Photography card game – Iterations 1, 2 and 3

For my Portfolio assignment, I could do anything, as long as it was my work and it would be interesting and connected to games design. Some of my colleagues chose 3D design, others chose animation, 2D design, storyboards, scripts etc. I decided I would create a board game. Of course there are plenty of other board games out there, but, to my knowledge there wasn’t any one that’s photography related. That is, that is specifically tailored out to incite a photographer’s creativity. Since I have some experiencing in creating creativity pervasive games, I decided that my board game would be created for people who are interested in photography.

Goal: create a playable photography board game in 3 months

Steps towards achieving that goal:

• Gather willing testing subjects
• Gather ideas for the game
• Test the game several times
• Gather feedback
• Polish to desired result

Global Games Jam 2012 – The Snake-A-Maze experiment

This post has spent some time in the making, but I believe that now is a good time to publish it. I have participated in the Global Games Jam 2012. Myself, along with a team of 4 other 1st years from University Campus Suffolk, spent 48 hours making a game from scratch, on a set theme. My own contributions to the game were in the form of doing some of the coding, debugging a lot and helping in coming up with the general idea. Also this was the first time I created and recorded sounds, which I found extremely interesting and this could be something I believe I would like to do again, at least once.

For more information about the Global Games Jam, check out their website.

Now, why exactly am I writing about the Global Games Jam? The reason is simple: I’ve managed to create a full game, from start to finish, with 5 people, in 48 hours. Sure, it’s not bug-free, but those are minor details. I’ve been trying to create a full game with another team of 5 people for the last 6 months and we’re somewhere along 3/4’s of the game. I want to talk about good ideas and good managing, being able to do a crunch session in which all the members of the team work together and are together in the same room and do nothing else but work (and occasionally go for a pizza).

The whole experience was great and I learned lots of new things, including how to start thinking as a good object-oriented programmer (taking the lead from the senior 1st programmer which was in our team).

When the theme was assigned…

Shifting Maze – Iterations 3 and 4

In the last post, I had a good idea (in my opinion) for a nice little strategic game with random elements, but the first two iterations relied too heavily on luck, so I decided to rethink some of the game.

Rethinking

Shifting Maze – Iterations 1 and 2

One of the most interesting things that game designers can do, in my opinion, is to make paper prototypes of games, and board games. Nothing quite compares with the feel you get from building up a game from scratch in 30 minutes and then having people play it and give you feedback on it. To compare, it took me around 3-4 hours to write up the balloon game that’s in a post below, just because it was my first solo-take on a coded game, without help from tutors or tutorials.

So here’s the second board game I did since I arrived at UCS, the first one being a not-so-genius race-to-the-finish game. I will present the concept and iterative process as this game advances. At the moment it’s at its 3rd iteration, so I will post the early 2 iterations now and the 3rd one separately a bit later.

The whole idea of this game came when Rob challenged us to make a game in which dice would not be used to decide how many squares you move, after giving us a squared board on which we could try to do our game. I put on my “challenge accepted” face and gave it a go. After a few turns I decided I didn’t like the board, so set out to make my own. Having the idea roaming in my head for quite a while, I decided to do an ever shifting maze game.

Coding – Balloon shooting minigame v0.1

My second Flash game! yeeey. No, not really. This one is a minigame for the group project that I’m in.

Essay assignment – Iterating the Royal Game of Ur

Abstract

This essay will present basic historical information about the Royal Game of Ur and several iterations of this game in a games workshop during the “Critical Game Studies” class of the “Computer Games Design” course at University Campus Suffolk. The iterations will be discussed upon and at the end a new set of rules will be agreed upon for this ancient game. The terms “Mechanics”, “Dynamics” and “Aesthetics” refer to the work of Hunicke et. al, “MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research” and will be used as such. In their work, “Mechanics” refers to the state of the game before the actual play session, including all the game bits and rules of the game, “Dynamics” refers to the emergent player behavior during the actual play sessions, while “Aesthetics” translates into the emotions that the players are experiencing as a direct result of playing the game.

Coding – basically a basic platformer

My first individual Flash game 😀 be amazed!

Game idea: Fortresses

So last Friday at Rob’s lecture we played some real life games (ZOMG, I know, rite?) like “Elves, Giants and Wizards” and “The Human Knots”, which were very very interesting. Below, photographic evidence:

although you can't see it, there actually WAS a girl in the middle

We’ve been asked that we do our own real life game for this week to play, so here’s my proposal (insert eeevil laugh here):

Understanding “A” of “MDA”: this is a games designer’s blog

Now, some of you might have been wondering why I don’t post my own stuff on this blog? Why don’t I post my script, my art, my games? The first thing you should know is that I value this blog a lot, and that I only hope to post my best work here. Secondly, I believe that I haven’t managed to make something qualitative enough to post here yet, other than the first week Apple logo. Thirdly, the text that you see is my work. I value the text that I write highly and I hope it shows as some of my best work. I love writing, analyzing and debating stuff, be it game-related or not.

Now, I said that I did not think I did anything of too much value till now. That is partly true, present texts excluded. I would post the group project game I’m working on at the moment but it’s in pre-pre-alpha at the moment, so it would require a lot of instruction just to play a very small and unrefined game. But that does not mean that I haven’t tested the game with my colleagues yet. This, as the title suggests, is my FIRST ever experience as a games designer, with a beta tester of my digital games, and it’s one I don’t think I’ll forget soon.

Iterating Battleship

I’ll start this one easy. Probably not everybody knows what “to (re)iterate” means. I know I didn’t, before I started this course. According to the master Google, it means:

it·er·ate
[it-uh-reyt] Show IPA verb, -at·ed, -at·ing.
verb (used with object)
1.
to utter again or repeatedly.
2.
to do (something) over again or repeatedly.

Also it’s synonymous to rehearse, so we’ll use that term. When I say we “iterated” or “reiterated” a game, it means that I have taken the basic rules of the game and changed them either by adding or subtracting, or just changing one or more already existent rules.

That being said, the title means that I’ve created a variant of the popular game, Battleship. Is it better? Is it worse? It’s the reader/player’s choice, and I’d be glad to hear it.