#5

Pictured: Higuarshi No Naku Koro Ni

I decided to write a paper on the topic of Visual Novels. As visual novels are often debated whether or not they're actually games or not, I decided to cover what generally falls under the visual novel genre, as well as briefly whether or not they are actually games or just fancy digital novels with sound and sometimes voice acting. I covered sound/kinetic novels, VNLs, and ADVs, as well as different genres that generally fall under the visual novel category such as: dating sims or adult content, "crying games," horror, and science fiction. I initially was also going to cover different software used to make visual novels, but the paper was becoming lengthy, and I felt I was covering too much at that point. It was hard to extensively cover whether or not to consider them as actual games thanks to the lack of articles covering it, and I mostly found forum posts covering this topic. Unfortunately, it was really hard to find articles on the subject, and many of them referenced each other. My actual paper is linked here. 

blog post 4

All bow before Grandma

I'm sure you've heard of it at some point before, also considering we've brought it up in class. This game is Cookie Clicker, and if you haven't played it, I don't recommend it unless you want to lose a couple days of your life. Unfortunately, I've played through the early stage of the game, on the day of the release, as well as a later release which is shown above during a triggered "GrandmaPocalypse." This game uses both elements of "gamification" and "zero player gaming."

As this game is called, Cookie Clicker, I'm sure you can guess what it's about. In this game, you continuously click the cookie until you can buy items that will increase your amount of cookies over time, whether you're actively clicking the cookie or not. These cookies can in turn buy more items to increase your cookie score, or upgrades to boost your cookie output, as well as bonuses. Cookie Clicker employs gamification as clicking on the cookie, or having more buildings, can lead to more achievements and unlockeables.  It's also a zero player game, thanks to you not having to actively click the cookie once you've bought at least one cursor object. In later versions, once you trigger the grandma apocalypse, you have to actively watch the cookie in case these alien like creatures start attacking your cookie, which significantly lowers your cookie output (Although there's a strategy to get more cookies by making use of these creatures). In the earlier version, however, the grandma apocalypse actually doubled your output, and made a terrifying grandma flash in the background. This was taken out in later versions, and given to the golden cookie object, which appears randomly rather than after having several million cookies, and every 15 minutes or so after clicking the initial grandmapocalypse. 

It's interesting to note that this tedious game exploded almost over night. I remember that the game appeared online around early august, and the very next day, I saw jokes about how awful cookie clicker was, yet no one could stop playing until they either got one of all the objects, or the game actually tells you to stop playing. I'm still honestly not sure what enticed so many people to play this game. Possibly the witty ticker at the top of the screen? Or maybe it was just gamification tricking us into continuously playing.

5 Games Review

Last week, I played a multitude of games linked here. Some of them, I played in the past, but had forgotten about until then. The five different games I'm covering here are: Don't Shit Your Pants, Rescue: The Beagles, Super Puzzle Platformer, You Have To Burn The Rope, and Memory Reload: The Downfall

In the first game, Don't Shit Your Pants, it's run like an old DOS game with command line type inputs, with a similar soundtrack and graphics that resemble old DOS games. This game was interesting in that I had no idea how to open the door at first, until I watched someone else beat it in front of me. The first time I inevitably shit my pants, while the second time, I managed to get my pants off, but shit on the floor instead. The next few tries, I ended up shitting my pants automatically due to trying to kick the door down, or writing "don't shit pants" or something along those lines. This game is simple, but interesting in that there's plenty of achievements, or ways to beat the game. Apparently there are plenty of ways to shit or don't shit your pants. This game really lets you get creative with how to not shit your pants. This game exemplifies how you can take a mundane concept, such as trying to use the bathroom, and turning it in to an interesting short game.

