NatKat's Rambles

After listening to everyone's presentations, I think it was very interesting to see how everyone had very different implementations and mechanics added into their games. With my own game, we initially didn't plan for it to be playable for multiple players, but rather have NPC cars for the player. However, since gaining feedback from my professor, me and my team were able to get a build in where 2 players can play on 1 laptop at the same time, giving the player motivation to really race against their opponent.

Since I usually work with programmers from the SJSU Game Development Club and artists from the Shurunkenheadman Club, it was strange to work with people outside of that bubble. There was a mixture of people really interested in getting into the game development industry or people who would just want to get credits for the class. So as a result, some people didn't put as much time into their games as they would've liked due to their focus on other classes.

Our final project is going to be a our final prototype for our game, "California Roadrage," a race game where it has the option for a split screen so that multiple players can play the game at once so that they can race against each other. While racing, there are a few obstacles that would appear on the road that will slow the player down, such as cones, going off road, plastic bags, etc.

In the beginning, it was only Devin and I on the tea, where we added in the simple layout of the game, where we had a lap counter, while the car was moving on the track.

From the initial prototype, there has been a lot of feedback in terms of the camera angle and how sensitive the movement of the car was. Not only that, but the turns were extremely sharp for the player, making it difficult to navigate through the roads. Not only that, but they wanted to add in some other small details by adding more cars into the game to make it competitive, adding a timer, adding more obstacles, etc.

Discuss mechanics and your experience with your peers in the game.

There are many different kinds of mechanics in each kind of Jackbox game; however, when it comes to the core mechanics, it settles down to bringing a large group of people together to play a group activity game, where people can use their phones or tablets as their controllers. Not only that, there a variety of games to choose from, whether that's playing a horror trivia game, entering into a dating competition, or even playing a rhythm game. Since I've played the horror trivia multiple times already with peers in the past, I've noticed that these questions can be very difficult to answer, especially for those who are new to the game. Even as a veteran of the game, I still don't quite remember the answers to the question itself. There are even some events that can be extremely unpredictable, which can make the game fun for every time that it's played. Events become even more unique with more players added into the game, because each player can easily impact the events of what will occur in the game. This type of game is meant to emphasize quick responses, while adding a voting and social interaction system.

How does playing with an audience affect the game?

California Roadrage

Credits:

Artist: Natalie Wu

Programmer: David Kamin

Sound Effects by: DRAGONSTUDIO and Universfield

Known Issues:

movement of the car can be extremely sensitive

the boost works in the direction that the player is travelling in, which can get confusing since there's arrows

turning can be an issue with how sharp the turns are

players getting dizzy playing due to the sensitive movement of the player and the camera angle and its smoothing

Instructions:

WASD to move

About the Game and its Journey:

California Roadrage takes place in the "lovely" roads of California, where you, the player drive on the 101 Highway from in a loop, travelling between SoCal and NorCal. There will be some boosts and sharp turns throughout the game to really give that sense of frustration for the player, almost as if they're road raging.

Unfortunately, there were more aspects that we wanted to put into the game, such as boosts and more obstacles, but due to time constraints, they were never added into the game. Not only that, we wanted to create this game, restricting the player to 4 lanes, but our programmer struggled to get the gist of Unity. So, we simplified it down to 1 lane instead. As the artist, I would be up for it to continue on with the game, but it would ultimately depend on the programmer and whether he wants to continue with it or move on with another game.

California Roadrage

Role: Artist and Game Designer

How did your players respond to your game?

When players were responding to my game, they were having a difficult time trying to move, thinking that the controls are extremely sensitive. They recommended having the camera angle of the car be different as well, because the constant spinning from the camera after taking multiple turns can easily make the players feel dizzy at times. They also recommended having a timer so that they can time themselves as they race through the track. However, all of them thoroughly enjoyed the sound effects that were added into the game.

What do you plan to change or keep in your game based on this feedback?

This Is The Only Level

OffBeat!

