Month: October 2024

Final Game Instructions (2 Players):

Get Random Words:

• Open up on this computer https://wheelofnames.com/ to pick your words (words should already be there)
• Give both players 10-15 seconds to scan the list of possible objects before starting.

Roles:

• Choose one player to be the Director and the other to be the Builder (switch roles each round).

Gameplay:

• The Director randomly spins the wheel of names and writes down the object without showing it to the Builder.
• The Director gives instructions on how to build the object in Minecraft, but they can’t say what the object is.
  • Example: The Director can say “Build a tall wall with stone blocks” or “fill in that hole with water” but not “Build a house” or “Make a pond.”
• The Director can make 1-2 clarifications per instruction to specify how to perform the action if the builder is not performing the action as the Director envisioned.
  • Example: “Build a wall horizontally instead of vertically”
  • This does not mean you can add more actions to your instruction. For example you cannot say “Break the floor and replace it with stone”
• The Builder follows the instructions and guesses what they are building while they construct it, however, they are limited to 3 guesses for every instruction the Director gives.

Scoring:

• Count how many instructions the Director gives.
• The goal is to guess the object with the fewest instructions possible.

Switch & Repeat:

• After the round, discard the object and pick a new one.
• Switch roles and repeat the process.

End of the Game:

• The lowest amount of instructions given is your teams high score, go brag about it or something

Playtest #1 Notes:

On my first playtest, my two roommates swiftly resolved the game because initially Players created the prompt cards and thus they could easily guess what the generated words are after a very few amount of instructions as they had a hand in creating them. 

Playtest #2 Notes:

The second playtest went better as I changed the rules to allow for a randomly generated prompt that the director got through a website. However, as the game progressed it became clear that the Builder often misinterpreted the directions in unexpected ways and guessed wildly complex objects, leading to the game dragging on for a while. The players were also annoyed by the lack of a mouse, forcing them to play on a trackpad which is difficult in its own right. From this playtest I realized the following changes were necessary.

1. The director should be allowed to give instructions as a Clause, not to many clarifying questions.
2. Let both players have 10 seconds to scan the list before starting to reduce rounds taken and wildness of guesses.
3. The game should be played with a mouse.

Summary:

My work was inspired by how much Minecraft has been appropriated and turned into different games by many fans of the game. I was also inspired by pictionary, which in itself is a game that takes objects and appropriates them into an artist’s interpretation. I also wanted to take some inspiration from the Dada movements by twisting this version of Pictionary, ensuring the artist in charge of drawing is not the one in control of the direction they’re given leading to the game that was made.

StickPin is a casual mobile game that focuses on quick reflexes and precision. The gameplay involves a mechanic known as literally “stick the pin in the gap”, where players must strategically place pins onto a rotating circle without letting them touch other pins. The challenge intensifies as the circle speeds up, testing the player’s reaction time and accuracy.

My game is based on the traditional *StickPin* game design, where the gameplay and mechanics are similar. The player clicks the left mouse button to stick a pin into a rotating circle, and the objective is to avoid sticking the pin onto an already placed pin. However, in my version, the central circle has been replaced with a whale, and the pins are now harpoons. After the player throws five harpoons, the previously stationary whale starts to struggle, and as more harpoons are thrown, the whale struggles even more. I hope that at this point, the player realizes they are no longer playing a simple relaxing game. With technological advancement, human hunting of whales has become as easy as a player clicking the mouse to throw a harpoon, but the immense suffering inflicted on these intelligent and spiritual creatures is overwhelming. The cost of hunting is far outweighed by the damage it causes, and this is what I want players to take away from the game.

Playtest & Iteration

Playtest 1

At first, I designed the game as a Mario version of *StickPin*. While it looked novel and didn’t align with traditional expectations for a Mario series game, I didn’t feel that it had any meaning beyond being “fun,” which wasn’t what I wanted. So, I redesigned the game’s elements and initially replaced the Mario theme with whales and harpoons. The logos for the whale and harpoon, as well as the ocean background, all came from the *China Whale and Dolphin Conservation Association*.

Playtest 2  

I received a lot of constructive feedback, such as the message I wanted to convey about whale conservation wasn’t effectively communicated. So, I reflected on this and considered several possible ways to enhance the impact of the game.

