Experimental Game Design

Month: October 2021

Situation puzzle game

by | Oct 21, 2021 |

Rule:

The player tries to reconstruct the whole thing after reading the sentence provided. Players can ask me questions about the case. I would just say yes, no and it doesn’t matter. The player needs to know the whole story of the case from these questions. The player has three chances to ask me for a hint about an item. I’ll tell them what it’s about. 

Artist statement:

The game mechanic I appropriated was a game called 海龟汤 (Turtle soup) in China. The rules of the turtle soup is to give an incomplete story, let quizzes to ask the possibilities of the problems, and ask to solve these problems can only say “yes”, “no” or “has nothing to do with it” these answers, so the quizzes must in limited clues in the reasoning of the event, by defining the Q&A piece together a full picture of the story. I didn’t change the rules of the game too much because the mechanics were hard to change. When I was playing on my own I found it a bit difficult to tell what happened by asking questions alone, so I added in the rules that players could ask me for three items. In this work, I borrowed more from the story in the game. I adapted it from a story in a book I read in junior high school called 十宗罪 (Ten Deadly Sins). The original story is like a murderer killed a woman and was heard by a blind man. The blind man asked what he was doing. He said he was mopping the floor. The next day the police saw blood all over the floor, but there were no footprints, because the killer had used the body as a mop and had wiped his tracks with the victim’s hair. And then I adapted it into a man had to go to a public toilet because his toilet was broken. It was dark in the toilet and he met a cleaner. He said hello to the cleaner and went to the bathroom. The next day the police knocked on the door and said there had been a murder in the toilet yesterday. The man quaked when he saw the photos of the crime scene. Why is that? I think appropriation can make the work more perfect, because the original work is already perfect. It can also give new life to previous works when used for appropriated by later people. After being used for appropriation, people will pay more attention to the original work. My inspiration comes from one piece from Grapefruit, which is a conversation piece. In that piece, people are trying to use their words to convey information. People also need to judge whether the information they are being given is correct. That’s pretty much the same idea as my game. I don’t give the player too much information, but the player still has to piece things together from the information I give them. Unlike Yoko Ono, my information was correct.

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City Guesser Appropriation – (Joey)

by | Oct 21, 2021 | ,

City Guesser 2-Players

My appropriation game is a modified version of a very popular game online called City Guesser. In the game City Guesser, players would observe a video playing on their screen and based on the video that’s playing, try to guess the location of the video. There are buttons on the top right of the video that can help players by controlling the video so that they can get more information. After guessing where the location may be, the game will tell the players how far they are away from the actual location of the video. There is no score or map limit, so players are free to continue guessing and playing however long they want.

My Modified Version of City Guesser:

Players:

  • 2 Players

Rules:

  • At the start of the game, position the players so that Player 1 cannot look at the video and Player 2 can. Player 2 must give as much detailed information as possible to Player 1 about the video, however, Player 2 cannot make the guess about where they think the place may be. They can give suggestive guesses but ultimately, Player 1 makes the decision about where they think the place is.

Modifications/Setting Changes:

These are additional rules that the players can add to make the game more challenging

  • Limited Amount of Questions
  • Time Limit
  • The Player describing may not suggest any country
  • The Player describing may not say what language is spoke or shown in the video

Artist Statement

Throughout the process of forming an idea of appropriating a game, I was mainly focused creating ways to make an original game more frustrating, difficult, or unique. Yoko Ono’s piece, White Chess, really inspired me to somewhat appropriate a game where there was a loss of information. In Yoko Ono’s game, the lost of information was what game pieces the players control where if the players do not completely remember all of their piece’s positions, then this game essentially becomes impossible to play. Likewise, when appropriating my game, I realized that by taking away a player’s vision and hearing, my game creates the same type of challenge as White Chess in terms of a mental challenge where that player must constantly infer about the given information to formulate and achieve the goal of my game. Unlike Yoko Ono’s piece, the difficulty in mine comes from the coordination between players and whether the descriptive information correctly leads the other player to the destination or that information becomes too opinionated to the point where other player wrongly infers about the location. These types of interaction between players interests me where I believe in the idea that enjoyable or good friction within challenging games creates some sort of satisfaction or euphoric feeling when overcoming these hurdles. Although the players might not get the right location or be remotely close during their first attempt, after multiple attempts, the players would start to understand certain tips or tricks that would help each other, possibly forming some interesting way of communication exclusive to both of them, overcoming each obstacle until they finally have a guess that is close to the location. However, to constantly facilitate these challenges and feelings, I felt the need to create more modifications or settings to my games that would ultimately create more obstacles, which once again, create the sort of interactions that I would like to see in a my game.

