Experimental Game Design

king.jas

Gameloading: Rise of the Indies – JK

by | Dec 5, 2024 |

I really enjoyed watching this film, more than I thought I would. It was competently shot and directed, and all of the technical aspects (sound, angles, pacing, etc.) were done well. More importantly, I found the actual content of the film to be quite inspiring. So much of the struggle that comes with entering the game development space is seeing the swarms of competition both in person and online, but strangely enough, that’s paired with the struggle of feeling like your alone if that makes sense. By presenting and all these indie game developers and humanizing them by giving exposure to their personal lives and the ways making games intersects with that, I do feel less alone.

It’s interesting to see how far the industry has come now that almost a decade has passed. The problems they bring up with AAA games (they’re much more homogeneous with a lesser tendency towards innovation due to the danger of ballooning budgets) are more prevalent if anything, while the indie scene has continued to grow at an incredible rate.

It was also very interesting to see the unlikely partnerships that formed, as I did not expect the creators of Enter the Gungeon to say they did not like each other very much, yet were still able to create something so acclaimed. It speaks to the fact that the act of creation is something incredibly fluid, and both in methodology and output there is a massive range, with many experiences yet to be discovered. The sound game without an elevator pitch about achieving zen through humming is barely a game in the traditional sense yet still a very interesting and by the looks of it an engaging piece of art.

Ultimately, I leave watching this film with a renewed passion and drive to make games, as I see there are so many more fighting that same fight and chasing their dreams.

Artwork #4 Heart Defense Game

by | Dec 5, 2024 |

PLAY IT HERE ON ITCH : https://jasonkinggamedev.itch.io/heart-defense       (Password : Jason)

Playtesting Video :

All in all, I would say the playtest went well, and the user enjoyed. Many of the criticisms I list later were brought up, such as a lack of enemy variety. However, my playtester loved the central premise having gone through similar experiences themselves. I’m glad I was able to make that connection as that’s part of what I sought to do with this game in the first place.

Overview

Heart Defense, my fourth artwork, is the artwork I have the most passionate love and hate relationship with out of all the artworks I made. As per the assignment directions, I decided to make a game that emblematic of the experiences I had growing up and my view of growing up in general. I wanted to convey the added strain that growing up can provide as more and more responsibilities are accumulated. Even more than added strain, I wanted to convey the sacrifice inherent in growing up as it becomes more and more apparent that life, especially in this society (and this economy) doesn’t afford people the time to do everything they want to do. I think I have partially succeeded and partially failed in this goal, and overall been left with a final product that I am happy with, but not content with, and I will seek to expand this game further going forward (and hopefully I will be able to show off the updated version next semester).

Reflection – Cons :

The areas of improvement regarding Heart Defense mainly concern lacking features and content.

I wanted to add a feature where the player heart would bleed and lose health when shooting after a certain point. This is because the “bullets” you are shooting are meant to represent “time” (as in the time we use to do things) and so convey the difference between spending time as a youth (it feels free and infinite) and spending time as an adult (every second you spend doing something is a second you could spend doing something else and you’ll never get to everything and your going to die so chose wisely) I wanted the “time” (the bullets) to cost more, to cost so much more that it went from not hurting at all to hurting (which mirrors my shifting perspective regarding spending time as I aged). Coding this was easy, but without the visual feedback with the heart bleeding, it was hard to tell exactly what was happening, and I didn’t have time to implement that visual feedback.

The game needs more “enemies”. As the gameplay loop is incredibly simple, every step towards variety should be taken, including visual variety. Thus, the game needs more enemies that take your health and friendlies that heal you when shot.

The game needs better visual signalizing. As I want the game be symbolic of my experiences, I think a lack of dialogue helps, as this is something I feel not something I had expressly explained to me. However, I didn’t have time to implement clearer visual signaling for enemies being enemies or friendlies being friendlies. Additionally, the death screen should be an image representing my conceptualization of failure and how that changed as I aged, but I alas, as with the other visual signaling improvements, I did not have time to implement that.