Playtest 3  

In this test, I added a new animation effect: after the player throws five harpoons, the previously stationary whale starts to struggle, and the more harpoons thrown, the more violently the whale struggles. This mechanism added a stronger hint toward the game’s message, and it received the best feedback from players, who thought it was the most effective version.

This version effectively merges gameplay with a deeper message about whale conservation, making it a meaningful experience for the player.

By Ruby Harkness

Geolistenr:

Geolistenr is based on the well known game Geoguessr. Geolistenr acts the same as Geoguessr in the sense that the player is trying to figure out where in the world they are. Instead of google earth images, Geolistenr uses 10 second audio clips from around the world. The player will hear 5 different audio clips and attempt to match each clip to a country in a word bank. 

How to play: 

The Idea: Geoguessr with audio clips

• Geolistener can be played with as many people as you want
• One person acts as the game master, and uses the spreadsheet to access audio clips 
• The game master will choose 5 audio clips coming from 5 different countries
• They will write sound 1, sound 2, sound 3, sound 4, sound 5 next to a list of the 5 country names that go along with the sounds  (the game master should shuffle the countries around so they do not line up with the sounds) (see playtest image below) 
• The game master will then play each sound for 10 seconds, and the player(s) will try to match the sound up with the country 
• When played with more than two people, players are allowed to collaborate and talk about where they think each sound is from 
• The player(s) win if they get all of the countries correct 
• The spreadsheet is pictured below and shows how the game master keeps track of the sounds and countries 

Artists Note: 

Appropriation is using something someone else made to create something new. Geoguessr is a game in which the player is dropped into a random location on Google Earth and asked to decipher where they are based purely on their surroundings. I think this game is heavily based on appropriation, and uses maps, or Google Earth, to create a very enjoyable game. I thought it might be interesting to take a game based on appropriation and appropriate it further. (I also just enjoy playing Geoguessr.) 

I wanted to take appropriation of maps in a different direction and utilize sound as the main recognizer. It is based on DADA performance work. Before taking a deeper look into it, I was under the impression that DADA was overall a visual art movement. I have since learned about the intersection of visual and audio performance that was utilized in DADA after learning about Sophie Tauber and Hugo Ball’s collaborative performance project. While Ball performed a sound poem, Tauber danced. I thought this was interesting, and wanted to explore sound as a DADA theme. The original idea was for the game master to say outloud the name of a city and have the rest of the players guess what country it was in, but during a critique someone suggested using real audio from different places, and so I went digging for a source of audio clips. Finding the sounds was one of the most difficult parts of creating the game, but I ended up appropriating an artistic project titled “Cities and Memory.” This site is a project based on providing different sounds in different places all over the world. I went through and hand picked 25 sounds I thought would provide enough information that the player(s) may be able to tell where they are, but I didn’t want to make it obvious. In a perfect world, I would find a way to automate this process, but for now 25 sounds leaves enough room for 5 play-throughs of the game. 

I did three play tests of the game, one with a game master and one player, one with a game master and 2 players, and one with a game master and around ten players. The first play test done in class with one player was super fun, and it was interesting to see what the player thought of the sounds and how they interpreted what they were hearing. With two players, discussion was a big aspect of the game, and the collaboration between the players as they tried to figure it out was interesting to see. The final playthrough, done with the entire class was even more interesting, and made the game a lot more time consuming, with people going back and forth between answers throughout the entire playthrough. After much discussion, they eventually ended up getting all the sounds correct. It was interesting to see what assumptions the players made about places based on audio, and how language could either help or hurt them. Most of the audio clips I played utilized language, and watching the players try to decipher which language was being spoken and where it is commonly spoken was very intriguing. It was mentioned in a play through that this game could also provide a commentary on colonialism, and how that has altered the way language has evolved in different places. This is an idea I think the game could really utilize, and it could definitely be explored further with different game modes and groups of countries. If this game does anything, I think it provides players a bit more knowledge of the world through having to solve a puzzle. I am very interested in the world, and spent a lot of time lurking on “Cities and Memory,”  It is linked below if you would like to check it out. I love Geoguessr and in the future want to expand Geolistenr even more by adding more countries and sounds to the reference sheet.

Spreadsheet Link

Cities and Memory Link

Playtest and Spreadsheet Images: