Experimental Game Design

KamishBhai

Artwork #4: Alta Customs

by | Dec 7, 2017 | , ,

Artwork #4: Alta Customs

V3 (Final Version)

You have a starting line that everyone starts off at, and your ultimate goal is to make it to the end of the board with a certain amount of points. Points are either accumulated from actions, stolen from other players, or obtained at the end of the board depending on how quickly you make it there (every turn, the end of the board gives you 1 less point, starting from like 20 points or something). Every turn, you roll 1D6 to move, and land on either a blank space or an action space. The action space can either a) give you an action card that you can use at any time in the game or b) immediately cause you to take a certain action, such as moving forwards/backwards spaces, sending you on a different path, causing ‘conflict’ or ‘benefits’ (point -/+), etc. This is decided by rolling the dice a second time and depending on whether you roll a 1-4 or a 5-6  decides if you draw an immediate action space (b) or an action card (b) .

Some of the actions can be negated or enhanced based on your species, or any action cards you have in your hand that essentially act as equip cards (green card, family members, previous favors you can cash in on). However, the main problem in the game is this: once one person reaches the end of the map, each remaining player has 1 more turn to make it to the end of the map before the ferry departs for the new land, regardless of how many points the player has. You must end the game with at least 20 points to immigrate, and depending on how many points you end up with decides what place you have in society. 20-29: Working Class. 30-35: Middle Class. 36-40: Upper Class.

So the game overall is more so about a few things: 1) how immigration isn’t fair sometimes even if you do all of the right things (the ferry departing without you on it) 2) how selfish or selfless people can be when you all face hardships together (whether you wait to go to the end so that more people can make it, at the expense of guaranteed points, and also whether or not you steal points from people or intentionally sabotage them) and 3) how not everyone has the same path to success (species, differrent actions and how they affect you, etc.)

 

I actually made this model after multiple different variations, each with a whole rules list. The second version I made was very different, and the third one is most similar to the first, but is more straightforward and makes more sense. I will only post the second and third versions as they aren’t as in detail as my first (the original).

Also, Original Board:

Games Final V2

There are going to be resource bars called criminality, happiness, and anger. You must have less than 2 anger, less than 2 criminality, and more than 2 happiness to successfully enter Alta. You start with 2 anger, 0 criminality, and 2 happiness. The ratio of what “day” it is is affected by you criminality (You add your criminality by the day, which determines what action will occur). During the day cycle, Dragonborn and Bobblemen roll D6 while Mansepos and Spectres roll D3, reverse in night cycle, which rotates every 3 turns. After 6 turns, the days cycle. On day 3, all rolls are halved in value, rounding up. Each card has a different choice on them and cause different effects to your different resources, then I had a few cards mapped out. 

Games Final V3 (as well as the cards included)

 

Species:

Mansepos

-Start with 20 points.

-All immediate card effects (or cards against you) are doubled, regardless of negative or positive effects.

Sommiticus

-Start with 15 points.

-Start with a D5 (roll a D6 and subtract 1)

-They can use one action card twice.

Spectres

-Start with 10 points

-All point losses are halved.

Frashers

-Start with 10 points

-Start with a D5 (roll a D6 and subtract 1)

-Passively gain 1 point per turn

Purchasing Store: You can use your points to give you an advantage in the game. Abilities can only be purchased at the beginning of the game.

Dice Plus: Increase your dics roll by 1 permanently. 15 points.

Action Plus: Purchase a random action card. 5 points.

Steal Plus: Gives you a chance to steal points from other players based on a double dice roll. 5 points.

Anti-Steal: Prevents a single player from stealing points from you for that turn.