The enemies and friendlies could use more interesting movement patterns. I’m glad I worked out how to add parabolic sine wave movement in addition to linear movement, but more variety would help the game (for example, teleporting enemies).

Reflection – Pros :

I believe the concept was executed well in terms of format and genre. The game has a very plain pixel art visual style, but I think the decision to forgo a background draws the eye even more to what really matters for this game, which is the heart and the enemies/friendlies coming to hurt/help it. I loved the opportunity to work on my pixel art skills more, and I believe this project both has good pixel art assets and allowed me to improve. I’m proud of the pixelated enemy explosion effect I created, as well as my decision to make the heart be beating the entire time. The phases of game as a concept has a very strong foundation, as currently the enemy spawns (in terms of enemies spawned and frequency) enemy movement patterns, and heart model all change phase to phase, paralleling aging. The added difficulty in conjunction with the amount of changed things from phase to phase I think conveys my message well, if not perfectly.

Conclusion :

Overall, this was definetly my favorite artwork to work on, and one I look forward to working on more in future.

 

Indiecade Extra Credit Review : Balatro

by | Dec 4, 2024 |

I absolutely loved my time playing Balatro, and I worry I might have uncovered yet another rogue-like I can get addicted to. The game is visually stimulating in all the right ways, strategic, and offers me an opportunity to explore a genre I haven’t really before.

Graphics :

While this game’s visual style is relatively simple, it works incredibly well. I love how the cards all look, the pixel art is great. More than that, the effects that happen when you get high combos scratch a part of my brain and it feels great. I love how the pixel art fire roars to life in accordance with the size of the combo you managed to achieve. It makes me desperately want to achieve the highest combo I can, which brings me to

The Gameplay :

I have never played Poker before, so learning this game was a bit of an adjustment. I need to have a list of all the possible poker hands up on a second screen while I play as I have no clue what any of them are, and the game only tells you what hands are called not what they are comprised of which doesn’t help me at all. However, despite that awkwardness adding friction to my play experience, I still had a great time. With every failure my mind starts to race about what could have been better, and that experience is so exhilarating for me because I have very limited experience with card games relative to the average person (or at least it feels like it as I don’t know how to play poker and am not the biggest fan of card games in general) so so much is new to me and love learning new games like that. Even now, I just keep thinking about how high I can push that number.

Sound :

I like the music in the game, it blends into the background very well. However, more standout than the music is all the sounds the cards make. Shuffling the deck, playing cards, selecting them, every action has a nice sound associated with it that makes the game feel tactile, which is important as it’s a digital translation of something typically very physical.

Conclusion :

I pray this assignment hasn’t given me my next addiction. I love Balatro, and while I need to play it more to see if it deserves higher praise (to see how well the roguelite progression systems hold out, how much variety there actually is and how much it’s systems hold up under extended play) but as of now Balatro is at least  an 8/10 and I think it absolutely deserves it’s Game of The Year Nomination at the Game Awards.

Artwork #3 Shueisha Intervention

by | Dec 4, 2024 |

Trigger Warning : Mentions of Sexual Assault (SA), the SA of Minors, and Child Sexual Material

 

Artwork Idea & Description :

For my intervention artwork, the industry/issue I wanted to intervene in was the manga industry in Japan. This presented many challenges I would have to try to overcome, but I chose this topic because it’s one I genuinely care about and would love to be able to better. In Japan, the manga industry is almost comically awful, and an excellent example of the evil that can be perpetuated when the only thing being considered is money. Japanese mangaka (manga artists) work absolutely brutal hours well in excess of 100 hours a week, demolishing their health in service of their art and their company. Sometimes, these same mangaka commit crimes ranging from the SA to having terabytes of child sexual abuse material. While of course it’s not all of them, there are a handful of high profile cases just with Shonen Jump, and every time as soon as the convicted predators serve their sentence, they are welcomed back with open arms, an especially worrying standard considering the magazine is expressly (at least in part) targeted at children.