Documentation:

Peers in my class playing my modified version of City Guesser.


One player is describing the location to the other player.

The player choosing the where they think the place may be.

The final result of the video’s location.

Appropriation: No Three in a Row-Xinyi Ren

by | Oct 21, 2021 | ,

This game was first inspired by Yoko Ono’s white chess. After seeing this work, I wanted to start with a board game, so I chose to learn from the simplest tic tac toe game. On the other hand, due to the central idea of “anti-art” of dada doctrine, I decided to make some reverse modifications to the core game mechanism of tic tac toe – but the finished product will still be a game, just as dada art is still art.

First, I expanded the chessboard from 3 * 3 to 5 * 5. The reason why tic tac toe is an easy and fast game is largely due to the size limit of the chessboard, and I want players to spend more time “hesitating”. Secondly, I modified the two core mechanisms of the game: how to proceed to the next step and how to win. In the process of the game, players should not only think about their next step but also think about how the other party will take the next step. The key is not how to control your own actions, but how to control your opponent’s actions. Finally, in the traditional tic tac toe, three in a row means victory, but in this game, it means failure. I think this is the most interesting part and can also bring the most novel experience to players: everyone will find ways to avoid the victory means they are used to.

 

Artwork #2: Musical Card Game

by | Oct 19, 2021 | ,

Instructions for this game (each player will go one at a time) :

  1. Shuffle your hand of 13 cards
  2. Draw the first three cards from the top to form a chord
    • If card is between 1-Q, the card’s note must be played in this chord
    • If the card is a King, you may select any note you would like to add to the chord
    • If the card is an Ace, you may replace the drawn chord with any chord you would like
      • Drawing an Ace immediately negates previously or future drawn cards for this chord
  3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 three times until you have your chord “progression”
  4. The player now has two minutes to create anything with the progression they have drawn
  5. All players will come together at the end of these two minutes to perform their composition to one another
  6. The players then decide on a winner

This musical game was greatly inspired by Takako Saito and her modifications to the game of chess. Pieces like her “Sound Chess” game got me to think about how I could manipulate traditional games into something that stimulates the senses. Similarly to that piece, I thought it would be a great challenge to incorporate something musical to a traditional game of cards. After having difficulty pairing instrumentation to an already existing game of cards, I decided it would be best to create a new one. I came up with this idea after sitting at my keyboard for a while and being stumped on where to start in terms of making a song. It then came to me that I could make a game where the deck of cards started the song for me. With this new random way of putting chords together, it is much easier to overcome writer’s block in a fun way.

Roommate playing this game:

Classmates playing this game:

My life

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Get a piece of paper

Get some crayons

Use one color to represent the mood of one day

Draw anything thing I like

Make sure draw on the same paper

Draw for a week

In “Grapefruit “, there are many pieces about painting. Yoko Ono tried to paint room, shadows or other things. My inspiration is color. I think people’s lives are colorful, blue is blue, happy is orange, irritable is red. Every day has its own color. Also, there are many songs use color to represent their mood. For example, there is a lyric talk about it in Taylor Swift’s cruel summer, which is “It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got”. School days may be boring, but they are definitely not colorless. From the color in my works, I can see my daily mood. The red part indicates that I must have had a bad day. Every day something affects my mood. I want to document my life in color, to prove that my life is not black and white. In order not to feel like a zombie during a Novel Coronavirus pandemic, it is important to keep track of your feelings. As a student, it’s easy to tell the difference between a school day and a weekend. From Monday to Friday. I feel like “my life sucks,” but then on the weekend it instantly becomes “love & peace.” The result is messy, but it’s also organized. The proportion of each color is about the same, and there will not be a picture of one color. T his is my life, too, and it doesn’t seem organized, but the proportions are just right. Drawing is really an amazing thing, and the colors are the same. People can do anything with drawing and use color to express any emotion they want to express. I think that’s what makes this assignment interesting.