Action spaces (1-4):
Move forward 1/2/3 spaces (Find money on the ground, find a fellow immigrant from your country, get help from a kind immigration officer)

Move backwards 1/2/3 spaces (Lose money, lose your immigration papers, get caught up at an immigration checkpoint)

Take a side path
Gain 1/2/3 points (do a good deed, do a great deed, do an amazing deed)
Lose 1/2/3 points (do a bad deed, do a worse deed, do a terrible deed)
Take 1 point from every other player (cause distrust amongst all other species)
Give 2 points to the player w/ the least amount of points (help a poor immigrant out)
Give 2 points to the player w/ the most amount of points (get strong-armed by a gang of immigrants)
If you have less than 10 points, gain 2 points (poor man’s luck)
If you have less than 10 points, lose 1 point (poor man’s misery)

If you have less than 10 points, move back 3 spaces (detained simply for being poor)

If you have more than 20 points, give 1 of your points to every other player (sharing the wealth/knowledge)

If you have more than 20 points, lose 5 points (get too greedy)

If you have more than 20 points, move forward 5 spaces (use your status to cut the line)

 

Action cards (5-6):

Take 4 points from a player; give yourself two points and give another player two points (petty thieving scheme)

Move forward either 1, 2, or 3 spaces (read the newspaper, able to predict events)

Send any other player back 3 spaces (plant a false flag on another player)

Move any other player forward 3 spaces (send helpful information to another player)

Obtain a green card (allows you to negate any 1 negative points action against you)

Obtain a yellow card (allows you to negate any 1 movement action you would have to take otherwise)

Obtain a red card (if you are on the same space as another player, you can steal half of their points)

Switch places with another player

Steal 2 points from every player you pass this turn

Push each player that you pass this turn back 1 space

All players with more than 20 points lose 5 points or get pushed back to 20 points, whichever happens first

All players with less than 10 points gain 2 points or get pushed to 10 points, whichever happens first

Landing on a colored space allows you to roll again. This roll determines if you pick from the Action Card pile, or the Action Space pile.

 

I feel that my reason for choosing/creating a piece such as this is to bring awareness to the issue of discrimination against immigration and against immigrants in general in a game-like way. I want it to cause a powerful feeling, like with the man who posted the names of the people who died in the war in the military war game and the feelings those around him felt. I want to invoke a feeling of unfairness in just luck and who you are, things you can do nothing to change. I wanted to do immigration because I am a Muslim, and over the past months, Muslim immigrants have been getting a lot of trouble for either being a Muslim or just having a Muslim name without even being Muslim. Even someone with a long beard would be pulled aside just because they might have some Pakistani features. I modeled different species after different people, like how the Mansepos have a major advantage in which they start with the most points and the fact that every point or space they move/gain is doubled and how the Frashers start with the lowest points and start with a D5 instead of a D6,.

Show & Tell- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

by | Nov 15, 2017 |

This first trailer gives a very brief look at the game but sets up a quick but haunting atmosphere and shows a lot of Senua’s inner thoughts and what she hears. The second trailer is much more in-depth and sets up the atmosphere in a deeper and heavier manner, and explains the reason for her journey.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a cinematic-esque horror adventure/action video game where the main character, Senua, embarks on a personal journey through a  demonic underworld made up of her manifestations of reality and her mind. It is a direct look (for a gamer) into the realm of psychosis and other mental disorders as the biggest part of the game is the visuals and the atmosphere it provides. It gives a very haunting atmosphere as if there are always voices around you, clamoring. There is always something there, you see things that aren’t. It is quite disorienting and can be very brutal, especially when the story is combined with this use of mental illness. The game was actually developed in conjunction with neuroscientists and a few diagnosed as psychotic to generate as real as a world as possible built around it.

This is a very radical style of game as well as a very creative approach. It takes a different approach from the traditional style of game which tends to not go near more concrete science or mental related things. This one embraces it wholeheartedly and builds a world around mental illness. This game is a III game (triple I) and so there has been a lot of effort put into this game to portray that feeling of paranoia and fear, simply into the visuals and the atmosphere. Also, the voices that constantly talk to your head (as surround sound) helps to add more to this frightening experience.

