cconway22Blog

You have been abandoned. The site of your grotesque form has caused your creator to flee, leaving you all alone. You have no skills. You are unable to read or write, and thus you are unable to communicate. You are also unable to use your new body to move successfully about. You can however attain these skills so you can find your creator. Only then will he accept you. It is your quest to be accepted, to abandon solitude and become loved.

What if Mary Shelley were a game designer?

Other than being a book, I think Frankenstein would work great as a board game.  Packing all of the characters and themes into one board game would be nearly impossible so I chose to only include a few. Acceptance, loneliness, and the desire to attain something more than what you were given to you by your creator in the beginning, were themes that could fit nicely into one game.

Players take the part of monsters searching for their creator. By attaining all of the necessary skills on their quest, the monsters will then be accepted by their creator. Set before the players is a game board with a few different types of landscapes, in each landscape there is a town where a specific skill can be obtained. First there is Geneva, a small town where the monsters can learn their motor-skills to aid them on their quest. Then there are The Alps where the monsters can become knowledgeable and more apt to pick up other skills on their journey. Next there are the woods, hidden in the woods is another small town where the monsters can learn a language. The plains are the last landscape where a small village can teach them how to interact with others using the language they learned.

In the book, Frankenstein always seems to be running from the monster he had created. By calling a game board piece the creator, the idea of the piece moving by the roll of a die or draw of a card could act as a nice element. A player could have attained all of their skills and is closing in on their creator only to find out they had just missed him. By giving other players the ability to move this piece when they so chose could serve as excellent sabotage element or a players life line.

With the environment pretty much established and the main objective defined, a way to move around the board would need to be decided. At the beginning of each players turn they would draw a card from the deck and roll two dice. On the card would give the player specific commodities like, meat, or bread, or corn. Rolling the dice would tell the player how many steps to go forward. All along the player is trying to get to a town to learn a skill. If a player rolls a six, but a town is 5 steps away, they would miss the town but would take 1 card from the deck, if they rolled a seven, they would take two cards from the deck and so on and so forth. The resources the players get do account for something. When a player finally does reach a town, they will need commodities to trade for a desired skill.

Some towns may require two ears of corn, and a pound of meat for a skill while villages may just want a loaf of bread. Now the creator piece comes into use. If a player has three of each commodity they can either keep them or use them to bait Frankenstein out from hiding and trick him into trading with someone whom he thinks is just a regular trader with a lot to trade. This tactic can be used to thwart a player from winning or it can be used to a players advantage. If a player has all of the skills needed, they can then use those cards to bring the creator to them so they can seek his acceptance.

ashowkati:

What if Mary Shelley was a present day video game designer?

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Due to the general setup of the characters of Frankenstein, the game would best tell the story from the perspective of Frankenstein’s Monster. He would be the best character to be used to explore the world of Frankenstein. The game would be a third-person perspective, over-the-shoulder adventure game. As a creature that is above human, you would have access to fantastic abilities in the areas of traversing and fighting. Also, as a creature that is quite literally built from parts, the ability to upgrade and attain new abilities would be introduced, introducing a great RPG element.

Themes to Explore

Some of the themes explored would be the ethics and consequences of the monster’s creation and Victor’s role in playing God.  Some more themes would include religion and politics. These could be used as story point to further conflicts and provide for some interesting obstacles in Frankenstein’s Monster’s journey to ultimately find his creator. Frankenstein the game would be a fascinating game to play, as it would throw you in the shoes of a true monster and force you to deal with the world of the game in a completely different manner. Can you just walk up to a human NPC as you would in any other game, where you might be playing as a normal human? Will that NPC treat you with hostility? Do you kill the NPC or try to reason with him or her? A few more themes to round out the experience would include purpose of life. Another would be sympathy of his towards humans, and vise versa. The idea of solitude would play an interesting role in decisions to interact with villages you come across. The Monster’s mentality would also prove an interesting story point. His rage as a true monster versus his ability to connect to his former humanity could certainly be an opportunity for interesting problems for the player to solve. The story could also play with the concept of benevolence. Albeit this would come through more in the game’s central mechanic. The game would still be called Frankenstein to honor the game’s main objective, similar to The Legend of Zelda, which doesn’t use the name of it’s lead character in the title. Some of the main storyline would include you tracking down and understanding your creator, Victor. You can do this, by intercepting letters, and interacting with their recipients.

