Untitled

Things to collect: coins, gems, keys.

A step block and a different spike.

Wall background

Two lantern options

Opening Door and Opening Treasure

Soldier Protecting and life counter.

Soldier pouncing and rocks falling down.

Advanced spike options and animation.

Lower spike option.

When I was maybe two years old and living in India, my dad had bought a Nintendo Wii from abroad. That was my first and very brief introduction to gaming. My mom helped me create my character, and I vaguely remember trying to play the boxing, tennis, and bowling games. Now, my little brother, who's 10 years old, is into gaming, and he's really good. It started with mobile games like Red Ball 3, and I believe he's done all, or if not, most of the levels successfully completed. I remember when I first started watching him play. It looked easy, and I thought it was silly, but it turned out to be super fun and also challenging. 

My final project consists of creating a sprite package on the itch.io website. I have chosen to improve on past design sprites and create new sprites in accordance with the Knight Jump Game, which was a 2D medieval-themed adventure platformer in which the goal was to avoid dangerous spikes and jump across the block steps and ultimately escape the castle.  

During the draft feedback session we did in class last week, I asked about how to improve on or what to change regarding the art aspects of the current game. A couple of people told me that currently the spikes match the background grey color and also pointed out how, in the game, the pop-up spikes feature was too fast while playing the game. Therefore, I decided to upgrade the spikes. My first step was changing the color. I chose a brighter sea green color which would contrast with the grey background, making the spikes easier to see during gameplay. I also made the spikes have a bench base so the spikes will emerge from a separate flat platform that is not the regular game blocks themselves. This not only adds to better visibility, but also you foresee an obstacle and can expect something different because it doesn't look like regular platform steps. Lastly, I also made the popup animation smoother, and now you can gradually see the spikes popping up. I also made just a tiny spike option for more variety. 

Next, while I was playing games other teams had made, I realised many had created certain collectables and tokens in which players would have to collect all before moving on to the next section of the game. I really liked that idea and drew inspiration from it, in which I made coins and diamond gem sprites which the soldier could collect. These could be placed on different platforms so that the player has to jump and reach all platforms in order to move on to the next levels. Also, since the game implemented collecting a key, I made a treasure chest animation to go along with the concept. The idea is that at the final level, the keys collected help open the treasure chest in the end, filled with valuable wealth!  

Additionally, I was suggested to add more variety to the background, and so I decided to make decoration sprites like options of a hanging fire lantern to go on the walls. I made two different aesthetic options to choose from. I also created a door and door opening animation to add to the levels. 

Lastly, I also made a rock debris falling-down animation sprite and a soldier holding up his shield sprite to protect themselves from the rocks to add in more challenging aspects to continue advancing the game.

We played a total of 3 Jackbox games in class last Friday. The first game was Monster Seeking Monster, the second was Trivia Murder Party 2, and the final one was DodoReMi. I was part of the audience during the first two games, and in the third game, I was one of the players.

As part of the audience in the Monster Seeking Monster game, the game mechanics I engaged with were choosing certain fill-in-the-blank choices for a given texting line prompt, and also getting to vote on the player I wished to date, after which I had to wait and watch what happened to the audience's votes and see if we as the collected audience matched with one of the players and gained a heart or there can be other scenarios like cursing monsters and gaining half of the heart. In this game, in particular, playing with the audience affected the game by treating us as one player and allowing us to compete with the other players to gain the most hearts and win the game. I had a fun experience with this because playing as the audience feels like a team effort to beat individual players.

Even in the next game of Trivia Murder Party 2, the game mechanics I engaged with were primarily voting to try to guess which player member would survive the round, as well as getting to test our own knowledge on whether we knew the answers to the trivia questions. Here, it was fun to see how far we, as the audience, got in trying to escape the room and how we affected the game by trying to beat the individual players and secure better escape positions to win.

Link to play: https://rajiv-mohan.itch.io/knightjump

The above image you see is a glimpse screenshot of our medieval-themed adventure video game prototype, Knight Jump! The friendly licensed music incorporated into our game was from the freesound.org website. The objective of our 2D platformer game is to jump across the various platforms while avoiding falling off or hitting the spikes, and ultimately reach a golden key to finish the level. The instructions for playing include using the left and right arrows to move our knight character left or right, respectively. Then, when you want to make the knight character jump, use the spacebar. 

We got many important insights from the alpha testing stage, which helped us improve our game. One major issue we fixed was changing our sprite's pivot to the center so that when our knight character switched from facing left to right or vice versa, it would not disproportionately change the sprite's location, as previously the sprite would unintentionally fall and end the game. Another piece of feedback many of our players gave us was to make the game level last longer and be a bit more challenging. Previously, there were only spikes between the platform jumps. Now, to make the game more challenging, as requested, we also added spikes on some of the platform steps to jump across accordingly, and nearing the end, there is this one surprise pop-up spike before jumping and claiming the victory key. Lastly, an aesthetic-related feedback we got was that the players wanted the background of the game to be more distinct, as previously we had it be the same color as our blue block steps. We changed the background color to be grey to bring in more contrast. 