 

Intervention: Learning of Legends

by | Nov 10, 2017 | , ,

League of Legends is a very competitive game that used to revolve around creativity and fun. The competitive aspect often breeds much toxicity, My intervention initially went through multiple phases. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to use a website called “Ultimate Bravery” (a website that randomizes the items you should buy, as well as what skill to make more powerful first, along with a  random character) and I wanted to see if I was able to build a playstyle around it, where I could take it. I wanted to see if I could affect the game itself through a rather awkward build that may or may not work. I realized, though, after doing THIS:

                                                       Kills/Deaths/Assists

It was not going to work. I was too inexperienced as a player to be able to adapt to such randomness in a build. Also, it was not fun. I then realized that League is SUPPOSED to be fun. This made me decide I wanted to do something in ranked (because ranked usually isn’t fun). So, with some suggestions from a friend, I decided that, instead of intervening with a random build into a normal game to test my capabilities of making it work, I decided that I would instead intervene into ranked. Ranked is essentially the place where serious people go to play, to test their skills against others. What I would have done normally would be very detrimental to other, but this is the pre-season, aka before the actual season where ranked counts immensely.

I had a friend help me out, and we essentially swapped roles. Before the game, we had to teach to each other how to play our respective roles/champions. I played jungle and he played ADC. I sometimes play jungle, but I almost never play Shaco, one of his favorite champs. So he gave me a detailed explanation of what I should, what to build, what runes to take, and then we played. I did the same with him. I actually only followed half of what he said, because I wanted to let my creativity to flow a little. The reason I consider this is an intervention is because ranked is a place where you take your experienced champions and playstyles to put them up against others. What we are doing directly refuting this because we are taking our unexperienced champions and pitting them against others. It did not go well at first, as seen by the next image:

After the next few games, though, I eventually got the hang of it.

But even while playing, my friend was constantly giving me tips on where to go, what I should be focusing on, etc. The goal of this intervention was to show the ranked mentality that could be screwed up (please never do this during the actual season).  I was also not expecting that last score. Way higher than I initially expected. I wanted to test how my learning and adapting skills faired against those either experience.

Inspiration

My inspiration was taken from the Jejune Institute and video games. One aspect of what the Institute did was is that it essentially tried to take the seriousness and turn some of it into an enjoyable fairy tale, and also how they had to learn and adapt to everything on the fly.  I wanted to do the same with League, especially the Ranked aspect, where most of the toxicity and hate resides. By having a person learn a champion on the fly, it allows a lot more creativity as well as the partner giving some direction on where to direct that creativity.  But please do not do this in ranked during the season. You will most likely get banned.

I also took the ideas of intervening in the serious aspect of the video game, similar to the man who intervened in the game created by the military to recruit soldiers where he wrote the names of soldiers who died in the war. Mine was supposed to be the opposite where you can have more fun while learning on the fly in a serious environment than adding serious content to a “fun” environment.

Favorite Indie Game: Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+

by | Nov 7, 2017 |

Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+

Image result for binding of isaac afterbirth plusThe Binding of Isaac is a  is an indie roguelike video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl and was released for Windows in 2011, but was then ported to other software and consoles, such as OS X, Linux, and the Nintendo Switch. The fanbase for this game is quite big, especially with a steady release of new DLC content. The Switch version comes with all the latest DLC content, including Afterbirth+. This game has procedurally generated levels, so you will never play the same map twice, and the item drops are random as well.

Often the items combine is creative ways, giving new and inventive power-ups and causing some pretty wacky combinations. Plus, these items often deform Isaac, and it is rather weird how he changed due to the items. The more you play the game, the more items are unlocked, and the story itself take a long time to unravel, but it is a rather dark story, especially when you realize Isaac’s weapon starts off as his own tears.

After you beat certain bosses a few times, you can progress past them, unlock new bosses and items, and even unlock new characters that each have their own abilities. Beating the game with these new characters unlocks even more content. The game is endless and packed to the brim with content. And if you ever, SOMEHOW, get bored of it, the PC version is able to install mods which adds new items or even new characters into the game.