Central Mechanic

The game would be closest to modern 3D Legend of Zelda games, where killing and fighting are not the main aspects of gameplay, and traversing the landscape is. However this would only serve as a starting point. Weapons could be implemented, however do not serve as main “battle” tools. If resorted to violence, the monster would use melee combat. Charged jumps and rams could be used to overcome environmental obstacles, as well as prove useful to quickly escape hot spots with overwhelming enemies.

The game would basically throw you in the middle of the European countryside, and would use the major plot points in the novel, as objective points. The benevolence factor would serve as the central mechanic. You could choose to pummel a scared lone traveler, threatening you with a pitchfork. Of you could hurry and get out of his sight. This could also introduce a notoriety aspect, which could serve you in your favor. Along your way, you would come across villages and towns. How you decide to interact with these villages and their residents would define how easily you can achieve your objective. You can choose to randomly terrorize the village to build notoriety, causing future encounters to alter.

Another strong core mechanic would be included which would gauge the monster’s “feelings” as you play. The sight of fire would “scare” the monster, causing crippling gameplay side effects, such as the inability to fight. The sight of a beautiful open vista would “calm” the monster, and make him “happier,” which would have various other gameplay effects.

Design

The design of the world of Frankenstein, absolutely must defy all of the current pop culture preconceptions, as a bumbling, slow moving, and crippled mass. The monster would still be larger than the humans, however, he would be more athletic in appearance, which provides for a much more satisfying player character. The general mood and design of the world would be closes to the aesthetic found in Steven Sommer’s 2004 film Van Helsing. 18th century Europe would still be the setting, however it would borrow the more stylized gothic desaturation, and use of steam punk elements from Van Helsing. The game would span a 20+ hour epic fantastic adventure, with a strong story, and enormous production value. The world would be completely free roaming with many side missions available for completion. Although their presence would be masked as “side missions” and would be more intergraded and unlabeled, for a more uninterrupted, and immersive experience.

The Graphic User Interface would be very minimal to showcase the gorgeous landscapes and to help with the overall immersion. The feelings could be displayed by faint colored vignettes around the frame. It would be interesting to leave the player to discover the meaning of say, a red vignette, versus a green one, versus the absence of one. Health could be displayed on the physical character model, and critical health could be shown by camera shakes or blurriness.

In the End

The game would capture the essence and feeling of the book, while slightly exaggerating it in various aspects, to allow it to fit better in the video game media. The intellect of the book would translate over, making it as successful, and critically acclaimed as the original source material. I hope Ubisoft sees this and actually makes it, because I really wanna play this game now, after thinking it up, heh. Writing this, also makes we much more curious to see how Electronic Art’s game adaptation of Dante’s Inferno will turn out. It could help push video games to be the socially legitimized, and respected form of art that it has so desired and deserves.

Very impressive! Can’t think of one thing I didn’t like about it. I’d really like to see this thing come to life! Get it? Come to life! Ha!

ewilde:

My favorite episode was the one in which they talked about how the player relates to the character. I agree that the more vague characters help the player connect to the character they are controlling. The example helped immensely; they had you tell bob which way to go, then they had you control bob with arrow keys. Telling Bob where to go does not make you “Bob”, but moving him with the arrow keys connects you more directly to him.

I don’t think their point was the more visually vague the character was, the better connected to him you were. I just think it was based on vagueness in general… like not telling the player what they should think, how they should feel, what exactly they should be doing next, etc. I think it’s okay to give the character properties such as gender and/or appearance because you know you are playing AS a character, like you play in any game. …… done.