For our digital prototype, my partner and I created the medieval-themed 2D platformer game called Knight Jump. My assigned roles were being the artist and designer. As the artist, I used Piskel to create sprites representing the game objects: the knight character, a key prize, dangerous spikes, the brick background, and platform steps for the character to stand on. For the menu-viewing page, I created the start, start over, and the main menu button sprites.

My first playtest player mentioned that their favorite moment of the game was dying on the super-long spikes that occur when jumping from the 3-block step to the middle single-block step. This player wanted the game to have a faster pace, meaning the knight could move faster, so that navigating the obstacle course would be more thrilling. This player also commented that they want to see the game adopt a brighter theme, with more color contrast. An important observation that occurred during this first session was noticing that changing the direction from the knight facing left to right or vice versa, the location of the sprite would change, which would make you fall and die on the spikes unintentionally. Therefore, we plan to fix this sprite-flipping issue by moving the sprite's pivot point to its center.

Next, the second playtester for our game commented that, unlike the first player, they wanted the game to have a slower pace and an easier challenge at the start, then get more complicated as it moves forward. They wanted the game to have more levels or for the levels to last longer so it would be more satisfying. Another thing that the player noticed is that, unlike the directions, which said to use the up arrow for jumping, it was actually the spacebar that worked. This player thought there was too much usage of the color blue and that there needed to be a better distinction between the foreground and background. Therefore, we plan to change the wall colors so the game's overall setup doesn't feel too jumbled.

Three games I played during the video game lab last week were “This is the only level”, “Skeleton Gelatin”, and “Today I’m Harvesting You!” One thing I observed was that “This is the only level” and “Skeleton Gelatin” were both platformer games, meaning that they had the concept of navigating the game characters using your keyboard and playing using precise movements, so that you can get your character through certain obstacles in order to go up to the next levels and explore new platforms. Additionally, the core aesthetics of both games are a challenge since the games are structured as an obstacle course, and there is sensation because you get a sense of pleasure from surviving and moving up levels in the game. 

In “This is the only level,” our character was an elephant, and in most levels, the main goal was to jump through the obstacle course without landing on the spikes, which resulted in the game mechanic known as “Sudden Death Ending,” as the elephant would die, and we would have to restart that level from the start. The other additional challenge, along with making the elephant jump through the obstacle course, was that you had to make the elephant land on a button to open locked gates and move on to the next level. 

Link to game:https://armorgames.com/play/4309/this-is-the-only-level

Similarly, in the game “Skeleton Gelatin,” you navigated the obstacle course challenge using “bubble blocks,” which you constructed according to the path in which you wanted to move, and, similar to pressing a button using elephants in the previous game, here you had to reach a skeleton skull to pass and continue on the journey. Here, one core mechanic is pattern building because you are constructing your own path pattern in a particular manner to successfully collect the skeleton and also ensure your path allows you to travel so that you can get across to the next game portion. Additionally, this game is similar to the game mechanics of “Sudden Death Ending” in the “This is the only level” game, because when you press X, all the bubbles you created vanish, and you have to reconstruct your path, which, in a way, literally is restarting your game, even though your character doesn’t die, as you still have to do all your work pattern-building work again.

Link to game: https://adamatomic.itch.io/skeleton-gelatin 

Additionally, observing others play and playing a game yourself are both valuable but different experiences. For example, I had first watched my lab partner play “Skeleton Gelatin,” and I remember I couldn’t figure out what they were pressing to construct the bubbles; however, I was able to guess that using the arrow keys was how they were moving up, down, left, and right. It was fun watching them play as I got to just visually observe all the effects happening during play, but it was only when I tried to play the game, I realized that to construed the bubble blocks you had to press z and it was more fun being able to actively interact in the game and try navigating the challenges with your movements which you have control over. Basically, watching others play is the time to analyze game tactics and figure out optimal ways to solve challenges, but actively playing the game requires skill and practice.

Lastly, different from the previous two games, I played “Today I’m Harvesting You!,” which was a dating simulation game, and the core aesthetic was fantasy as you are going on these make-believe dates and simulating certain scenarios based on the options you choose during the storytelling mechanic portion of the game. The pictorial and written stimuli during the storytelling process made the game engaging and evoked sensation as you got pleasure from making your own choices at certain points by clicking a button describing what action you would choose and seeing how that plays out in the dating game.  

Game Setting: Welcome to what was once known as the trapezoidal kingdom, a community part of the shape universe! Due to the increasing population of trapezoids, they had to relocate to a larger area, leaving behind their trapezoid-shaped layout. You are our brilliant shape architects competing to claim the most area (and land worth) to see who gets to design the new layout! 