Gameplay Clip:

1:15

11:44

 

Final Iteration of Appropriation: MAD Wars

by | Oct 24, 2017 |

Appropriation Art: M.A.D. Wars

2-4 players

This game takes War (the card game) and adds some twists and new rules to it.

Materials:

  • 2-4 decks of cards, evenly mixed together
  • Nukes (anything to represent a counter, preferably in an atomic bomb-style shape)
  • 2-4 sets of rows of 3 circles each (Places to put your dormant Nukes)

Rules:

  1. Every player chooses a power (either from ALLIES or AXIS) and that skill is applied to them for the entire game.
  3. Every player is evenly dealt the combined decks of cards (modified for Germany due to country effect).
  4. Every player starts with 3 Nukes*.
    1. If a player’s total Nuke amount dips below 3 (modified for Italy because of country effect), Radiation Poisoning** activates.
  5. Players proceed to play a “normal” game of War.
  6. After a declared “war” has ended, the winning side is given 2 options he can either give the cards to the enemy and steal a Nuke from them or take the cards for himself.
  7. All destroyed cards are sent to the Graveyard.
  8. The game is complete when only one player is left with cards in his deck.

*Nukes allow a player to destroy all enemy cards currently on the board and allows you to regain the card you just played. They are a one time use.

Nukes can be activated at any time, including right after a “war” is over after the winner has been decided, preventing the winner from taking the spoils. But if used during a “war,” all cards on the board are destroyed.

**CHOOSE A TYPE OF RADIATION POISONING PER GAME

Fatal Radiation Poisoning (For shorter games)

Activates on a per turn basis. A player gains +1 Radiation Poisoning for every Nuke used that places their total Nuke count under 3. Players must discard the top card of their deck before every turn for every Radiation Poisoning they have.

Vengence Radiation Poisoning 2 (For longer games)

Activates on a per turn basis. A player gains +1 Radiation Poisoning for every Nuke used that places their total Nuke count under 3. The player must place an additional card on the field underneath another card depending on how much Radiation Poisoning they have, but only the first card seen counts. For example, a player has +1 Radiation Poisoning. Every turn, he draws two cards from the deck and places them face up, with the first card hidden by the second. Only the card that can be seen, aka the second card, counts. The winner then takes all the cards on the field, like in normal war.

Ex. A player has 2 Nukes. He has +1 Radiation poisoning.

Ex. A player has 0 Nukes. He has +3 Radiation poisoning.

TIPS: It is better to try out the game without using the countries to get a feel for the game first.

Allies v. Axis

ALLIES

USA– Gains 1 Nuke every 20 turns

USSR– Can negate a Nuke (once for every enemy)

Great Britain– Can activate a Nuke effect without using a Nuke once a game (Dresden)

France– Gets 2 Jokers, which essentially can be any card France wants it to be (wild card).

AXIS

Germany– Starts with 10 more cards than everyone else.

Japan– Can declare “Kamikaze War” at any time, limited to 2, which is normal “war” except the resulting cards placed will always be destroyed and sent to the Graveyard. The winning side of the “war” always steals a Nuke from the loser.

Italy– The Radiation Poisoning minimum starts at 2.

Inspiration:

My inspiration for choosing this game was because I felt I was never good at building things. I thought that I could take a card game, and turn it into something different. War has been a game I have played ever since elementary school, and so I wanted to take this game and put a spin on it. I also took inspiration from the chess board idea that involves pouring red paint on the dead chess pieces. Chess is a game mimicking war, so why can’t the dead from war also be mimicked. I wanted to make the card game War similar to this, where an aspect not included in the original game is implemented from a realistic war standpoint. I added the idea that you can use a nuke to destroy a battlefield, but your enemies also have the power to do the same.

