Creative Gaming

WORKSHOP (ILLU)

Tarot is, first of all, a deck of cards.

        Tarot could be played as a game.

              Or, considering Tarot a centuries old divination tool, compendium of numbers, letters and symbols, whose infinite combinations, filter the turbulent flow of the future, decelerating it in an interpretable message for the present.

Not to mention, Tarot as a mirror for our subconscious to project itself onto.

https://schmidtty91.itch.io/billy-holliday2

Billy Holliday is on the way to work. For some reason on this day, she is not stopped to work at the airport, where she normally is posted at the security bag check station.

She instead is guided through the airport as a passenger caught in loops of songs and guarded closely as a imitator of the inhouse workers. 

In Evil Lab, players will explore a maze-like laboratory. The game board has a set of fixed rotatable pieces and the players get a set of single tiles with random walls that can be used to place obstacles in front of other players. The opponents compete in turns to reach their artifacts and be the first one to bring it to the other side. The first one to complete the task wins. They play in a cutthroat manner to escape the wicked laboratory. 

Number of players: max 3 

Age group: 12+ 

Playtime: 20-40 min

„The Masterplan“ is a card game about YOU being the villain and having to plan and explain your next big coup to your fellow partners in crime. Decide who’ll be your ultimate partner in crime, choose your most powerful object and the perfect location for carry out THE biggest coup of the century.

No. of Players: 3+ Length of Play: max. 20 minutes Age group: 14+

You are playing as a teenager that has been grounded. Your crush suddenly invites you to a date. You cannot miss this opportunity and therefore decide to sneak out. Your parents are very strict and you realize that if they catch you, you will be in an immense amount of trouble.  

Together with your teammate find all 4 item cards and then reach an end zone. Only one player may be in each end zone. The team that finishes first wins.

(Naomi Seeling) The “Super Smash Bros.” series is, at its core, a 2D fighting game. One to four players compete against each other, each controlling a different character, with the goal to knock out opponents from the stage before they do the same to you. The characters are controlled with analogue Game Cube controllers, and follow simple inputs such as directional movement (left, right, jump, drop down), attacks, shields and special attacks.

Mechanics

 Moving the stones are counterclockwise from player house to the other player area and here end the Game when the all stones become in the other player house, the player is entitled to put more than one stone in one column but he is not entitled to put on the other players stones. 

Dishonored Game Mechanic

The game “Dishonored” is a stealth action adventure game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks in 2012. In the game you play as Corvo who is framed for murder and is therefore forced to become an assassin who seeks revenge. The game has a mechanic which is called “Blink”, which is one of many skills Corvo can learn. This mechanic lets you move almost instantly forward to a chosen location, inside a set range. The Blink skill can be used in many ways, it is most commonly used to either assassinate someone by getting close to them extremely fast and then performing a silent kill or to reach a platform you would normally not reach. It can also be used to move past guards, since the ability does not create any sound and you can therefore use it without the guards noticing. The Blink ability is not a teleportation ability, it is more like an almost instant movement. If Corvo tries to Blink through a “Wall of Light” which is like a wall made of electricity, he takes damage or dies. He can also only go a set distance and he must be able to see the place to reach it, so one cannot use Blink to pass through walls. When Corvo is climbing or carrying a body, he can also use the Blink ability, however some objects like a bottle cannot be carried while blinking. The Blink ability cost mana, so he cannot use it the entire time since he will eventually run out of mana, however the mana cost is very low. One can also upgrade the ability, and this upgrade will increase its range. The DLC lets you play a different character, whose Blink ability also stops time if you are not moving. The Blink ability gives the player increasing more options and is extremely fun and smooth.  