Yeah Ellen I have to agree with you on your point about the vagueness of a character. When I was playing Ocarina of time I didn’t actually say to myself, “This game can’t fool me, I’m not Link!” However in Super Mario Bros. I sort of felt like I related to Mario in someway, maybe because of his simplified form. At eight years old I felt like I could have been an Italian, overall-wearing plumber with a bushy black mustache. But in truth I feel myself more connected with a detailed look character aside from a block of large colored pixels.

I thought the flash games were a very effective method for teaching me about games. I’m more of a hands-on learner so having the ability to go through the motions while learning about the various concepts was really helpful. I couldn’t really think of anything important missing from the games either. If there were any episodes that stuck out to me, it would have to be the second episode, even if it did speed through the second half at light speed. What I thought the second game was getting at was how important a manual can be? I’m normally the guy who throws the manual out. I’m not a patient person and I can normally figure things out by myself. If I run into trouble, then I’ll get the manual. This second game however, came with not F’n manual though. How was I supposed to know if the puzzle was going to rotate? How was I suppose to know that I had to make a mirror image of the puzzle. Damn that game frustrated me! I pressed space bar, I ran my hands across the keyboard, I pleaded with my computer to let me skip the puzzles. Finally I figured out the puzzle to learn more about the lesson. Then guess what happened?! I couldn’t learn about the lesson because there’s some sort of glitch in the flash movie. Overall, I was frustrated with not having a manual and I have learned my lesson. The last lesson was the least effective because it was something I already knew. Detailed looking characters are going to elicit a specific type of character we have seen before, a vague looking character is not. Clicking on an object for somebody to go to is indirectly controlling them. Duh. Basically the fourth episode didn’t really bring out too much of an emotional response for me, thus making it mostly ineffective.

Check out my portfolio website. It’s a work in progress so don’t be too harsh if you decide on giving me some much needed constructive criticism.

When we began this project I was pretty pessimistic about it. The idea that all of us were going to combine pieces from a bunch of crappy games and then separate them into three smaller boxes seemed kind of stupid, I must admit. I wasn’t really seeing any possible way that my group was going to make anything amazing out of the contents in the box we were given. We had a bunch of cards with pieces of a global map on them, a lot of geographic trivia cards, paper money, and some other plastic pieces. The first step was to separate those things into piles of what was useful and what was not.

Once we had all of the things that we wanted to utilize in our game, then we could start thinking of things we wanted to use. Did we want a trivia game, a conquest game, or a simple twist on a classic game like Checkers? We didn’t know. We had a lot of pieces and plenty of trivia cards. I think that we all had a little bit of difficulty deciding what direction we wanted to take the game and what pieces we were actually going to use. However I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a huge problem. All of us basically started throwing out a bunch of ideas and how we could use the pieces that we were stuck with. After a while we all pretty much agreed that using the trivia cards would speed up the process.

When designing the game, we wanted it to be available for all ages. Unfortunately during the design process we added something that only made it available for people 13 or older. The rules are very simple to understand but some of the questions may not be suitable for every audience. If we had to go back to the drawing board in order to make it appropriate for all ages it would only be a matter of making a few questions easier and deleting certain aspects of the limerick cards. Basically some guy thought it would be a genius idea to put limericks on the flip side of the money cards. Sure limericks are fine but if you want everyone to be able to play the game you look for the ones with cuss words and delete that shit.

As I stated before, we had so many trivia cards, it would be stupid not to use them. We also had a lot of money that we could implement into the game. Setting up the board was another thing we had some trouble figuring out. Would this board be separated into small pieces like some other revolutionary games or would it be one board like monopoly? This is a question that we dealt with for a while until we decided that it would be cheaper and easier to just keep the game on one board. In the end, I think it was one of the better decisions we made, it fits into the box nicely and no one has to worry about losing pieces that when lost make the game useless. We also had about four little mouse pieces from the awesome game Mouse Trap. Having these pieces gave us a good idea to how many people we wanted to make the game for.