The above was an intro to the game I prototyped, named Trapezoidal Vision (shown in the above picture)! A basic description of this game is that two players are trying to occupy the most territory by taking turns rolling a 6-sided die and placing that many trapezoid pawns on the game grid. The goal is to create larger shapes like triangles and hexagons, with your trapezoid pawns; the bigger the shape, the higher the land value. If there is an equal number of both players' trapezoids in any given shape, the players have to battle the land out with a game of rock-paper-scissors. The game ends when all land is occupied, and the winner is determined by who has the most territory land points. Overall, the core mechanics of this game include area control, push your luck, rock-paper-scissors, and victory points as a resource. 

During the first play session, I decided that I liked the game mechanism of area control, and my game partner wanted to incorporate rock-paper-scissors as the 2nd mechanism of the game. I started off my searching on the internet for simple grids for our game board, then my partner made cards to represent rock, paper, and scissors for both of us, as you can see in the picture below. Since the game board we chose had a lot of space that each player’s pawns could occupy, we decided to use a spinner over a regular die. Overall, for the time that we had, our game in construction proved to be a solid idea as we started to play our newly constructed prototype! 

Next came the second play session, where we stopped working with our partners and could make our own unique changes to the game we had started off with. I previously liked the two main mechanics of area control and rock-paper-scissors, so I decided I wanted to stick with those two as being part of my new game. The first thing I changed was our game grid; it had too many small territories to claim, and therefore, the game would take a long time to finish. Additionally, our placement of having too many tiny pawns clustered together made it hard to keep track of the game board. Therefore, I found a new trapezoid grid I really liked. I wanted my game to get a bit more creative, so I decided to make shapes using trapezoids, which would be the territory the players tried to claim. During this game phase, I came up with the following description and rule: Depending on the player’s vision or perspective, it is possible to see different beehive shapes overlapping in the game grid. Beehives can have conflict, and to resolve this, you can overlap the opponent's trapezoids in hopes of making the overlap area a part of your beehive territory. This process can happen back and forth, always changing to be in a position favoring one player over the other at any time. Whichever player spots whichever potential overlap works in their favor, can claim the whole category when it is their turn! However, after my play session with my Mom, I realized that this rule, hypothetically, can prevent my game from ending in the way I had originally envisioned. Both players can keep going back and forth overlapping each other’s beehives and just waste all their limited trapezoid pawns! You can see such a conflict in the provided image below. 

Finally, in my last session, I decided that I wanted my game to have better consistency with easy rules people could quickly understand, but once you started playing the game, it would get tricky, and one would need agency and use their critical thinking skills to decide where to place their pawns, in hopes of claiming the most territory.  Basically, I got rid of my beehive shape and gave like points to each of the shape properties; the trapezoid area was the lowest point value, and the highest was the hexagon shape. Therefore, now the game was not just about occupying areas; it was also about realizing the importance of constructing bigger chunks of area as they had a higher value. This made winning not just about owning territory but also having the most land worth points. When playing the game this time, things went more smoothly as there was now less confusion with the beehive shape being gone, and the game went slightly faster than previously, so players don’t lose focus or interest in finishing the game! Below is an image of the finished game grid, where player blue, who happens to be my opponent, won. 

In my Intro to Game Studies Class, I got to play the game “I doubt It”, also known as “Cheat” or “Bullshit”, along with four other classmates. 

In this game, a regular 52-card deck is evenly dealt to all players, where each player can only see their own deck of cards. Then, each player takes turns and has to place anywhere from 1 to 4 cards face down in the middle of the group. What card they are supposed to play at their turn is determined by the ordering of the cards, which goes from ace to king. Basically, the player who starts the game has to put down Aces, and then the second player's turn is to place 2’s, the third player's turn is to put down 3’s, and so on. The goal of each player is to empty their hand of cards and not get caught when they lie about what card they have. The fun is all about trying to guess when someone is lying or not about what cards they put down, which can be based on memory or simply just pure luck and gut feelings! 

Now, let’s look at the play-by-play session report and analyze what happened throughout our gameplay! I was player number 5. 

Game Starts

Player 1: played one ace

Player 2: played one 2

Player 3: plays two 3s

Player 4: plays one 4

Player 5: plays one 5

Player 1: plays one six

Player 3: calls bullshit (BS), was bullshit on 6, and the actual was 3, Player 1 takes all cards

Since this is a mix of guessing and a memory game, and one never fully knows all the cards another player has, it’s difficult to determine what exactly made player 3 call bullshit. It may be that player 3 had all four suits of number 6 cards (which is not as likely given that the cards are shuffled and it's still early in the game, but it's still totally possible), or more likely it's a lucky guess!  

