My Game Space

:A three-hour workshop where play became a training methodology and games a creative outlet. Junior Game Designers aimed at educating youngsters on the basic game design rules, its methodology and of course, its potential use in different fields of practice and knowledge. Our game journey began in Alexandria, where young creators laid the foundations of the game (game narrative, creative maps and actors, world building) that afterwards was completed in Cairo from a group of older and more experienced students (they created the storyboard, the mechanics and the digital application of the game). This kind of tale of two cities unfolded with the help of an easy-to-use mobile application.

Title of the game: Jasmeen and the Four Missions Instructors: Elina Roinioti, Marilena Agathou Organization: Hellenic Ministry of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Media, Hellenic Foundation of Culture- Alexandria

Instructors: Game Lab, Panteios University aka Elina Roinioti, Eleana Pandia, Anna Kartasi

How can we design a game using only pen and paper? How can we hack games and create our own?

Little amazing game designers learnt the basic rules of game design, did some game design exercises and created two games, a fashion-marathon video game and a rpg!

The Game Design Workshop took place during the Global Game Jam Athens 2017.

Game Design: Elina Roinioti, Eleana Pandia, Anna Kartasi, Giouli Giannakariou Game Development: George Kazamias Graphic Designer: Myrto David

A hybrid library game for young teens. The Dewey Planet is a game for children to learn how the Dewey library system works, to understand and practice upon information seeking and the process of acquiring, evaluating and using information while at the same time, to understand terms like copyrighting and copytheft.

This game combines a digital game platform where the narrative of the game unfolds, producing several different challenges (riddles, mini games) that the players need to overcome and the thrill that a physical game has to offer. Children have to cooperate in order to solve the digital riddles, to explore the library and find hidden objects, to follow digital and physical clues and make decision that would affect their future in this weird planet.

The Dewey Planet was a collaboration between the New Technology Lab of Panteion University and The Eugenides Foundation Library

Concept, script, art director: Angelos Frantzis Game Advisor: Elina Roinioti Game Development: Aisolve

An educational point and click narrative game for young teens.

Immersed into a world of fantasy and dreams, youngsters assume the role of a detective trying to solve a mystery case while at the same time, learn everything about the structure and the operation of a cultural center.

A workshop about game design and fanzines

Conept and Game Design: Elina Roinioti and Marilena Agathou Graphic Designing : Marilena Agathou and These are a Few of our Favorite Things aka Tassos Pappaioannou and Panagiota Theofilatou Zine production: These are a Few of our Favorite Things aka Tassos Pappaioannou and Panagiota Theofilatou

Evanthia was chasing a dog who had taken her scarf. Nondas was participating in a scavenger hunt. Both of them will have to confront different challenges but sooner or later fate will bring them together.

The reader of the fanzine unfolds the story of Nondas and Evanthia by playing games that were created during the Play zine workshop. Each game will help you take a step closer to the end of the story, where our two heroes meet for their first time of their lives.

Game Design: Entropika w. Artemis Papageorgiou, Elina Roinioti, Christos Koutsouradis, Stratos Bichakis

A new virus has appeared and is highly contagious! Two opposing groups will fight for the survival of the city. The Virus Team, deadly and dangerous aims to spread their disease over the city. The Guardians on the other hand are city’s last hope, its sole defenders. Will the Viruses take over the city or will the Guardians eliminate the threat once and for all? The teams’ only weapons are their speed and mobile phones! Infectopia is a variation of the game Αμπάριζα (Prisoner's base), where Viruses and Guardians employ different strategies to win. A team will need either to weaken and eliminate the other team by capturing its members, or to find and send the secret passwords that turn on the light projectors.

Infectopia @P-public Festival, Chania, Greece 2014

Infectopia @Playpublik Festival, Krakow, Poland 2014

Game Design: Elina Roinioti, Eleana Pandia, Anna Kartasi, Christina Bonarou, Foteini Papapanagiotou Web Designer: Alexandros Rigopoulos Graphic Designer: Odysseas Kartasis Actors: Valia Pandia, George Tasoulas, Kostas Mitrakas, Dionisis Christopoulos Director: Marouso Athanasiou Music Composer: George Panagiotopoulos Montage: Andreas Papazoglou Radio producers: Danae Kostaki and Afroditi Preveza (Spam Radio)

“The  Trail”  is  an  Alternative  Reality  game,  designed  to  create  a  playful  and  immersive narrative  both  online  and  offline,  as  a  part  of  the  players’   daily  life  .The  techniques  used, typical  for  the  genre,  included  creating  fake  websites,  e-mailing  the  players,  having  them interact  with  game  agents,  aiming  to  produce  a  framework  within  which  a  fictive  scenario could unfold and for as long as the game was played, become the players’  alternative reality.

The Trail lasted one week, it was a low, close to no-budget project that despite  its  very low  cost, managed to create a sense of sportsmanship and rivalry and a strong drive to see it through by its  players.

Storyline

The story of “The Trail” focuses on the investigative research of a prominent scientist, Dr. Melissandros Mandragora. After noticing some abnormal activities in the ecosystem of the village he grew up he gathered some of his colleagues to examine whether the chemtrails, which were spotted over that area, had negative effects on the environment. His investigations led to Erevosky, an air-spray company responsible for spraying a chemical substance that could allegedly cause violent outbursts and aggressive behavior. The scientist and his colleagues managed to uncover the conspiracy of some powerful people, including members of the government, journalists, and other prominent members of society. This Group secretly aimed to make the world reach a state of rage that would ignite all sorts of rivalries, quarrels, and antagonisms. Such a state of fury aimed to serve as a distraction to conceal their even darker endeavors to awaken the Great Old One, Cthulhu.4 Despite their efforts to hide their plans, they made a fatal mistake. The sudden disappearance of the lead investigator Dr. Melissandros Mandragora, was the catalyst that, finally, brought together a determined group of people (the “Shujaa” which is Swahili for hero) that needed to act as one to solve the mystery and stop the evil Group’s plan and their accomplices (the “Waliochaguliwa” which means chosen in Swahili) aiming to bring forth the end of the world.