Smoothie Piece – Xavier Meade-Kelly

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Smoothie Piece

Record everything you eat during a meal

Repeat this for every meal for three days

Gather together the foods on your list

Place all the foods inside a blender and blend.

Pour it out into a cup.

Take a sip

 

When I began to bounce ideas around for my score, I first looked to existing pieces for reference. Most of my favorite pieces could be executed by a single person, and the ones that really stuck out gave the performer nonsensical or uncomfortable instructions. My biggest inspiration was definitely Yoko Ono’s collection of scores called Grapefruit, which includes a number of works in this vein.

As I began to zero in on my idea, I realized that I wanted to involve food in my piece. Food is a constant in the human experience. Everyone eats food, everyone enjoys food, and everyone appreciates food. Even though food unifies us, it also sets us apart. Some people view food as a means for moral expression, choosing not to eat animal products or food produced by certain companies. Food also marks culture, with every region spawning a number of unique dishes. 

At the end I settled on blending together all the foods eaten for three days into a single smoothie and taking a sip. I thought it would be interesting to combine all the different things I’ve eaten into one substance, and to combine all of the tastes I’d experienced into a single sensation. In a weird way the container I kept the smoothie in mirrored my stomach, as both essentially contain the same things.

On my third day I began to gather together all of the foods on my list. At the end of the day I blended them all together and placed the smoothie into a refrigerator. I presented my score in class by reading out the instructions, and taking a sip in front of everyone. One Idea I had was to plan out all of my meals so that the smoothie would taste good, but I decided to just eat what I normally eat: steak, salads, macaroni, and other foods were all blended together into one bizarre amalgamation. When I finally tasted my creation, I regretted that decision, as it tasted so very bad, so bad that I felt a little sick for a few hours. 

Scott Pignataro: Artwork #1 – Score: Adapt

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

Score:

Find a place with a table and chair

Take out your work and place it on your chair;

Then sit on the table.

Start Working.

Struggle.

Adapt.

Artist Statement:

This Score was inspired by a lot of things but many by my roommates. One day I came home and all my roommates were working so diligently at our dining room table. Watching them work made me think about how people often do not think about how important something is in our daily life. I do not often think about how useful a chair and table are but watching my roommate struggle to get any work done while sitting on the table really shows how underappreciated some things are. I was also inspired by the idea of using things in a way they are not intended to be used. When you use something in a way it’s not intended it can have really fun and humorous results. In the case of my score my roommate had a blast making jokes and laughing about the different techniques that could be used to be more efficient. The score that inspired me the most was, Tape Piece III. The score was simple, yet in my opinion very deep. Taking something like an audio tape and using it as a bow for a present or a gift wrapper, as suggested in the score, was really fascinating to me. Most people would never think to use a tape of audio for anything besides listening but Ono had come up with such a unique use for it and I found that really inspirational for my own score.  Seeing how people adapted to the challenge of sitting on a table while having their work on a chair is super interesting. One of my roommates thought it would be easier to work while on his stomach; after switching positions he found, at least for him, it was easier to get work done. I wish I could have had more people try out my score so see different adaptations.

 

 

 

 

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Score: Solve the Puzzle

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Find 

I walk around school grounds, 

trying to get my standing,

there are loopy roads and roundabouts,

A little shop called wall-e’s?

 

It’s all very confusing this property I’m around,

Seems like there’s an overpass,

In the middle of the property,

Purple hues all around it

 

Kids all around waiting

To be let into this hostel

As a supervisor swipes

And off they go 

 

My intention in creating this score was to create a kind of puzzle in a puzzle effect. You as the reader, are trying to figure out what specific place the score is referring to in a treasure hunt like manner. As a child growing up, I’ve always been a fan of puzzles. Every game I am fond of has some sort of puzzle element involved in it. I even remember being 10 going to restaurants and my parents giving me sudoku puzzles to keep me distracted. I think this lends itself to this score, I love the idea that someone is reading it in passing and thinking about it as they walk around campus.