Meaning Behind the Game:

This game has a very similar meaning to the appropriated game of chess, specifically Yoko Ono’s “White Chess” version. In Ono’s piece, you cannot tell who is friend or foe. In my piece/game, it borrows the idea of chaos between friend and foe and ends up hurting both. The reason I chose this game was that the world of Dada came into being during the time of War, where there were much chaos and destruction.  The world was filled with so much revenge reasoning, like where the enemies strike, so you strike back. Dada takes all that reason and throws it out the window. Much of WWI and its propaganda was conveyed through words, so instead Hugo Ball, the Father of Dada, at the Cabaret Voltaire decided to make poetry using, not the heinous words used to encourage the war, but pure sounds. Emmy Hennings sang a ballad then followed it with a ribald ditty. This movement had a ripple effect that spread to other places, such as New York or Paris.

I decided to take a different approach but still related to the anti-war style and have a game where the idea of War (the card game), even if the original game is childish, and shows the major repercussions war can have, especially when we enter the world of nuclear war. When a player uses a nuke, they feel the repercussions on their deck, even if they are not instant. They occur and accumulate over time (because the cards are gradually discarded. These cards are the victims of the radiation poisoning of the land, slowly being sent to the grave, simply for being there, which is the unfortunate truth of nuclear war. This may seem rather weird, where when you nuke an enemy, you get poisoned, but just imagine if everyone was fighting on the same battlefield. If you were to nuke your enemies soldiers when they went out for battle, the next time your soldiers go out to fight, they would feel the aftereffects of your decision. This is essentially how the world is now, especially with North Korea and the rest of the world on the edges of their seats.This is why I dubbed the game not “War with Nukes,” but M.A.D. Wars, aka Mutually Assured Destruction Wars.

Appropriation First Iteration: M.A.D. War

by | Oct 13, 2017 | ,

Appropriation Art: M.A.D. Wars

 

2-4 players

 

This game takes War (the card game) and adds some twists and new rules to it.

 

Materials:

  • 1-3 decks of cards (depending on number of players), evenly mixed together
  • Nukes (anything to represent a counter, preferably in an atomic bomb-style shape)
  • 2-4 sets of rows of 3 boxes each (Places to put your dormant Nukes)

 

Rules:

Every player chooses a power (either from ALLIES or AXIS) and that skill is applied to them for the entire game.

  1. Every player is evenly dealt the combined decks of cards (modified for Germany due to country effect).
  2. Every player starts with 3 Nukes*.
    1. If a player’s total Nuke amount dips below 3 (modified for Italy because of country effect), Radiation Poisoning** activates.
  3. Players proceed to play a “normal” game of War.
  4. After a declared “war” has ended, the winning side is given 2 options he can either give the cards to the enemy and steal a Nuke from them or take the cards for himself.
  5. All destroyed cards are sent to the Graveyard.
  6. The game is complete when only one player is left with cards in his deck.

*Nukes allow a player to destroy all enemy cards currently on the board and allows you to regain the card you just played. They are a one time use.

Nukes can be activated at any time, including right after a “war” is over after the winner has been decided, preventing the winner from taking the spoils. But if used during a “war,” all cards on the board are destroyed.

 

**Radiation Poisoning activates on a per turn basis. A player gains +1 Radiation Poisoning for every Nuke used that places their total Nuke count under 3. Players must discard the top card of their deck before every turn for every Radiation Poisoning they have.

Ex. A player has 2 Nukes. He has +1 Radiation poisoning.

Ex. A player has 0 Nukes. He has +3 Radiation poisoning.

 

TIPS: It is better to try out the game without using the countries to get a feel for the game first.

 

Allies v. Axis

ALLIES

USA– Gains 1 Nuke every 20 turns

USSR– Can negate a Nuke (once for every enemy)

Great Britain– Can activate a Nuke effect without using a Nuke once a game (Dresden)

France– Gets 2 Jokers, which essentially can be any card France wants it to be (wild card).

AXIS

Germany– Starts with 10 more cards than everyone else.

Japan– Can declare “Kamikaze War” at any time, limited to 2, which is normal “war” except the resulting cards placed will always be destroyed and sent to the Graveyard. The winning side of the “war” always steals a Nuke from the loser.