The Blink ability is very mechanical, it has ma maximum range that can not be changed unless one levels up the ability. It can be cast in closer distances. The ability is made for combat but also stealth since you can use it to dodge certain attacks but also remain hidden from certain people and reach places that would be harder to reach otherwise. When using the Blink mechanic, the player must “equip” it. You have your different weapons in the left hand. (Gun, heart, abilities) When using the blink ability, one cannot simultaneously use the gun or other abilities. The miss use of the blink ability can cause you to fall to your death. The dynamic of the ability is very good, it reacts instantly when clicked and moves the character, Corvo instantly and smoothly to the desired location. The location that you will travel to can be seen by the blue lighted area. The aesthetics of the Blink ability are very good too. Since it is a first-person game, you cannot see yourself when using the ability, only in cutscenes. You do however fight people that can also use the Blink ability and it is very smooth and consistent. The animation looks almost as if you are crumbling away and then crumbling together again.  This crumbling is very fast though. You do not even have to stop moving when using the blink ability making it great for stealth and assassinations.  

The type of player is also very interesting in this game, since there are different ways you can play the game, stealth without killing people, stealth with killing people, or loud and killing everyone. The mechanics of the game change according to what you want to do. You can learn abilities that make it easier to remain undetected or abilities that will help you in a fight. Usually a player seeks different things from the game and some people will have more fun playing the loud style and some might like the stealth style more. The highest score in a mission is given if you have as little casualties as possible. The stealth way of playing is the hardest one but will also be rewarded with the most points. Creating a skill tree and different abilities makes it fun for the player to decide what style he wants to adopt and if he ever replays the game he can play the game in a completely different way.

General: 

Teleportation is the instantaneous travel between two locations without crossing the intervening space. This mechanic is very common in the Game Industry. The idea of teleportation lies in the 19th century. The earliest recorded story was in 1877 in the book „the Man without a body“  by Edward Page Mitchell. From that time people started using it everywhere in the fiction genre. With new technologies scientists put out the terms of dematerialization and materialization regarding to black holes existing in the universe. The term of teleportation was in everybody’s mind. A lot of games like Skyrim or Zelda use this mechanic and some of these mostly consist of it like Portals and Portals 2. But how does it work? In the Game scene teleportation is called warp.  If a player controller enters a transparent game object it will trigger it’s action and you get teleported to another transparent object. There are many ways to use teleportation. Another example is teleporting to specific point on the map to for example shrines in Breath of the wild. Mostly before you enter you can’t see where you will be teleported. However some games like portal 2 will let you see where you teleport like a mirror of what you see if you would look strait at it. Teleportation affects a lot of games.  

Example: Zelda Breath of the wild 

Mechanics: 

 In Breath of the wild and many other games you can teleport from your current location to a specific location on a map or of your choice. The system checks your current location of your character and moves it to the chosen location. These locations will always be noted Vectors. Since breath of the wild is a 3dimensional game they use Vector3 (x, y, z) for the locations. That one mechanic works there usually needs to be at least a second one to assist. To enable the mechanic of teleportation there is another mechanic in use. Before you can teleport you need to click on specific clickable objects on the map (altars) to start the teleportation.  

Dynamics: 

To teleport in breath of the wild you need to unlock the first shrine. The shrine is this specific location where players can teleport to as I mentioned earlier. After you unlock this shrine you can return to this location whenever you want. How you do it is simple. You press the map button to open the map and on this map there will be an icon displayed. You can click on this icon and an option “move to” will be displayed.   In the DLC of breath of the wild there is another way to teleport. It’s a specific item which allows you to teleport anywhere on the map you discovered before. Here you choose a location you want to return to and use the effect of the item. There will be a blue circle displayed and now whenever you use this item again you will be teleported to your marked location  

Aesthetics: 

Breath of the wild has in my opinion a very beautiful and sensefull teleportation animation. When you do the teleportation process you will have a 3-4sec time span where you see your character disappearing into blue light lines. You will reappear on your chosen location reversely. First the blue light lines appear and form your character which also lasts for 3-4 seconds. The creators of BotW are using a beautiful particle system. As I mentioned in general the idea of teleportation is dematerialization and materialization. With that they build a bridge to the real world which effect’s the player in a positive way. According to the Game Research of Robin Hunicke, Mark LeBlanc and Robert Z. it touches terms of “Sensation”. BotW is aesthetic wise a pleasure. Another taxonomy is “Discovery” which is actually a very big part of the game. In breath of the Wild everything is aestethically fit together. For example the colorscene fits to each enviroment and brings a specific mood with it. Each action and each location has its own unique sound which lets you immerse into the game even further. even the teleportation has its own unique ancient sound. To conclude the aesthetics support the mechanics very well which makes it such a successful game.

In Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the player starts in a Tutorial zone called "The Great Plateau". Once the tutorial finished, the player can choose where to go and could even choose to go face the "Ultimate Challenge" of facing the end boss right off the bat.  

During this tutorial the player discovers some of the game Mechanics:

-Weapon Durability: All weapons break relatively fast (There is only one exception for an end game weapon). Weapons work as temporary power boosts that you can store in your inventory.

-Permanent Armors: Once the player has an unlocked an armor piece, he will keep it forever. This mean they work as permanent upgrades.

-Open Worlds: The entirety of the world is free to explore as soon as the tutorial is over. Leaving the player with the choice of where to go. The player is also given different ways of exploring; Riding, Gliding, Sailing, Walking, Running, Climbing ect...

-Cold/Hot zones: These zones need preparation to be explored (Either resist potions or resist gear).  

-Rain: The weather affects all regions. The rain is the most important because it can virtually create walls around an area preventing you to explore them by making the normally climbable walls slippery. Depending on how much stamina you have, the gear you are wearing and if you have any active stamina effect active, some areas will be inaccessible until the rain stops.

-Chests: All the "odd" areas are worth exploring because the player will most of the times find a chest in them, awarding him with new weapons, armor or rare ingredients.

Those Mechanics, put together, generate an interesting Award System Dynamic were every time the player decides to push away the final quest of "Destrying Ganon" he will find himself awarded. Not by a quest, not by an npc but by himself.

This Mechanic joined to the world of Zelda creates a very enhanced Adventure/Exploration Aesthetic, were the player runs around the map, exploring anything he didn't visit before, getting new gear and destroying his old gear in the process.

In Fallout 4 the most unique mechanics is the V.A.T.S which stands for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. While using V.A.T.S, the  otherwise real-time combat is slowed down. Various actions cost action points and the user can target specific body areas for attacks inflicting specific injuries. There’s also a critical execution bar which gets filled with each successful hit and when full can be used for a devastating attack. In the following text the MDA framework for this system will be explained.

Mechanics

The V.A.T.S system is basically a queuing system inspired partly by the ability to shoot specific parts in the turn-based combat system of Fallout and Fallout 2 which were turn based RPGs. Each click on a specific part of the body is queued and executed one after the other based on the order in which they were clicked (eg. if we click the left arm then the head then the torso the player shoots first at the left arm then the head then the torso)

Dynamics

When using V.A.T.S. against a humanoid enemy, seven different areas can be targeted: the head, torso, left arm, right arm, currently held weapon, left leg, and right leg. However, there may be other points available when facing off non-humanoid creatures (e.g. robot combat inhibitors, ant antennae). As explained earlier when V.A.T.S is used the game slows down to almost being considered paused and the player has enough time to select their desirable target spots on the enemy. The number of selections during the use of V.A.T.S depends on the “Action Points” of the player which are limited and based on how much “endurance” which is part of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L (Strength.Perception.Endurance.Charisma.Intelligence.Agility.Luck) list of the player and can be increased as the game progresses. Another feature of the V.A.T.S is the Critical meter which gets filled with each successful strike on an enemy in V.A.T.S and when full can be used for a devastating hit against the enemy.

Aesthetics

In ‘Danganronpa‘ you play as the student Makoto Naegi, who gets accepted into Hope’s Peak Academy, a school full of talented students. After arriving at school on his first day, he loses consciousness but soon wakes up to the faces of other students. It turns out that they got locked up into the school and the only way to “graduate“, to leave the school, is to murder another student without being found out.

