Experimental Game Design

shapiro.da

Final Project

by | Dec 11, 2019 |

My partner Pranav and I decided to collaborate together for the final project.  We wanted to make a game based on overcoming control from a mentally abusive character.  The game involved writing a lot of dialogue that was very demeaning and hurtful, however the point of our game wasn’t to hurt people but to try to set up the challenge of overcoming adversity. The influence for our game came from a game that was shown in class called Loved. The basis of that game is based on the world changing around whether you listen to the narrator or not.  If you go against the narrator the world alters and the narrator gets more and more upset and angry with you.  I wanted to make something that I could relate to. A big personal influence on making our game came from when I dealt with people personally with verbal and mental abuse from an ex and old “friend group”. Being in those circumstances were extremely difficult time but I want to be able to tell people that you can overcome no matter how hard it is. It will take its time but its do-able!
I never really thought I would make a game about this kind of topic but after this semester it felt right to make this kind of game and I am pleased with how its turned out so far and maybe one day I can take this game and make it something special.

Here below are some designs for a level in our game and a quote from the abusive narrator.

Appropriation Project #2

by | Dec 11, 2019 |

The Death Run Game

The objective is simple. You have One hour. Take any story game or sandbox game that has unique death animations for the main character or death text showing how the main character died. Within that one hour, find as many ways to reveal the death text or find as many unique death animations for the main character.  Both players must agree upon the game and have their own copy ready. The goal is not to die as many times but find as many different ways to die that reveal new animations for the character to die. Example of some games you can do that have multiple death animations: The Tomb Raider Series (from 2013 onwards), The Last of Us, and Dead Space.  For the ones with death text you can use Minecraft. In the sandbox games that are open world and potentially multiplayer, PVP death is not allowed (since it isn’t even beneficial for the player killing). For the story games one must start from the very beginning or a similar save point. 

 

What made me choose this game and its rule set is that I have always been intrigued by games that have made their main character suffer unique death animations, like the developer has done so much to build their character to then give them one of many very brutal deaths. I would love in the future to be able to make a mod out of adventure game that involves finding the unique death animations and put it as a score at the end of the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2lv0XVCxk

Pacifist Apex Games (Intervention Project)

by | Dec 7, 2019 | ,

The goal was to take a highly competitive first person shooter battle royal game and see if I could make peace with the enemy. 

Game: Apex Legends

In apex Legends, you can only hop into matches in groups of three. I took two of my friends together to hop into matches and tried to find groups to make peace and would hopefully let us live or spare us. We had a few encounters that led to probably seconds of peace but then me and my group were terminated.  We kept trying and trying and getting interesting interactions. I noticed many players had a tendency to panic when they encountered my group although I was trying to get their attention by using non lethal methods. I was able to use a specific character named Pathfinder who has a special ability to deploy a zipline anywhere on the map.  I spotted another squad so I took the zipline and launched it at them to get their attention. Once they spotted me they started shooting at me however they all stopped when they spotted my character spamming the crouch button over and over. Crouch spamming is the only way I could think to show signs that I was trying to be friendly. The video below shows the brave attempt from Graham, Jake, and myself.  It went about as chaotic as you would expect.

The Inspiration for the Intervention project came from two places when I played the Halloween event in which the game starts as a free for all but as players get eliminated they get turned into “Shadows.” the final 10 players must work together to escape the map vs the 20 or so Shadows that are out to kill the players.  During the initial phase of the game i encountered someone trying to not kill me by crouch spamming and showing signs that they did not want to fight me but survive together all the way through.  We ended up working together to get far in that match.  I’ve tried doing their method later on in the Halloween event and had one successful encounter. I figured why not try it in Apex’s main game mode of 3 squads BR.

Appropriation show and tell

by | Nov 18, 2019 | ,

  I decided to share a meme (at least appropriate for class) that was quite directly an example of appropriation mixing in media from the Spiderman Franchise. The video involved mixing in a few moments from Spiderman 2 movie, taking the famous “Funiculì, Funiculà” which was used in the Spiderman 2 video game when delivering pizzas in the game as a mission. The version of Funiculì, Funiculà that was used was played with an accordion.  It became a very popular meme many years for how derpy the song sounds while played through this instrument. I shall provide the links for each source. I feel memes are the best way to spread information to communicate among one another and by using material we can all relate to or know the references of we can do just that.  

The Main video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpvT-Fciu-4

Funiculì, Funiculà from spiderman 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czTksCF6X8Y

JJJ’s Laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJ6UZ0SkYY

Pizza Time!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgdA9_FsXM

Ball Painting Score

by | Oct 7, 2019 | ,

Take multiple Tennis balls and different color paint cans, put the canvas in the middle of the room. Give the artists multiple gloves to be able to pick up and roll the ball across the canvas of different colors.  If everyone is alright they may bounce the ball to each other assuming they dont mind getting paint on themselves. The idea originally came around when my friend and personal trainer Kevin Brewerton showed me a video of him doing art with his boxing gloves and punching the canvas with paint on his gloves.  I wanted to take a step further and try throwing a baseball or hitting a baseball against the paint however many things can go wrong so quickly with that. Baseballs can deflect and hit someone, not enough space to protect the whole area from getting splashed. I then thought about doing something similar with throwing a tennis ball between two people against the wall but there’s still the potential of breaking the canvas and also dealing with covering up as much ground so we won’t get paint everywhere.  

What is needed for the happening:

  • Tennis Balls (six for this Happening)
  • Tempura Paint (Blue, Orange, Red, Green)
  • Paper plates to hold the paints
  • Disposable Gloves to help handle the tennis balls
  • A giant Tarp to paint on and also prevent the ground or room to be painted on
  • MISSING: (19in x 24in Paper as the canvas)
    • Tarp became the new Canvas

The results of the Happening: Lack of preparation for the Happening resulted in many changes to the final presentation. Didn’t have a place to prepare for the project nor could I get the tarp that I wanted to stay on the wall. The solution to this was to lay the tarp on the ground and instead bounce the tennis balls covered in paint.  The results are shown here:

The tennis balls ended up soaking up the paint and not splashing as much as I wished there would be. I had fun with the idea and it would be a lot of fun to potentially take this idea and reserve a room, get a ball that will splash more, and have the liberty of chucking the balls at full force without worrying about damages.  I find this can be a fun way to relieve stress by doing physical while also making art through your own physical actions.