Italy– The Radiation Poisoning minimum starts at 2 (which means Italy only starts gaining Radiation Poisoning when her total Nuke number is below 2).

Appropriation Show & Tell: GlitchxCity’s Christmas Medley 2013

by | Oct 10, 2017 | ,

Video Link:

GlitchxCity is a YouTube content creator who creates remixes of music from various Pokemon games, but occasionally makes remixes of music from other games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Splatoon 2. Just the remixing of songs would be considered appropriation, but the next piece if information shows her taking it a step further. One of her more well-known music lineups would be her yearly Pokemon Christmas Medleys.  Glitch takes various Pokemon tracks and mixes them with different songs from separate movies, animes, and video games. In this medley, besides the Pokemon music (one of which is the Primal Dialga Boss Battle), there is music from Attack on Titan, The Legend of Zelda (Song of the Storms), Avatar the Last Airbender, the Pokemon 2000 movie (Lugia’s Song), and Kingdom Hearts, and this is without mentioning that this is a CHRISTMAS medley, so there are obviously different pieces of Christmas music in here (Ex. Carol of the Bells).

A Living Painting

by | Sep 27, 2017 |

Score:

Let an hourglass run for a minute or two.

Three people are doing their own thing.

The two become the painting and one becomes the painter.

The two don’t move by themselves as the hourglass flows.

Only the painter can move them.

Before the hourglass is up, he must return to his original position.

The hourglass goes.

The living are no longer the painting.

Work’s Intention

My intention with this wasn’t too complicated.As a child, I had always dreamed of being able to freeze time, and so this is basically bringing that into a game-like setting. My goal is, for a minute or two, let that child within someone to run out and play around and mess up the world. Imagine you were told that you could stop what everyone was doing, and then mess with it. Make your own creation. That is why I named it as so– a living painting. A painting is a representation of what you want on paper, and so I took that idea and placed it in reality, but mixed it with my old childhood fantasy. It is a simple game that has no real depth or intention, but just some fun. It is also very interesting to see what people are willing to do and what ideas they get when they are given complete freedom to screw with the “world” as they see fit. Like a child’s playground with living people. Well, when it’s put like that, it sounds kind of morbid, but I believe it gets the point across. Another major part is that, like every child’s fantasy (and especially a child’s imagination as he grows older), it comes to an end for the most part, which is why the people are able to move after because the “painting” moment is over. I still kind of wish I was able to do this because it would be a pretty overpowered ability to have.This specific iteration of the piece went through a bunch of different versions. The other ones were a lot more complicated, so I made this one a lot simpler.

Work’s Influence

Like mentioned before, a major influence was the dream of freezing time and doing what you want while time is frozen. This pseudo-version of that is as close as we can get to something similar to freezing time. But another influence would be my background in psychology and sociology. I always want to know how people will react and what interesting things they can come up with when given free rein. As I am a very awkward child who is not well versed in the idea of common sense, I am still ways off from predicting this sort of this, so it brings laughs as well. One of Yoko Ono’s pieces that inspired this one was the baby carriage, mostly because of how people would react to an empty carriage. It seems really funny, to do what you want, like driving an empty baby carriage around, and see the weird looks on people’s faces and how strangely (or not) on how they react to you.

The Painting

I actually found very interesting what my friend Ben did as the painter. For this score, I enlisted the help of my three roommates. Ben was the painter, and Cam and Ryan were part of the painting. He first started to mess with Cam, then moved to Ryan, then almost went back to Cam when he thought of something. Something that I probably would have never done or figured out. Unfortunately, it is rather explicit and inappropriate, so I can’t say it outright, but he placed a tissue full of lotion in Ryan’s hand and drew a pic of a nude woman and put it in front of Ryan. A very “interesting,” if I might say, approach to the game. I did not think it would go that way, but it did. Very cool how the game went a whole different path from what I initially intended.

CAUTION!! A slightly offensive and inappropriate drawn image may appear at end of video. User Discretion is advised.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7dmQkZFrzNEdVU2elZrR2VNN1E