A Dance of Fire and Ice

These are some of the games that I played for the game lab. Out of the 3 games that I played, A Dance of Fire and Ice and This Is The Only Level have a lot in common in terms of mechanics due to the fact that these games require a lot of replayability in order to understand how the game works. This is the case with Offbeat as well since it's considered to be a rhythm game within 1 level; however, these two games have a variety of levels, despite using very similar mechanics. With This Is The Only Game, the creators use the same level format, yet have the players use different methods on moving the elephant, whether that's by arrow keys or the mouse, and using those as the player adapts to every new level environment. It's a similar feel with A Dance of Fire of Ice, where it has the player remember features from past levels in order to better understand the rhythms of the next couple beats. Offbeat uses these similar methods in order to create a rhythm game combined with a level design that contains obstacles, like the spikes in This Is The Only Game.

Game Description:

Each player has their own set of 24 pieces set to each side of the board, along with 6 extra to spare, but they’re in the discard pile. In a world of gambling, 2 players test their luck to see which rule/minigame they will have to play next as they draw the next card. Each player needs to try to keep as many pieces on the board for as long as they can as they draw the cards. Once they draw a card, the number/value will determine whether they need to discard, give up their pieces to the other player, or gain some pieces. The game ends when one player loses all their pieces, leaving the other player to win.

Session 1: Me (NW) vs Noah Jones (NJ)

As we played through the game, my and my partner thought there were too many rules that causes us to lose pieces. So, we decided to switch up the rules a bit, especially changing the rule for the queen, because just being able to get another turn felt a little boring to us, especially for a Queen card, which is meant to be something more special. We even changed up the Ace to be on a 50/50 so that the game can be a little less brutal to the players. However, adding these factors did make the play time a lot longer. In the end, I won the game.

Session 2: Playing against classmates

In this session, I was in a group of 3, so I decided to let the other 2 players play the game as I observe them. As they played through the game, they didn't like the fact that certain rules were meant to last throughout the game, such as the rule with the number 5 card, where players couldn't say a certain rule. So, as they played, I changed up that rule so that when 1 player breaks the rule, then the rule doesn't apply anymore. They thought of the rule to be super annoying, though the challenge of remembering all of these rules was my original intent for the game. With this rule change, it did make the game go by much slower than it should have. The game ended up being cut short since we didn't have enough time to play during class.

Session 3: Playing with a friend, Giselle

Outside of class, I had one of my friends, Giselle, play this game with me. I explained a lot of the rules for her. She didn't have a lot of feedback for me, but after making some of the changes from previous feedback that I made, the game lasted for over 30+ min. However, she did like some of the changes that I made once I explained how the rules were like before. She didn't think she would have had the mental capacity to remember all of those rules at one time. I think I would have to add in some mechanics to make the game shorter, for those who would want to play a shorter board game. I ended up winning the game.

Core Mechanics:

Players each roll die to determine who goes 1st

Draw 1 card.

Follow the rules as said on the side of the board game.

Rules: based on the number/value tells whether you lose/gain pieces, or the players would have to play through a minigame to determine whether they win or lose pieces.

Ace: Roll a dice, if even lose half your pieces (round up)

2: Gain 3 pieces

3: Lose 2 pieces

4: Lose 3 pieces

5: You can't speak a specific word, the player gets to choose it. If said, lose 1 piece.

6: Both players lose a piece.

7: Steal a piece from the enemy's board.

8: The player says a word and the next player needs to say a word that rhymes. This continues until one player runs out, they lose 2 pieces

9: The player picks a category and other players continue to say words of that category, if one runs out, lose 2 pieces. 

10: Start by saying 10, the next player can say a number 1 or 2 lower, keep going until someone says 0 or below, they lose 2 pieces.

J: Play never have I ever: If a player A (the one drawing the card) speaks about an event that they did that player B has also done, player A loses 1 piece. If player A says an event that player B hasn't done, player B loses 1 piece. 

Q: When finishing a sentence, the player picks a word/phrase to end. If one player runs out of words to rhyme, they lose a piece. 

K: Both players add 1 piece. 

Blog Post 2: Game Lab I

Group: Natalie, Patrick, Rajiv, Zoee, and Richard

Game Name: I Doubt

Rules:

Using a deck of 52 cards, the players can play 1-4 cards onto a stack. When they play, they need to claim the number of cards that are played, the value of the card (ex: ace-king). The value has to be one above, one below, or the same as the value given from the previous card.

Any player can call “cheat” or “BS” as the player plays, and when they do, the cards they played are revealed. If it turns out what they claimed was a lie, the cheater takes the entire stack back into their hand.