The piece was inspired by Yoko Ono’s TRUTH/FALSE in Grapefruit. It sounds like the list of things she’s trying the readers to figure out what’s true and false. But the more you read the more you find similar topics, hidden messages. “All fruits are related species of banana, which was the first fruit in existence. The Bible lied about the apple because they felt mentioning the word banana was too undignified.”  It seems like simple commentary but there is some sort of distaste that Yoko was trying to convey! My score didn’t end up being as deep but used the hidden message idea to make a puzzle!

 

Documentation:

Here I have attached an image of the “bridge” hallway connecting both halfs of this building. The purple hues, the loopy roads and then finally the building in question in the score is West Village F

 

Xuanshuo (Stone) Zhang – Weather Piece

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Score:

Check the weather forecast on your phone

Check the percentage for rain

If the percentage is under 7, pick a 20-sided die

If the percentage is under 13, pick a 10-sided die

If the percentage is under 20, pick a 6-sided die

If the percentage is under 30, pick a 4-sided die

If the percentage is over 30, flip a coin

If the percentage is over 75, stay home

Roll the dice

If the roll is higher than one or the coin lands on heads, proceed with your day

If not, stay home

 

 

Artist Statement:

As a wannabe game designer, I always look for ways to make my life fun. I think that randomness can usually be a pretty fun aspect. As someone who has difficulties making choices, I would sometimes use methods such as flipping a coin or rolling a dice decide whether or not I would do an action, not unlike in a table-top role-playing game. One of the things that we do most regularly is check the weather report to see if we would want to participate in any outdoor activities. Part of the scores that I’ve read including Yuki Ono’s works and works in the archives of the blog pages that interests me is that some of them are really simple instructions and based on things we do mundanely. I wanted to create my score based on something we do regularly and incorporate randomness to make it fun. So I decided to incorporate both of those elements, something I do regularly and random element that is common from games. I ended up deciding on weather, because it is one of the things that my life depends on, and it is easily associated with probability. For the randomness part I chose dices and coin flip because they are pretty easily accessible. One of the goals of my score is that it should be something that is easy to do, so someone might want to just do it for a bit of fun one day. Personally, among the scores I read either in class or as homework, the ones that are doable and easy to do strikes with me the most, because being able to participate in them helps me understand them a bit more. Some of the examples are Clock piece, and Wood Piece, which involves actions that I would sometimes do (except not with wood). When combining what I want to put into my score and the concept of these scores as explicit instructions, I decided to specify what to use to decide the probability for each precipitation range closest to representing the probability of the dices. My score does not have any deeper meaning, but I hope it is something that people would find at least a bit fun.

 

Documentation:

Xinyi Ren Score: Trace

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

Trace

Turn on your computer

Fix a piece of paper on the mouse pad

Tape a pen to the mouse

Start playing games

Change the paper or stop when you want to stop

Observe the path of your mouse movement while playing the game recorded on the paper

 

Artist Statement

My inspiration comes from Yoko Ono’s grapefruit. The book’s content is simple and straightforward, but readers can feel a kind of romance and sincerity. These “Poems” are discovered from every corner of life, and even some unobtrusive things can be given important significance, which makes me choose to observe one of my most common things in life from an unnoticed angle. So I began to observe the computer keyboard and mouse because these are the props I use every day. After a long time of use, I found that several commonly used keys on my keyboard were obviously worn out, but I usually don’t notice that I often use them during play.

The results of these almost unconscious behaviors may be more evident than I thought. I want to use a visual way to record the use of the mouse. People will find that the mode of mouse movement in different game activities is also different, and there is a significant gap in the length and density of lines presented by high DPI and low DPI settings. Even if you play the same game on the same device, results can vary from person to person. At the same time, I think this will also change the behavior of “playing video games,” from short-term preservation to long-term preservation, from personal experience to an art form that others can understand.

When I was doing this score, it gave me a new understanding of my subconscious actions. When I was fully focused on the game, my actions were not what I thought they would be afterward. I originally thought that the moving track of the mouse should be smooth and coherent, but in fact, most of the turning points are stiff and sudden. At the same time, in the game, I pause the mouse in several specific areas more frequently than I thought. When I perform this score on the same game again after a period of time, the pictures composed of these separate and broken lines look very similar to the last time. From this I sensed a pattern hidden beneath the randomness, which is a very wonderful experience.