back to make the game more realistic and force the player to face the consequence of moving forward without thinking. Consequences are the few enemies scattered to the space moving towards the player, chasing him. If the player does not move, everything stays in place and no chase occurs. This was done to make the escape more puzzle-like rather than forcing quick action since most of the time the result of a bad move is being caught. The enemies move faster than the player so the player does not just run to the escape zone. The game area has random walls to prevent the enemies from catching the player easily. Smart moves in the game are done by taking advantage of these walls to block the movement of the enemies. The game restarts if the escape is achieved or if the player got caught with a completely randomized set of game elements, except the position of the escape and respawn zones, and the walls surrounding the map.

 

Playtesting with multiple people gave me the chance to observe whether I managed to reach my objectives. The common comment was about the artistic nature of the game. People said they liked the design and the minimalism of the game because it was colorful and consisted of similar shapes. I observed people panic when they make a mistake, which proved the feeling of being trapped was achieved. The common trend of players was to play the game slower after they get caught a few times. The technique of escaping was clear to people after approximately ten minutes of play time after they found the pattern of movement of the enemies. A couple of the players complained about not being able to move backward, they thought it made the game harder. Overall, the feedback was positive but even though a new scenario is produced at every game, the game got boring after 10-15 minutes. New levels could be added in the future, introducing a different pattern of escape with more unpredictable characters, maybe ones that do not care if the player moves or not.

 

The game could be an artifact because it represents the escape theme in an unnatural manner. The escape that happens in the game could not be observed in nature in any way. The representation of this theme in the game is biased towards human experience and such a scenario could only occur digitally. It is obvious the experience of the game is a human-made one so this makes it an artifact.

 

The game link: Evade the Chaser

 

 

The game will convey randomness while keeping the escape element in it. Its duration will be minimal, about a minute per game while to not bore the player every game will be generated randomly. The logic in the game will not be revealed through the documentation but it will form as a result of the gameplay experience. The graphics of the game be minimalist, consisting of small boxes and to distinguish different game elements, simply different colors will be used.

 

The aim of the game will be to reach a certain location while feeling chased and outnumbered. Various mazes will be generated randomly for each run to prevent player memorizing a single solution and act with it every game. This way, a different approach will have to be taken every single game to achieve the goal.

Sort the Court

The game is about ruling an underdeveloped kingdom to prosperity by saying yes and no. The game does not require any mechanical skills from the player as in proficiency with the keyboard and the mouse. The binary nature of the game makes it less threatening and more interesting. The game takes place in a palace where the kingdom can be seen. There are three features of the kingdom visible to us: money, happiness, population. Each day random guests visit and make inquiries to the king which is the player. Saying yes or no have a long-lasting effect on the evolving story throughout the game while it also has a short-term effect on the happiness, money, population. The game area develops as the game progresses, the richness of the kingdom or the development of the city by the time can directly be observed:

 

The game design is minimalistic in a sense that everything in the design is necessary to capture a king’s palace. The game takes place in the same room throughout so such minimalism is necessary to not bore the player with unnecessary details. The game introduces the main goal when the kingdom is developed enough which is joining to Council of Crowns. Other than this directly given one, other goals are subjective to the player. The player can wonder how a story evolves and he can create his own goal to see where the story leads as long as the kingdom survives. The game story offers surprise elements by character development. Saying yes or no to some characters reroutes the story. For example, helping the robot leads to a gift which is used by a scientist for developing a gold generating machine:

The meetings do not only include various characters constantly pushing us to make decisions affecting the stories. There are many funny elements in the game that do not add up to the main story, however, they are humorous. For example, once every couple of days our grandma will ask for a dime for the newspaper, or a street cat will ask for food, or a random drummer will show you his cool new rhythm. These elements thin out the frequency of the important decisions to be made and provide the gap necessary to distribute the important decisions. This is important to not to squeeze the player and let him make the big calls once at a time.

The main premise of the game is facing the consequences of one’s decisions. Various different problems arise during the game which conveys different ideas. For example, if the kingdom expands too fast the king of trees will show up in our palace and complain about the destruction of the forests which underlines an environmental problem. On another occasion, we have to solve a really silly border problem between the kingdom of plants and the kingdom of sea animals who both claim a swamp as their own land. One another one, our workers will complain about their working conditions and will unionize and demand better conditions. There are many more examples such as these ones during the game that contain subtle messages. These subtle messages modify the priorities of a player in terms of the game objectives. They turn him into a king that does not just care about his kingdom but also is also cautious to cause an environmental problem or has respect for his workers’ rights. The unethical path is usually the easy path in the game but the friendliness of the characters and the trust relationship among the kingdom makes it harder for the player to take that path. Sometimes, the development pushes the player to make unethical decisions to make up for the previous unsuccessful ones:

 

There is a constant trade-off majorly between the three features of the kingdom. Balancing and making the profitable decisions lead to a surviving and growing kingdom along with a fun playing experience.

If you want to play the game:

Sort the Court

                                                      Rules

The game is called Peanut Showdown. In this game, the maximum number of players is two. The required materials are a can of peanuts (optionally any kind of nuts or popcorn or even chickpeas), a handful of paper towels, an open play area of at least 5×2 m2. The game is simple. Each player agrees upon a distance initially and starts throwing the nuts at each other’s’ mouths by turn. The thrown player has to catch the nut only by using her mouth, no limbs allowed. One strict rule is that they need to throw vertically, and kindly. Both players have three lives. The game starts simply yet each time a player manages to catch the nut he has to go one step back, deciding how big the step will be himself. Each fail of catching a thrown nut means losing one live. If a player loses all the three lives, he loses and the game is over. The loser has to clean all the thrown nuts after the game as a punishment.

This is a game because there is a challenge involved consisting of a required ability and strategic thinking along with observation. It is a fun activity and a new experience because the activity it involves is merged with the competition. There is the concept of losing and winning along with a punishment. The punishment is not too heavy to take the fun away from it. It gives meaning to losing while respecting to the play area by cleaning it. The space in the game can grow if more experienced players are involved. The preferred location of the game is indoors to motivate the players by taking the fear of falling down and getting injured.

Peanut Showdown largely exhibits construction over destruction. It involves improving a set of skills (reflexes, strategic thinking) while supplying pleasure. It introduces a new experience to its players and motivates them to be risk takers to win the game. There is also a minor exhibition of destruction which is making the loser clean the play area. This rule, however, gives the game consequences so the players try harder to not lose.

The strategy is shaped by deciding one’s size of the steps. A player can dominate by finding the distance that the other player is weak at. Thus, it is natural that more experienced players have a huge advantage in this game.

                                                     Gameplay

The game experimented with a player and the rules previously stated were pretty much respected and not violated. The player expressed the difficulty of the game which is normal for an inexperienced player. The joy of the audience can be heard which reveals the fun of Peanut Showdown.