The second game, Rescue: The Beagles, is about rescuing beagles from testing lab grunts. Except, this game is actually pretty hard. The difficulty level is supposed to resemble classic arcade game difficulty. That's probably one of the reasons why as a kid, I could never get that far in to this game. Even now, I still have trouble rescuing all the dogs, but I usually manage to get a few of them. One of the mechanics I always liked about this game was that you could leap from ground level to the areas in the background. While I never had much of a problem going on to the higher hills, I always had a problem of accidentally dying when I tried to lead down one area. Avoiding the testing lab grunts was usually relatively easy, or at least it is in the beginning of the game as I never got that far, but trying to maneuver the area is sometimes really tough. If I remember correctly, as a kid I never would get rope or use the owls, as I thought they would hinder you for some reason, which made the game even harder. Owls in game serve as a "weapon" which you can use to force grunts out of the way, and rope lets you move up on to a higher hill. I also just found out that you can still use your parachute, and it's not just a one time use entering the screen. You also have to watch out for each hill, just in case a lab grunt is almost about to reach a dog. The game has simple cute graphics, and an actual story line, which surprised me as I didn't actually remember the story button when I first played the game. If there's one thing that this game has taught me, is that you probably should read the instructions instead of a brute force playthrough, as I realized this time around that a lot of the items lying around are actually helpful.

The third game, Super Puzzle Platformer, resembles either game boy advanced games or arcade style games. In this game, you shoot at blocks, which then give you exp to power up your gun. Shooting too many blocks can result in you falling off the edge in to the spikes below, or having no where to run when blocks are falling on top of you. I can't remember if anything happens if the blocks reach the top of the screen or not. The gun reminds me of the gun in Cave Story, as its power ups seem somewhat similar. There was one thing that got me about this game, was that when I played it in high school, and even now, I always glitched the game. When a block is supposed to fall on top of you, you're supposed to die. Instead, I would somehow glitch inside the blocks and would be able to not get hurt by any of the falling blocks. Instead I'd be able to shoot any of blocks from where I was standing. It's kind of a big glitch, that I remember my friends and I used to abuse. Besides that, the game is actually well polished, and has really nice simplistic graphics.

The fourth game, You Have To Burn The Rope, only has one level, and it's neither long nor is it terribly difficult. The game starts out by telling you that there is a boss at the end of the tunnel, but it also informs you that your weapon is useless against the boss. The only way to beat it is by burning the rope holding the chandelure above the boss' head, which destroys it almost instantly. The music for this game is pretty serene during the level, but the actual credit music is pretty hilarious. This game is actually incredibly short, but its credits song is pretty much four times the length of the actual game.This game makes fun of itself within its own song. This game's replay value sort of relies on whether or not you want to listen to the ending song or not, which can get stuck in your head rather easily. The background graphics and sprites resemble a generic platformer background, while the main character and Grinning Colossus are simplistic in nature, and lack basic shading. All in all, this game is simplistic in nature, but probably has some deeper commentary on games that I am unable to remember at 9 in the morning.

The fifth game, Memory Reload: The Downfall, actually surprised me quite a bit. At first, I thought it was a normal memory game. However, the longer I took to play it, the more I realized that I was wrong. The more times you get something wrong or depending on how long you take to find its matching piece, the cards will change. At first you could stop the cards from changing if you get everything early enough, but the longer you take, the worse things get. For instance, the migrant worker card will turn in to "mexican invasion" and "peace in palestine" turns in to "Israel security." This game is actually a commentary on the downfall of United States as a hegemonic power. After the game is over, it displays an explanation for each card, and how they've effected each other over time in our world. Depending on the cards you caught on early enough, the words in the after explanation change. This game is either a commentary on how society's views on certain subjects change extremely quick, or how society remembers certain subjects are drastically different from how they started out.

Paper Prototype

I switched games that I was working on for the paper prototype, by the second session, so I have 2 records of play sessions. In the first session, it was about a cat trying to defend moon cheese from incoming mice. I initially made this prototype with a more computer based system in mind, and it was hard to play test via paper. This game lasted through about two sessions, before I decided to switch to a different game. This game had a grid based mechanic, where the mouse was to collect all the cheese and has to escape off the map, while the cat has to attack the mouse. In the next session, the mouse was given a speed boost when it gets to the cheese. The mouse moved via dice roll, while the cat could move 4 spots per game. This game was scrapped for a card game.

