Textbased Game (title still pending)

is a text based “adventure” game that takes place within a computer terminal that is stylised to be reminiscent of the terminals in Fallout.

During the game, the player will get to learn about the person that they’re communicating with and eventually learn about themselves. Ultimately the goal is to create an emotion experience in which the players learn about their characters and the world their character exists in.

Early prototype video

Credit:

Programming and Visual Design: Anish Dhesikan

Writing and Visual Design: Grant Bickelhaupt

Artist Statement:

This game is my third digital game I’ve attempted and I went into it with fairly high hopes. What I got out of it was satisfying to say the least. Anish and I worked together on this game for this class so that we could use our time to work on a game that we’d like to take beyond a class. During the process we went through a series of prototypes, mostly dealing with the difficulty of elegantly building the game so that implementation of the writing and potential background effects can take place. The initial narrative is something that I’m not overly thrilled with, but it was a solid attempt and is something I intend to be heavily rewriting in the near future.

I’ve been interested in writing a game for a long time and my fascination with Artificial Intelligence, as well as with the concept of  the Singularity, have made me want to tackle the idea of an AI making its first steps to understanding humanity through the eyes of a machine. I think that in the modern context, with the rapidly developing “intelligence” of machines, it’s rapidly becoming a more and more relevant subject to explore.

Brenda Romero’s art played the largest role in inspiration for me. I wanted to create a game that, to people familiar with the topic, it’d be fairly recognisable to them, while to those not familiar with the subject, they might not realise it until the end. I was aiming to create a game where, like hers, the player will have to get to a major point in the game before they find out the truth behind their role. From then on, at least in the build I’m working on beyond the final one I showed in class, I want to continue the game past discovering the origins of your character and allow the player to decide how they interpret that information and how they want to let that affect their actions.

Download link – For mobile devices

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wz6rraw3x4o1vgi/AITextBasedGame.apk?dl=0

Friendly Fitness!

Materials:

A copy of The Division

Rules:

Participants must encourage fitness and friendliness under all circumstances in the PVP zone of the game The Division.

Participants must never harm another player.

Participants must perform jumping jacks and encourage other players to join in, either through voice or text chat.

Participants must encourage fitness until they are either killed by the players or the players escape.

Artist Statement:

So after discovering that you can use emotes to interact with players in The Division, I realized that there are things I’d much rather do in this 3rd person shooter than shoot bullet sponges.  I wanted to encourage players to stop shooting for even just a moment to do something stupid with some other players instead of fighting the bland and boring NPCs.  I, with the assistance of my friend David Yue (Australian Dude) and Colton Brooks (MattiasNilsson5), took to the PVP zone of the game where we would relentlessly pursue players and encourage them to do jumping jacks with us. My inspiration came from Dadaism and it’s mockery of war. Myself and my participants accepted the futility of fighting and tried to instill that on others, by never giving up in our pursuit of physical fitness. Even when being shot at by NPCs and other players we would continue our efforts.

Documentation:

While trying to secure some gear he found, I found him and approached him. He did the emote for “surrender” and waited patiently until I stopped doing jumping jacks.

While being as obtrusive as possible, players simply ignored us and went about their business.

Chasing after the group of players from earlier.

In the middle of a warzone I danced next to this person while asking them to join in. They didn’t.

The same group, still doing their best to ignore us. One of them noticed my username and started giggling.

We found a straggler and cornered him while doing jumping jacks. He joined in after a few seconds.

What it looks like to be hit with a flashbang mid-jumping jack.

Diplomatic Deathmatch

Starting Materials:

Nerf Guns

A deck of 52 playing cards

Index Cards (for rules)

Rules

1. Four players sit around a table with a deck of cards and two guns
2. Each player draws a card and does not show it to other players
   1. Diamonds = Russia
   2. Hearts = France
   3. Spades = Germany
   4. Clubs = America
3. Each suit has its own win conditions
   1. Diamonds = Win if Germany and America are killed
   2. Hearts = Win if they’re the first to be killed or are the last to survive with Russia or America. If there are more than one French players and one is first to be killed, only they win.
   3. Spades = Win if all non-Germans are killed
   4. Clubs = Win if Germany and then Russia are killed
4. If a player wants to reveal who they are without taking the gun, all other players must agree to reveal who they are as well.
5. If a player wants to kill another player, they must reveal their card before taking the gun.
   1. If a player reveals their card and goes for a gun, another player may go for the gun if they plan to shoot the revealed player, and may flip their card after shooting.
6. A player may only shoot once before returning the gun to the table.
7. If a player shoots an ally, they lose.
   1. Russia may ignore this rule.

Documentation

Artist Statement

This version of the game is wholly very similar to the original game that I put out, but that’s because I was really happy with what I wound up creating. What I did change were some of the rules, adding a few more factors into how the game can evolve during play. I really liked the idea of games like Werewolf or Mafia where there’s the aspect of blind play and guesswork involved, as well as intuition and just raw luck. So, I wanted to create a more kinetic and physical version of that involving some of the objects laying around my room. From finding my old nerf guns to figuring out a good way to use a deck of cards, I was immediately drawn to warfare and decided that I wanted to adapt that in a fun way while also trying to use the Dada views of conflict. What happened was that I wound up with a game where every round a room of diplomats are trying to figure out alliances with everyone in the room before having a frantic shootout with whomever they think are their enemies. I think that my idea embraces the idea of Dadaism where ultimately most of the conflict players will be having will be ultimately futile because they’re always just as likely to kill an ally as they are their enemy and ultimately the best way to play the game is to always agree at the start to reveal who everyone is.

Sever

• Take the hand of someone close to you.
• Tell them them the worst thought you’ve ever had about them.
• Tell them that you love them.
• Walk away.

Heart

Reiteration of Sever

• Take their hand
• Share yourself with them
• See if they share themselves with you
• Embrace them if they share, leave them if they don’t.

Result of me doing the score and “embracing” my teammates:

I applied Heart to the team members of Team Giant at the Global Game Jam, using the score as an excuse to go outside of my comfort zone while interacting with these people who I mostly haven’t met. Opening up to them and sharing with them my areas of inexpertise, wound up with them sharing with me their own skills and along the way I gained some friends thought it as well. They shared their skills with me, teaching me some animation tricks, helping me design and create portions of the game I wouldn’t have necessarily have worked on otherwise. The video and game below are the product of my application of my score.

https://teamgiant.itch.io/valley-of-the-giant

Artist Statement

Relationships can be difficult, frustrating, and emotional. I wanted to create a score that recreates the lows of a relationship, because of how often people tend to bottle things up and how in arguments it’s not uncommon for someone to try to be as hurtful as possible before leaving the argument. I wanted to circumvent the entire argument altogether and immediately get to the finisher; the part that’s supposed to sting.

I liked the initial score. Performing it is not meant to be fun and there isn’t really a way to enjoy it when you perform it with someone you’re intimate with. The more you know someone, the bigger the blow you’ll be able to make often times. It becomes less a game and more a jackhammer to the foundation of your relationship. I love the intensity of it.  To me, the game is fun, but it isn’t enjoyable. It’s as excruciating as it is exhilarating.

But, after sharing the score with the class there was a split from some of the thoughts I heard. Some liked the score, some thought it was too harsh. Understandable. Who wants to damage a friendship over performance art after all? So, I tried removing the necessity for it to be harsh and kind of cruel and took a step towards making it more intimate. Now, instead of abandoning your partner regardless of what their response is, you can now embrace them if they share themselves with you. The score is now  one for connection and not severance.

And that’s pretty neat too.