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My semester taking Introduction to Game Studies has improved my way of creative thinking tremendously. I learned many things about the aspects of what makes a game. I learned to analyze games and break them down into three components: Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. The MDA framework has extended my vocabulary of describing games. I am now able to name multiple types of Aesthetics which each have different types of play. Throughout the semester I’ve been given the opportunity to read many articles and papers about game studies. Using the theories behind game studies, I was able to work with peers on building our own games. From board games to digital games, we had to formalize creative ideas we though up in our head and write it down into paper. This is where creating design documents came in handy to organize our thoughts. I love this course because it gave me a chance to come together with my friends and collaborate. We were able to incorporate each person’s talent and ideas to creating a game that I personally think, was pretty well done. My favorite part of this course was seeing the work of all my peers. I loved being able to see the process of creativegames coming to life.

Our final project is a top-down survival shooter game. After our enemies sprites were finally created, we were able to come up with a proper name for our game, Handfestation. Handfestation has hordes of hand creatures running towards you for you to destroy. Your goal is to survive as long as you can and rack up the highest score that you can submit to our built-in online highscore system. You have a set limited amount of health and ammo. Hand creatures have a chance of dropping more ammunition for your gun. There are three types of obtainable guns to choose from: shotgun, rocket, and machine gun, which can all be acquired by destroying monster spawning portals. I implemented a unique mechanic where there are blocks placed all over the map for you to move around. This serves you some more strategic planning in which you can block off and slow monsters down while you shoot them down through the cracks. One of our biggest challenges creating this game was optimizing it. We realized that spawning many enemies will lead to a slower performance but this game relies on the challenge of being surrounded. We capped the monster spawn to 100 and utilized a built in game maker function where you can deactivate objects outside your viewing screen. This helped rendering the game much smoother without the huge map and monsters stored in memory constantly.

You can play Handfestation at: http://vannakittikun.com/old/Handfestation/

We played a social/spatial game in class today called Ingress. Ingress is a location-based, augmented-reality mobile game developed by Niantic. It is played on Android or iOS. Ingress’ mechanics is very unique, requiring you to actually walk around in real life in order to progress. Using your gps tracker, there are multiple points of interest spawned throughout your map which can only be accessed by being within a close distance. You choose a faction and you compete against the other side trying to capture points, destroy enemy portals, link, and many other actions. The game is based off real time, competing for the most portals captured. The game never ends. Playing this game with my classmates was very fun and relaxing. Exercising is much more exciting when its made into a game. Walking towards each point of interest with my friends and learning new things about the game along the way was a great experience. I was on The Resistance faction and it was funny to compete against my peers as we try to destroy each other’s resources. It was very stimulating and urged me to group with my friends to control the whole city. I loved the clever idea integrating a game with the real world and I would play it again.

I worked on a platformer game called Yump Man with my partner, Scott Ahearn. I was the programmer while Scott did the artwork. This game was modeled after Mario. We came up with the idea of simple mechanics but all the challenges will be from the levels itself. Our character has only a single jump, however, getting through the obstacles are all about timing. Jump height is dependent on how long you hold the jump key so there are mini jumps/half jumps needed to add some variation.

The arrow keys are all you need to move in this game. I added spacebar option as well for anyone who is more comfortable using that to jump instead of the up arrow key. Yump Man’s goal is to reach the end flag points with the most minimal deaths. You die when you get hit by the black void chasing you, or when you fall off the map. In the latest Yump Man, I have now included 3 total stages. In each level design I wanted to incorporate a different feel and I had to scale the black void’s pressure of chasing you according to the difficulty. In the future, I would like to add monsters and moving platforms to add some more spice into the simple, yet challenging game.

Play the game here: http://vannakittikun.com/old/YumpMan
Or Download here: http://vannakittikun.com/old/YumpMan/YumpMan.exe

I am the Producer/Programmer for the game YUMP MAN and I work with my partner Scott Ahearn who does the art and design. This is a game based off the Mario series however there is a twist with the added pressure running from a wall of death. My role is to make sure our game is ready by the deadlines. I also program the code and bring each of the sprites my partner makes to life. My partner made basic designs on paper for how the first few stages will be like and I based our first level off them, making improvises as I saw fit with the jumping and movement mechanics I built.

The first stage was made to get players familiar with the jumping mechanics and test its limits. The main question for players I would ask them is: “How challenging does the game feel so far? If it is challenging, does it drive you to play more or to rage quit the game?” I feel that our game has to maintain some sort of balance for it to be successful. If it is too easy, the game gets boring quick, but if it is too hard, many people will also quit early not wanting to deal with the challenges that might not give them any satisfaction.

Link to play Yump Man Alpha version: http://vannakittikun.com/old/YumpMan/

Based on the video game lab, three of the games I will be talking about will be: Wizard Wizard, Frog Assassin, and QWOP. Wizard Wizard and Frog Assassin are two different games but still have a similar connection. Wizard Wizard has a theme about saving the princess as a Wizard. Frog Assassin is about a frog trying to kill as many insects as he can. They both have different mechanics to play the game. Wizard Wizard gives you a double-jump to go through obstacles to reach the next level. Frog Assassin requires anti-rhythmic movement patterns to allow him to kill. However different the game objective and theme is, they both require mechanical precision and timing to clear the stages.

Watching someone play a game is more relaxing on yourself as you are not the one going through the challenges. You have time to make more detailed observations about the game. For example, watching my partner play QWOP allowed me to examine and plan ways to beat the game as I watched him fail many times. When you take over and play yourself however, you must be more focused which will stress you out as your own actions control the outcome. The feeling of pressure shifts to you and is much different from being an observer.

            I named our board game Kingslay. In Kingslay our main objective is to kill your opponent’s king in order to win. This game board game is a variation of chess but with a twist by using dice rolling to control the amount of spaces your pieces can actually move. Only power pieces and the kings can kill other pieces. The pawns exist to block your enemy from moving since you need an exact roll to kill. Kings can kill each other and can only be killed by other pieces once all their pawns are killed. In the first game we played, both of us setup our pieces in a foolish manner.

Within one turn, I rolled a six and was able to instantly kill my opponent’s King and win the game. Once that happened, we created up a rule which would limit the amount of spaces you can move in the enemy’s half the board by one space. In our second play through, I won again but it took longer. We noticed that it took a while to kill every pawn because it relies on dice rolling luck. In the end, we always somehow won by killing another king with a king.

We then decided that it does not take the exact roll to kill another enemy and that kings will be invulnerable even to another king until all pawns are dead. This improved the game flow and made it easier to kill enemies.