This game was heavily based off of magical girls, and had a lot of changes to the rules each session. I'm posting a picture of the very first session, as subsequent sessions were hard to see in pictures thanks to the sun setting, and causing a glare. We decided who went first either on a coin toss or a dice roll. You first started with 3 cards, and you drew a card and play a card. The first run of the game had a lot of problems. Your goal was to take out the other opponent's health entirely. Each card was either a spell card with a set amount of mana that it used to cost. Spells ranged from a basic air spell, fire spell, water spell, poison spell, and earth spell. With air and water being on the lower range of cost for mana (being between 1 and 2 mana) and everything else being between 3 and 5 mana. There was usually 2 cards per spell, unless they were more rare spells such as Restoration or a Wand, which boosts your attack and reduces your mana cost for a turn. Some cards even required dice rolls to decide the amount of turns some cards last for. Others require a coin toss based on spell failure rate. Cards the froze the opponent or poisoned them were later changed to use the dice roll mechanic, while the spell failure rate card was based on a coin toss. There were a few cards that would badly affect you as well, which included rotten apples which poisoned you, as well as spell failure rate cards. Health and mana cards were based off of sweet food and drinks, which healed you between 2 and 4 health, as well as 2 and 4 mana. There was also a Restoration spell which cured poison, but did little else in the beginning.

In the beginning, I started everyone out with 50 health and 15 mana. Then I realized that was too high of a number, and we often ran out of mana, as there were too little cards that restored mana. The next session I added a ton more mana cards, and reduced health down to a more manageable 25. I also had to change the poison spells to use less mana as it cost 8 mana to cost, but only lasted for 5 turns. So instead, I reduced it down to 3 mana, and it was based on a dice roll. This session went a lot faster, and didn't drag on as badly as the other one. I also realized the speed boost card, which allows you to use multiple cards in a round, ends up hurting you if you had no mana. The next round, I changed it to where speed boost has anything you use after that cost half the mana it normally would cost. I let you counterattack freeze spells with fire, and changed it where restoration spells cure all bad ailments instead of just curing poison, and also heals you 2 health for a dice roll decided amount of turns. I also ended up scrapping 2 cards as I didn't think they worked. "Hope Monologue" and "Shut Up CounterAttack" as a nod that there's usually someone who is monologuing during a magical girl show, whether it's about hope, or lack of hope. While the other person usually tells them off. They didn't work well as cards. Hope Monologue stunned the other player for 4 turns, or until the "Shut Up" card is played. Said card usually landed in the hands of the person playing it. I also just felt that the card didn't "feel" right. It was a good inside joke, but not good as a card.

One downside to the weekend play session was that my friend isn't much of a gamer at all, and continuously said mechanics were fine when I knew there were still some things off. Although I still learned a lot from it, as each round brought out a ton of changes each time. I learned a lot from both sessions. I initially thought something like a magical girl card game would be easier to play test as I blanked on how to make the cat game better, but there were a lot of things that needed to be changed in the magical girl game, but it was still far from perfect. On Monday, seeing two others play my game, as we were in a group of 3, I learned a lot from that session as well. As sometimes you can't use cards when you're out of cards completely in your hand.

Play Session

During the late play session, I played both the normal edition, plus expansion, of Fluxx, and Zombie Fluxx. Unfortunately, I only have a picture of Zombie Fluxx in play, so I grabbed Fluxx's image off of their LooneyLabs website. As I covered in the last post, the core mechanic of Fluxx is that you have a deck of cards, which have goals and card items that can accomplish that goal. Yet, Fluxx is a chaotic game, where the goal can change at any moment, and the rules as well. Actions can be played, as one time cards, which allow you to perform what ever action is said on that card. This is the basic mechanic of all Fluxx games.

In Zombie Fluxx, there are added goals, as well as "Creeper" cards, which are Zombie based cards. There is also an element where everyone can lose the game in this version, unlike the original Fluxx game, called the Un-goal, which depends on the amount of Zombies out in play. Zombie Fluxx, can actually be added on to the original game as an expansion, to create a larger version of Fluxx.