You can read all about the design choices that we made at:

JURIEΣ, is a party game for 4-12 people. Inspired from “12 Angry Men”, the players assume the role of juries and through role playing and a little bit of detective work, they have to investigate the clues, the official exhibits and make a unanimous decision on the guilt or the innocence of the defendant. During the game, the players have to elect their Foreperson, to role play the statements ( players of their choice will impersonate the Attorney, the Advocate and the Witness), to discuss about the case and understand what really has happened, to try and persuade the others and reach a unanimous verdict without (if it is possible) any moral judgments and finally, to change the accusation. Players will also have the opportunity to see how their decision affected the life of the defendant. 

The most important element of this game is that you are not impersonate anyone, it is you that becomes a jury and it is you that have to decide if you are going to send a person in prison or not. And of course to understand how your decision can truly affect a person’s life. 

JURIEΣ participated in the 5th Board Game design Contest, EPITRAPEZIO, 2014.

You can visit our site here https://thepartygame.wordpress.com/ and facebook group https://www.facebook.com/JuriesGame/timeline

Until now we have only one case : People vs Adam Smith in Greek. Soon we are going to launch our second case People vs Clara Marjory Davis. We also preparing the English version of the game.

Human Frontier is a co-op, real life human puzzle where the players become the missing pieces of that puzzle. The game space i.e. the map of the game is a visualized version of a country’s borders. Paired and tied together with a special belt, each couple have to find their unique spot in the map and at the same time to obey specific orders. The final goal is everybody to be tied together and collaborate in order to form an impenetrable net of people, protecting their own country's border.

Human Frontier began as a custom-made street game for Athens Plaython Festival 2013. Players as contemporary Akritai had to cooperate, form and protect the borders of Byzantium. The players participate in a kind of Akritai Academy, where in order to receive the “chrism” of the courageous guardian, had to follow specific orders or else would fail.

Human Frontier in real motion https://vine.co/v/hnppX1w0jTr

Human Frontier also participated in Playpublik Festival, that took place in Krakow (2014). This time the map was depicting the borders of Krakow and the game narrative acquired a more political turn.

Before the game starts, the players received some bad news regarding an imminent danger that could mean a serious threat for their country. Their role once again was to protect their country.

In this version, the game continued online through an interactive narrative. See here: http://www.philome.la/The_Berlina

Human Frontier proved to be challenging in terms of game design. But the most important part was that it gave us the opportunity to experiment with the concept of borders, in different frames. Our ambition is to play Human Frontier for different countries in different cities and experiment with the concept of bounds and boundaries

Game Design: Elina Roinioti and Marilena Agathou Illustrations: Marilena Agathou Special thanks to our assistants: Katerina Koulouri and Stathis Lytras

The Shutdown (Participated at the Game Idea Contest, HGDA)

Game idea: Elina Roinioti and Tassos Papaioannou Illustration: Tassos Papaioannou

The Shutdown its a 2D, free to play, point and click narrative game about the overconsuming digital era, the social media mania and the recent tendency of medicalizing internet usage.

Short Description

Anne, our hero, after spending the night in hospital, is facing a new strange reality; Everybody acts like emotional zombies.

During the game the hero finds herself in a constant moral dilemma to follow the mainstream or not, while the goal is to find out what happened and decide whether she would save the world or let herself plunge into the new social reality. 

The Shutdown never found its way towards full development, but we hope that it will one day! 

P.I.G.S (Featured in Athens Plaython Festival 2012 and presented in Playpublik festival 2012)

Game Design: Elina Roinioti and Maria Saridaki Game development: Georgos Hiotis and Dimitris Arabatzis Illustration: Georgos Dimitriou

In 2012, Maria and me had an idea about designing a location based game, with elements of strategy game and a political propaganda narrative. It is safe to say that P.I.G.S was a huge project and probably beyond our strengths. There were too many technical problems to solve and too many variables to take into account and we had minimum experience in game design.

Nonetheless, we managed to overcome the obstacles and play an alternative version of the game which proved to be really fun. Ultimately, P.I.G.S taught us many things about game design and we actually received very good feedback from players and by-standers.

Interesting enough, P.I.G.S. proved to be an opportunity to understand the psychology of player, to realize that game design is about designing an experience, a total system and for that you have to always return to the player i.e. by gathering data during playtesting (informal interviews, participation etc). 

A “prophetic” project from when i worked in Some Think Creative Office Before i even think about game design, me, Marilena Agathou, Tassos Papaioannou, Maria Thymi and Mary Mourtika came up with a card game idea :

A redesigned usual pack of cards to which we added six extra cards, six superhero cards. Each of which had special abilities.

Rules: Play whatever card game you wish. Throw the special hero cards whenever it is your turn and just follow the specific rules that apply to each hero. i.e. Goyiamma: Every player has to give his cards to the player sitting on his right Fawfug: Pick two players of your choice and without looking, trade two random cards and laugh out loud.

Of course at that time, playtesting was a unknown word to us. We wanted to play our game, without ever searching for game design problems. Honestly, that proved to be an important fun factor!