With this issue plaguing an industry I love, I was inspired by the MyCelia Barbie done by the Yes Men. I liked the format and the humor it allowed for as well as how directly and explicitly it pointed towards an actionable plausible solution. Instead of suggesting that Mattel go green via mushroom barbies, I wanted to suggest that Shueisha (the largest manga publishing company) start caring about it’s employees and taking measures to both limit the suffering they endure and the suffering they inflict.

Artwork Execution & Challenges :

I created a fake Shueisha Website with a satirical company announcement describing how they were going to start caring abut their employees. I leaned heavily into the satire in an attempt to heed the advice of my peers and professor and protect myself from any potential legal trouble. I made the site with WordPress, and below you can see a comparison of the sites.

Fake Website I Made: https://shueishacom.wordpress.com/?_gl=1%2A1ho68ra%2A_gcl_au%2AMTk2NTIyOTkxNi4xNzMzMjYyNjM4

Real Shuiesha Website : https://www.shueisha.co.jp/en/

The first image at the top of my post is a sliding gallery of Shueisha manga double page color spreads. This is distinct from the real Shueisha website, which has a bunch of images filling the whole screen horizontally and also sliding right to left. WordPress did not have the ability to recreate this feature, so I did the best I could. Besides that, thankfully, the official Shueisha website is very barebones which made parts of it easy to copy. The top of my fake website should say “Shueisha” but that’s a premium feature I have to pay for. Beyond the technical limitations of the software I was using, I think I did a good job of copying the basic elements of the Shueisha websites, and with more time (and maybe a WordPress Subscription) I think I could make it look identical.

For the actual content of the article, I tried to be both highly satirical (to make it somewhat clear this wasn’t real) and still bring up real issues and real stats with those issues (with how long mangaka are overworked for example). I did this to, just as the Yes Men, make it clear the problem is real and affecting people, and that the solution is needed, possible, but distinctly fake highlighting how the company is willfully just not doing it.

To spread the article, I ran into some issues. I don’t speak Japanese, but I could translate the entire article fairly easily. However, I would have no way of telling how off or fake the translation would sound, and it might hurt the meaning of what I wrote. In terms of location, I was also unsure, as I needed some way to spread this fake message but don’t have many distribution channels. I decided to post the article to reddit, but unfortunately, the one SubReddit with the largest amount of people that would be interested in my message (r/manga) doesn’t have a meme or shitpost or some other “not serious” flair to make it clear that this isn’t real. Additionally, despite my site having text on it, when I link it in reddit, it’s blank for some reason. Nevertheless, that’s where I posted it, and I hope at the very least a few people end up reading it and find it funny and “real” (speaking to a real issue) and it doesn’t get taken down.

Reddit Post :

Artwork Reflection :

I really liked my idea for this post, but I recognize the issues that arose with execution. Creating a website proved more difficult than I thought as my progress and vision for what the website was supposed to look like was stymied by the limitations of the software I was using, both technical (some features where just not available) and monetary (some where paywalled). If I had to do this again, I *might* choose WordPress again, but this time make extensive use of CSS to code the specific more complex parts of the website I wanted. That way, the site would look much much closer to how the real website looks.

Additionally, I recognize my distribution could have improved. If I had to repeat this, I would make a new reddit account, be active in various larger and smaller manga subreddits for at least a month, then contact the moderators and let them know what I am trying to do. With moderator approval, I could make the post, ensure it wouldn’t, get taken down, and raise more awareness/engagement. In terms of reaching out to more Japanese people, I would try to find a more reliable way to translate what I wrote (either a better service or try to find someone that speaks Japanese) and also more extensively research Japanese internet culture so I could essentially find the Japanese version of reddit and post it there for more engagement and more raised awareness.

 

Manga Monopoly

by | Oct 29, 2024 | ,

 

Manga Monopoly is a spin-off of Monopoly with the objective changed from attempting to gain as much capital and take as much from your competitors as you can to instead trying to create the best art with the resources you have available. It’s a game played with 3 – 4 people, who all go around a Monopoly Board, collecting manga panels as they go. Everytime everyone makes a full lap around the board, players use their manga panels to make collages, and then vote on which collage they think is best. People get different points based on whether they got 1st, 2nd, or 3rd which points increasing in the last round. The person with the most points in the last round wins.