From a developer's perspective, this is an interesting game. In card games, it's hard to introduce this element of randomness. While shuffling a deck of cards, it's highly unlikely to have the same cards in the same order twice, unless you're that bad at shuffling like I am. This adds to that you'll rarely see the same cards played in the same order. Also in card games, it's rare for rules to change so often, when rules are usually more set in stone, and while the basic "Draw One, Play One" card will never go away, nor will the actual rule cards, it's the order the players play them in which can result in utter chaos. Also in card games, it's very rare your end game goal can change at any point in time. While you still have your Keeper cards (which is your foundation to victory), they might become ineffective when a rule changes, or when the goal changes. The reason why all of this is fascinating is that this level of randomness is usually achieved by video games, which can switch on and off rules, and is controlled by a computer, and not by the player. It's also interesting to note that in this version of Fluxx, it gives you the option to make it where no one wins, and it's not considered being a "spoil sport" as it's a part of the actual game. Also, despite Fluxx being a "party game," I've rarely been able to play it in groups larger than 3-4, as most people don't have the attention span to keep playing when they're close to completing a goal in their favor, it changes. Or that element of chaos of rules pretty much changing per each person's turn, that it becomes harder and harder to play in a larger group of people.

What does Fluxx teach? First and foremost, playing Fluxx teaches you how to best play Fluxx. The second thing Fluxx teaches you is how to reason. Before playing each card, you look at your hand and have to think what is the best card that I can play to my advantage. Unless you're going for a total chaos game, and decide to play something like: Draw 6, Play All, Zero Card Hand Limit. Of course, your opponent would also learn by playing how to counter your card choice. If we want to get on a more abstract level of thinking, we could say how Fluxx represents life, and how we all have goals which may or may not work for or against us, and how we try to manipulate our surroundings in to working towards those goals. If we go by that string of logic, then you'll also run in to evil people who would rather no one win.

#2

I'm not sure what kind of game I'm going to make still. For some reason, I've been stuck on "A cat goes to the moon" and "magical girls" but not directly together. The story of a game where a cat goes to the moon, might be about a cat who protects the moon cheese from thieving mice. Maybe a sort of chase, and catch, or cartoon violence type thing. It might be a platformer, or it could be an rpg? I'm not sure how it'd work as a board game or card game though.
I honestly wasn't in class last Wednesday, so I missed the play session. I can, however, link to my favorite card game at this moment in time which is Zombie Fluxx made by Looney Labs. The core mechanic of the game is that each turn you draw a card, and you play a card. Yet the rules can change at any moment, and the goal of the game always changes. One of the reasons why I always liked this game is because it has a way to have everyone lose in the end, unlike the normal version of Fluxx. This is one of those games where you need to play to really learn it, and you just don't really read the core rules to learn how. Just read the cards, and play accordingly. My favorite goal of the game is the Zombie Apocalypse ungoal card, and I can't really say why. The game pretty much allows you to screw other players over, by constantly switching up the rules and changing the current goal card; however, there is a chance that this'll backfire on you. This is a great game to play with friends, and is really easy to pick up as you go on.

Games

Ever since I was little, I remember games being a huge part of my life. My brother and I weren't allowed to go outside, at least when my parents were around, so we would sit around the SNES/NES/Sega/DOS computer and play games. However, I usually wasn't the one playing. I would be the one watching over my brother's shoulder. Or, on rare occasion, the second player. Though that never lasted long as I was a toddler, and didn't know what I was doing. This usually ended in me crying and swearing I would only watch him play.

Also, despite growing up with games, I haven't owned most console or handheld devices. Majority of the consoles I had were the really old consoles. My first handheld being the original blocky DS, which I had bought as my mom's Christmas present to my older brother. Besides the DS, we also had a PSx and PS2, up until we sold the Playstation to buy us food for the week and the PS2 went up in smoke one day. Since then, we've only owned a Wii, which was given to us for free, and an old xbox which my brother sold to fix our shared computer at the time.

Now I mostly play games on my laptop when ever my friends coerce me in to playing with them. I mostly use steam to play. Majority of the games I play are usually from Humble Bundles. Occasionally I play games on my 3DS. So most of my knowledge comes from the classics, but I do enjoy newer games.

Some of my favorite games are: The World Ends With You, Digimon World 1, Harvest Moon, Seiken Densetsu 3, Mother series, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue/Explorers, Kirby Super Star, Black and White, and a ton more that I can't remember at the top of my head.