However, if the cards turn out to be the truth, the player who called “cheat” would have to take the stack. The way to win is when one of the players has no cards left, leaving 3 players remaining.

--Let the game begin!--

Player 1 (P1): Richard

Player 2 (P2): Zoe (it shows Player 4 for her on the image, but she was labelled Player 2 when we started playing)

Player 3 (P3): Patrick

Player 4 (P4): Natalie

Player 5 (P5): Rajiv

ROUND 1: We were pretty confused about the rules of the game in the beginning as we were reading through the rules. We didn't realize that we needed to claim type of card that needs to be played (spade, heart, etc.). We also didn't realize our cards needed to be 1 above or below the previous card.

P1: claimed a king of spades

P2: claimed a 2 of spades

P3: claimed a 8 of hearts

P4: Puts down 2 10s

P5: claimed a 5

ROUND 2: We ended up getting a little confused on whether we should be placing the number of cards we should be putting down or the number itself. (2 cards vs 2 of hearts). It turns out we need to place down number of the card rather than the number of cards. We weren't sure on how many cards we should place down, but we've placed down however many we want to get rid of.

P1: claims 6 of spades, they doubt

P2: claims 2 7 of spades

P3: claims 2 8 of hearts

P4: claims a club of 9 and a spade of 9

P5: claims a club of 10

ROUND 3: At this point, we started to kind of understand the game, knowing that we need to be 1 above the previous card. So more people are starting to call BS on each other.

P1: claims a Jack of hearts, P3 called BS, turns out to be a King of Diamonds, P1 takes the stack

P2: claims Queen of Diamonds

P3: claims King of spades, P2 called BS and lost, P2 takes the stack

P4: claims 1 club Ace

P5: claims 2 of hearts

ROUND 4: There was less calling BS here, which could be likely because the other players were scared of making the wrong call.

P1: 3 of spades

P2: 4 of spades

P3: 5 of spades and 5 of diamonds

P4: 6 of hearts

P5: 7 of diamonds

ROUND 5: As this new round tenses up, the players are still scared to take action. However, P4 realizes that the more the players play their cards, the less options that they have to play their true cards, making it more likely for them to lie. So, they took initiative to call BS when they realized that they have the card P2 has. However, P2 and P5 ended up mixing up the order of the numbers, but we let that go.

P1: 8 of hearts

P2: 2 of diamonds, P4 called BS, P2 lost and takes the stack

P3: 9 of diamonds

P4: 10 of spade and 10 of heart

P5: Queen of spades and Queen of heart

ROUND 6: Since P4 took initiative to call BS more, more of the other players started calling BS on each other.

P1: King of diamonds

P2: Ace of diamonds

P3: 2 of spades

P4: 3 of club

P5: 4 of club, P3 Patrick doubts, loses and takes the stack

ROUND 6: The room is getting more tense, with players calling BS on each other, but they keep losing. Since the players here didn't play I Doubt before, they likely don't realize that the types of cards are actually beginning to decrease as they play.

P1: 5 of club

P2: 6 of hearts, 6 of spades, and 6 of diamonds

P3: 7 of hearts

P4: 8 of diamond

P5: 9 of clubs, P1 called BS, loses and takes the stack

ROUND 7: P4 is actually running out of cards at this moment, but decides to stay silent about it since the other players aren't really paying attention at how many cards she has.

P1: 10 of clubs

P2: Jack of Clubs

P3: Queen of hearts and spades, P2 calls BS and loses, takes stack

P4: King of Hearts, runs out of cards, and as soon as P5 places their card, she claims to run out, knowing no one called BS on her

P4 wins the game!

Final Thoughts:

When I started playing at the internet arcade, some of the buttons felt a little finicky to me because the placement was unfamiliar. Specifically, in Root Beer Tapper, I was not used to the game's controls. I'm used to playing gacha games on the Windows laptop, where I use WASD to move, but I had to use the arrow keys instead. I thought I could use the mouse button to fill the root beer, but it was actually the Ctrl button instead. I kept mashing buttons until I eventually gave up and checked the reviews. However, once I got the hang of the controls, I started liking the gameplay for this, because it reminds me of Diner Dash, but is more picky about how the player performs. This is because a single mistake can cost the entire game. For example, I would make an extra root beer by accident, and would end up losing the entire game.