 

 

Inspiration (In Class & Out)

 

The broad inspiration for this project was the desire to take something highly commercialized and contextualize it into something more creative and generative. Many DADA movements are concerned with the commercialization of art, and I think of few more obvious games to critique this with than monopoly, a game that in it’s earliest form started out as a critique of capitalism and is now one of the THE MOST commercialized games of all time (we have Breaking Bad Monopoly). So I thought that through appropriation I could shift the focus of the game away from wealth acquisition and thus bring it more in line with its original intent (I know a satire of that kind of wealth acquisition was originally part of the point but world conditions are such that that kind of satire isn’t effective because no one thinks its satire they think its normal). Additionally, I wanted to combine the playfulness often seen in earlier DADA works along with the more overt political messaging seen in later ones, and I believe this project accomplishes both of those goals well. Collages are an accessible form of art as all you need is basic motor skills and an eye for composition (whereas most often forms of art require those two things + way more) and I think they can channel childlike creativity well due to that. The political implications of a game where the purpose is to create from nothing instead of starting off as a millionaire and stealing (AHEM, “renting”) everything in sight feel rather obvious, but to elaborate, I wanted the art to foster collaboration and healthy competition rather than a desire to seek dominance. In this game, you need other players to like your art to win, and I believe making something people like requires on some level an ability to understand and reach out to people (I feel that with all artistic creation in general) and I hope the game inspires those feelings in people instead of making them want to selfishly own and hoard everything for themselves.

 

The desire to send this mix of political messaging and fostering of childlike playfulness through collage was additionally of course inspired by the Merz art of Hannover Dada, wherein much of the point was recontextualizing “useless” or “boring” objects (junk, everyday objects, found objects) into something else entirely with an entirely new meaning. That was the approach I took to the “materials” of monopoly and manga.


I chose manga panels because I wanted to create a pastiche of many different series and artists, but I also wanted them to be visually cohesive. Manga are all in black and white, and this allows for an easily achieved color palette (as every Mangaka works with the same exact one, unlike comic artists) while still allowing for great contrast in the collages themselves. Additionally, I have a manga wall at home which works for these same reasons, so the idea came naturally.

 

 

First Iteration 

 

At first, I was quite rushed, so my starting iteration was rough. Each of the squares where relabeled but with no visuals (just the series title) and I didn’t know what to do with the community chest and chance cards. Voting was simpler as well, with people just voting for their favorite and that getting one point. The in class playtest went well, as detailed below 

 

Pros

  • It was fun making collages 
  • It was fun looking at other peoples colalges 
  • Getting panels from series people knew made it more gratifying for them

Cons

  • Voting being simplified made the votes more boring and not work well with only 3 people
  • Many squares there was nothing to do, which slowed the game down 
  • Players wanted more interaction with eachother

 

Second Iteration 

 

For the second iteration, I added many visual elements and tried to address player feedback. The game was made more visually interesting by me taking the volume covers of manga and placing them over the monopoly board. That way, each series was recognizable at a glance. To address the problem of community chest spaces and chance spaces having nothing to do AND to address the issue of players wanting more inter player interaction, I added a new set of cards to the game that allowed players to steal, force trades, take more cards, and more. This allowed for more dynamism in the gameplay as the actions of players could affect other player strategies in real time. I changed the voting to allow for points to be allocated based on whether it was 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, and allowed players to pick from the top 3 cards on the pile when choosing their card. Overall, this increase of player agency and visual facelift helped make the game more interesting and I am happy with the result.

 

Final Playlets Results

Despite having three people, the final playtest was very lucrative. I got to playtest with both a manga fan and a non-manga fan, and seeing them both enjoy and have different takes on the game was both validating and interesting.