Class trials are being held at the end of each chapter after a murder took place. Once you find the collectible evidence you proceed to the court room, in which the trial will take place. The students have to determine throughout the trial, who the ‘Blackened‘ student, the murderer, is. During the class trial, students confront each other in several debate phases and put together pieces of the collected evidence.

At the very end, the ‘Closing Argument‘ takes place. The ‘Closing Argument‘ is an unique element of the ‘Danganronpa‘ series. Through a comic-like story, it narrates the events during the murder, how and why the murder actually happened.

Opposed to the aesthetic component of ‘Narration‘, the closing argument gives you a fragmentary comic, which you have to complete. Below, the player has a broad selection of different illustrated round frames. The information in the upper left corner serves as an indicator of how many pages you have to complete with the suitable frames given. In this example, the mechanic is that you have to sort the frames into the comic by dragging it in the appropriate panels. However, you’re given more than ten frames of which some display incorrect information. So you have to decipher which illustration matches with the already filled in panels. If you’ve inserted one frame incorrectly, the story plays out until the panel you’ve filled in wrongly and subtracts one of your life points.

Player elimination in Coup

The basic premise of Player Elimination is that during the game, once a player has been deemed “eliminated” they can no longer play in that game.

Player elimination happens in multiple-player games when a player is eliminated from the game and the play continues without the eliminated player.

This mechanic does not include two-player-only games where the goal is to defeat the opponent, e.g., Chess.

Effects:

Players want to play - By knocking players out, a game with player elimination is forcing players to stop doing what they’re there to do.

Erratic game time - Changing game time is not just bad for fitting a game into a busy schedule; it makes things worse for those knocked out of the game early: they don’t even know how long they have to wait before their friends are ready to play something else.

Forced cruelty - in games where a player’s goal is to eliminate the opposition, players are often forced to attack each other, leaving some of the feeling bad.

It’s worth to plan such a game with short playtime so eliminated players don’t have to wait for a long time before starting a new one.

Elimination can have positive or negative effect on a game, some of them are actually useful:

-creates a natural ending -creates meaningful decisions -fosters strategy

-can be overwhelming for new players ( resource elimination can be confusing when the player starts with the most options but the least direction)

-can make the anti-climactic ( fewer options generally mean simpler, less meaningful decisions, and fewer resources mean players feel weaker than they did at the beginning of the game)

Elimination in Coup:

In Coup, the goal is to be the last one with at least one turned down influence card. The players continuously challenge each other to make the other player lose cards.

Elimination happens in the game when a player loses both of her influence cards. The

cards represent members of the government under your control, and you amass money in order to assassinate or stage coups against the other players' cards; turning them face- up and making them useless. Players with both cards revealed are out of the game.

Dynamics:

As the game progresses behaviors like strategic thinking emerge. As more and more cards get turned face-up heading into the endgame, more and more information becomes available to judge who is lying.

Outwitting your opponents would be the core dynamic as you have to manipulate the others into challenges they shouldn’t do.

Elimination creates meaningful decisions. Losing something is a significant consequence. If players eliminate options with every choice, every choice will feel important and tense, which can be a great boon for a game.

You can play it safe, tell the truth most of the time, and use diplomacy to target the people who are ahead of you, lie unpredictably and draw your opponents into challenging your truthful plays, or read your opponents and knock them out when they lie.

Aesthetics:

The forced cruelty of elimination can leave a bad feeling in players but the playtime is so short that it will pass quickly enough so at the end they will be able to end the game with no hard feelings.

Challenge definitely occurs as the players have to read the opponents and try to defeat them. The tension is raising later when they start to lose influences. Fellowship has a chance in case the players use diplomacy during the game.

People who like to play this game:

Anyone who likes social games where you can bluff and play in a vicious style will like this card game.

In Coup the players get at least two kinds of character cards at the beginning, the abilities of these cards are useful but the players don’t really spend a lot of time having them, meaning they can’t really identify themselves with these roles.

The typical examples of games that provides elimination are Diplomacy or Risk (where a player may be defeated) or Monopoly (where a player may go bankrupt and thus be eliminated).