Player 3: plays one 7

Player 4: plays one 8

Player 5 calls BS, was BS (actually J), Player 4 takes the deck

Since I was player 5, I can tell you that when I called BS, it was simply pure guessing. I did have one 8 card, and while I realized it is totally possible that player 4 can also have another one 8 card, I decided to call BS because I felt that player 4 didn’t sound confident enough when claiming what card they had based on their voice. Ultimately, I got lucky and was right with my guess!

Player 5: plays one 9

Player 1: plays one 10

Player 2: plays two J

Player 3: plays one Q

Player 4: plays one K

Player 1 here tries to call BS on player 3, but player 4 had already moved on and placed their cards. Since the BS was called after the intended turn had already passed, our group invalidated player 1’s attempt of calling BS. 

Player 5 calls BS on Player 4, was BS (was a 3), Player 4 takes all cards

Again, as Player 5, I was guessing here as I wanted to spice up the game and take my chances!

Player 5: plays two  A

Player 3 calls BS, was BS (2 and 4), Player 5 takes all cards

I lied here because I didn’t have any Aces, and I thought that if I super confidently claimed having more than one Ace, people would believe me, but unfortunately, I got caught. As a result, I had to take all the remaining cards in the played deck. In this case, I just had to pick up the 2 cards I only put down as the player before my turn had been caught lying previously already picked up the other played cards, which increased their number of cards significantly more. 

Player 3: one 2

Player 4: one 3

Player 5: one 4

Player 1: three 5

Player 2 calls BS was true, and Player 2 takes all the cards

Player 1: claims one 6

Player 2: claims four 7's (accidentally said four 5's) 

Player 2 here accidentally lost track, and our group simply called out the mistake, and let player 2 change their cards, and gave them the opportunity to place or claim the “right” card. 

Player 3: one 8

Player 4: one 9

Player 5: one 10

Player 3 calls BS, was true, Player 3 takes all

Player 5: two J

Player 4 calls BS, was BS (4 and 6), Player 5 takes all

Player 4: 2 Q

Player 1 calls BS, was BS, Player 4 takes the deck

Player 1: 2 K

Player 2: one A

Player 3: one 2

Player 5: calls BS, was true, Player 5 takes the deck

Player 3: one 3

Player 4: two 4

Player 1 calls BS, was BS, Player 4 takes the deck

Player 1: one 5

Player 3 calls BS, was BS, Player 1 takes the deck

Player 3: two 6

Player 4: two 7

Player 5: one 8

Player 3 called BS, was true, takes the deck

Player 5: two 9

Player 1: two 10

Player 4 called BS, it was BS, Player 1 takes the deck

Player 4: 4 J

Player 5: two Q

Player 1: three K

Player 5 calls BS, was true, Player 5 takes the deck

Player 1: one A

Player 2: two 2

Player 3: one 3

Player 4: one 4

Player 1 calls bs, was bs, Player 4 takes deck

Player 1: one 5

Player 3 claims bs, was bs, Player 1 takes back

Player 3: one 6

Player 4: one 7

Player 5: two 8

Player 3 calls bs, was bs, Player 5 takes back

Player 3: one 9

Player 2 calls bs, was bs, takes deck

Player 2: one 10

Player 4 calls bs, was bs, takes back

Player 4: one J

Player 5 calls bs, was bs, takes back

As the game went on and cards got rotated around and ended up with different players, calling BS started to become more frequent. 

Player 5: two Q

Player 1: one K

Player 3 calls BS, was BS, Player 1 takes the deck

Player 3: two A

Player 4: two 2

Player 5: one 3

Player 1: three 4

Player 2: two 5

Player 3 calls BS, was BS, Player 2 takes the deck

Player 3: one 6

Player 4: one 7

Player 5: three 8

Player 3 calls bs, was bs, Player 5 takes deck

Player 3: one 9

Player 4: four 10

Player 5: four J

Player 1: three Q

Player 2 calls BS, was true, takes the deck

Player 1: one K

Player 3 calls BS, was BS, takes the deck

Player 3: one A

Player 4: one 2

Player 5: two 3

Player 1 calls BS, was BS, Player 5 takes the deck

Player 1: one 4

Player 2: calls bs, was bs, takes deck

Player 2: two 5

Player 3 calls bs, was bs, takes back

Player 3: one 6

Player 4 calls bs, was bs, takes back

Player 4: one 7

Player 5: one 8

Player 1: one 9

Player 2: one 10

Player 3: one J

Player 4: two Q

Player 2 calls BS, was bs, takes back

Player 2: one K

Player 3: one A

Player 4: one 2

Player 5: one 3

Player 1: one 4

Player 2: one 5

Player 3 calls bs, was bs

Player 3: one 6

Player 4: one 7

Player 5: one 8

Player 1: one 9

Player 1 here wins as they were the first to run out of cards!