The non-manga fan liked the game and took a storytelling approach to her collages, trying to craft funny or interesting mini narratives with her manga pages. This was aided by this player just happening to get a lot of manga pages. From her feedback, I definitely would implement an “Explain” part of the voting phase where each player is required to give some brief intro for their collage.

The manga fan that played also enjoyed the game, and took a more impressionistic approach with their collaging, trying to make something visually appealing and leveraging text less. They suggested even more interaction, with players perhaps gaining physical tools like scissors, glue, or tape to further elevate their collages.

 

Playtest Collages

 

Rules

 

Cards

Destroy Draw Build

by | Oct 15, 2024 | ,

Destroy Draw Build Score

With Assistance 

From 1-100, choose how much you want to destroy.

Choose a graffiti pattern.

Chose whether to paint the old or the new.

Behold.

Without Assistance (i.e. with an administrator that knows how blender works and how the score is played)

Open the Blender file. 

Enter Edit Mode, Go to Select->Select Random.

Choose how much you want to destroy.

Right click-> Delete.

Pick a graffiti pattern from your available textures.

Choose whether you want to apply this pattern to the remnants of what you destroyed or what is going to fill in the gaps. 

Unhide the original model.

Destroy Draw Build Reflection

Destroy Draw build is of course inspired by Dada, but also inspired by the cartoon network show Destroy Build Destroy and the episode of Friends where Ross gets married. The goal of the piece was to allow players to experience the process of creation and destruction and ponder how they’re intrinsically linked together. Thus, the dichotomy of creation = good destruction = bad isn’t true, as new things cannot be created without old things being destroyed, and even without creation, destruction in of itself can lead to and be beautiful. 

Many of our readings talk about the political underpinnings of movements like Fluxus and Dada in addition to how they challenge what art is, especially the commercialization of art. This greatly inspired when designing this game. I can’t for the life of me remember the artist, but in class one of the slides went over this machine that broke and set on fire when operated, and thus could only be operated once before needing rebuilding/repair, and that was a great source of inspiration as well. I wanted to create a score where the process was as much the art as the literal artifact leftover at the end of said process, and I also wanted destruction to be part of that art and process. Socially, I want this score to recontextualize the meaning of destruction and thus art. I’m not sure how widely held this belief is right now, but I know some people think of graffiti just as defacement (in a way a form of destruction in of itself) and of course the art medium isn’t simply that. By pairing graffiti with literal destruction and then tying that to beauty, I want people to realize that many things can be art that you wouldn’t first expect. Hopefully, this would be a step for people to wonder why art has to be so commercialized, as graffiti can be beautiful and yet isn’t traditionally “commissioned” most of the time.

Playtesting was fun, I primarily did it with my roommate and my girlfriend, and it was interesting to see the different approaches applied. Some playtesters took more of a “screw it” approach when it came to the actual destruction, almost like they were just curious to see what happened. On the flipside, some where much more cautious. I find these different approaches telling, and would love to present this game to more people to see where most people default to. I also wonder what insight about people could be gained from such a choice, and how that choice could affect the score if I chose to game-ify it more.

Technically, this project presented some annoying difficulties but nothing too crazy. I was unfamiliar with blender so I had to relearn some elements like how to properly apply modifiers and texture mapping, some of which took some time. 

Overall, I am happy with how the score turned out. My favorite artifact would have to be the church paired with a graffiti pattern that had a lot of softer pastel colors, as shown below. I thought it ended up looking both very nice, and very nice in a way a church traditionally doesn’t (as the color scheme is anything but traditional). If I had to improve anything going forward, I would likely try to automate the process so that the user only had to input a few numbers, but that was beyond the scope of this project. Additionally, some technical issues remain, as I’m unable to render any high res images of my final product due to using in the rendering pipeline (everything is becoming tinted pink when I try to render it). While this could be a cool addition if I expanded this (pick a tint to tint the image or nothing at all) I would like the user to intentionally have that choice and not have it be forced on them because of a bug. 

Destroy Draw Build Pictures 

Final Product