So we had trivia questions that we were going to use, four mice and a bunch of cards with sections of earth’s map on them. There was however text on the back of these cards that corresponded to the different categories that the trivia cards were grouped into. Using the flip side of these cards made more sense, we didn’t have all sections of the earth so there would be pieces separated by awkward space. After these major decisions, we were left with a good way to use these trivia cards. We decided to use the cards with category text as pieces so when a player would land on one of these categories they would have to answer a trivia question that related to the space they were on. We all agreed that when players answered a question right they would get money for it.

By now, we had a pretty simple game on our hands. It needed something else though. We had half of a Checkerboard at our disposal that we didn’t know what to do with. One group member decided it would be best to use it in our game as a type of mini game. It added a new dimension. Since we were already using all of the mouse pieces, we were empty-handed. Fortunately we had six dinosaur pieces that we could use for the mini game. Getting all of the small details would prove far more difficult than the easier obstacles we had faced up to this point. Since we added another dimension to our game, we needed to figure out a way for the players to get to it. Making a warp point was what we came up with. The warp point was also what got us thinking of a theme for our game.

Out of all the different phases we went through when creating the game, I would have to say that creating a strong theme was one of the most challenging steps. It wasn’t necessarily difficult thinking of a good theme, because that part was really fun. It was all of us coming to agree on one thing. Like I said in a previous blog, it’s beneficial to have a lot of ideas at your disposal. Unfortunately it becomes difficult sorting out the ideas that can push the whole creative process forward from the ones that lead everyone down the wrong path. Even once everyone has decided on a good theme to use, it’s still important to ask yourself if the theme makes the game stronger or weaker. In our case, I think the theme of our game strengthened the design and vice-versa. It also gave us ideas for how to use our other pieces we hadn’t implemented yet.

After we had designed the game board and decided on a theme to stick with it was time to put it all together. Let me start off by saying that things didn’t turn out the way I would have hoped. We had a portion of our game professionally produced at moo.com, specifically the trivia and limerick cards. It’s too bad we didn’t know of any company that could make a game board of the same quality. The act of making the game board was the most frustrating and disappointing part of the project for me. We simply didn’t have the tools or materials we needed to make a professional looking board. Seeing the imperfections on the board we made was what frustrated me the most. We were faced with a few questions. How would the game fold up into the box? How could we protect it so it wouldn’t fall apart? How could we make it look just as good as the cards? We were able to answer these questions with one plan of attack. By cutting the board up first and then taping it back together with shiny packing tape we were able to have it stick together when it was folded, possess a professional like shine, and protect it.

In the end, the things that we saw as problems or challenges didn’t seem so bad. Those difficulties got us to the end product, which I’m really proud of. They were more like obstacles we had to work through in order to keep game development going. They almost made you think more creatively in an odd way. After all is said in done with I can’t help but think, “damn, I helped make that?!”

If none of you have have heard of the incredibly geeky game known as Settlers of Catan I suggest you put down your video game controller and race your bicycle over to your nearest comic book store and pick up a copy. Last year around Christmas time my brother sent me an email suggesting I get him this game for Christmas. I had endless material at my fingertips. Over the next few weeks I barraged him with a series of emails and voicemail messages making fun of him. On Christmas I played the game, and loved it. Yeah it took a while for him to explain the rules, and yeah it was sometimes hard to understand him because he kept having geek fits, but there were a lot of things to know. Eventually we began the game. You start off by setting up all these different tiles, which you come to learn are types of landscapes. There is rock, wool, brick, wheat, and wood. In the rules you find out that the settlers, you, will use these different resources to become the most powerful on the continent of Catan, hence the name. There are also ocean tiles that give the continent a boundary. Some ocean tiles even have little symbols on them, which basically tell you that that tile is a port at which you can trade some of your resources for others. The aspect of the game that captivated me the most was that the board was separated into tiles instead of one complete board. This aspect made for a different game every time it was played. True, there were the same rules, but when the tiles were randomly set up settlers would have to adjust their strategies and mode of attack. When settlers start the game they know that they eventually want to get 10 points. This is done by building settlements, cities, long stretches of road, large armies, and other buildings like chapels. As the game progresses though, they realize that the people they are competing against are also the ones that could potentially help them win the game. Other than using a port to trade their resources, they can trade with their opponents. One player may need wheat to build a city while another player may need wood to build a road. Players help each other and cripple each other throughout the game, an aspect that makes game play extremely addicting. Ultimately the object of the game is to become the most powerful, the one with the most settlements, the longest roads, and the one with the largest army. These things can be attained through a variety of methods and with the boards landscape differing from game to game, some of those methods are not always the easiest to carry out. This game is great fun for the whole family, but don’t take my word for it. - Cue Reading Rainbow theme -

ashowkati:

This week I played The games Dead Like Ants and For A Change.

Enjoying these games would be a huge stretch. But if i had to choose one, i suppose it would have to be Dead Like Ants, simply because i completed it… accidentally. Both game experiences were grueling and immensely frustrating. It probably doesn’t help they they were my first attempts at Interactive Fiction. To be honest, I think Dead Like Ants left a bad taste for the genre, so when it came time for For A Change, I didn’t have much motivation to finish it.

This may contain game spoilers.

I get what Dead Like Ants did. And I actually really liked the concept. However, this doesn’t work well for this genre. Again, this was my first real IF game, so this game might come as a delight to the more experienced or hardcore IF player. It would be like having you die constantly in a game of Mario Bros. only to find out that that actually is how you win. Not very rewarding. I didn’t notice the “points” I was receiving and assumed it was kicking me back to the Queens chamber to try again. I was about to quit the game and give up when I noticed that the last time was different. And I was the queen. I put it all together and realized what had been happening. It didn’t do the best job conveying it. It took me over half and hour before I gave up on the first creature and moved on. Very little of this game was enjoyable. Perhaps this wasn’t the best game to start with in IF, or perhaps I am just not a fan of IFs in general. It is clever. Just not right for me.

I didn’t get anything accomplished in For a Change. Nothing i typed would work or do anything. Even the hints didn’t help me in this one, (as if they helped me in Ants) That was the other frustrating thing. Because I didn’t pick up on the fact that I was really doing well in Ants, the hints angered me even more than the game itself. Text based games offer the least amount of stimulation. At least these two did. There was no discernible tone or theme, and didn’t pick up on the cynicism of Ants. I didn’t even know I was dealing with the creatures until the first one killed me. I can much more appreciate games with at least, some sort of visual element. Neither game was written well enough to get away with it.

You didn’t get any theme or images by just reading a few sentences?! If not a real theme, you have to at least feel like you’re trapped in hell with no way out. I actually started sobbing at one point.

Well to be perfectly honest, I pretty much disliked both the games I had to play. I was utterly confused with the whole thing at first. Even with the hints I was unsure of what to type sometimes. I think the reason I disliked the games so much is that you have to speak it’s language to get anything accomplished. If it were me programming the game, I would make it so that if someone typed in something incorrectly, the program would suggest things to say that would push the game forward. I just got, “this story doesn’t recognize this,” which was basically the program saying, “You’re shit out of luck pal!” Currently I’m learning the programming language known as action script. Just like these two games, you have to speak the language of action script to get anywhere. Lately I’ve been trying to accomplish more complicated tasks in Flash to get things done. Every once in a while….okay a lot of the times I won’t speak action script’s language correctly and an error will come up. Most of the time these errors don’t help me, they simply let me know that I screwed up. If I had to choose one game that I liked more than the other it would have to be, Dead Like Ants, for several reasons.

Dead Like Ants appealed to me, not necessarily because of the game-play but the whole feel of the story. The images that my mind created when I played this game were of Zelda and the middle ages. The rooms felt somewhat like old-school Myst. I didn’t really care for the queen that much. The fact that she ignored me or wouldn’t give me the information I wanted made me think that she was kind of a bitch. Again, that’s because I really couldn’t speak the question. Hell, maybe she was a nice gal!

In the end, if I spoke the languages correctly and knew what the hell I was doing, I would probably like the games. I almost think that if a book and a puzzle had a baby, this is the kind of game that would come out. There’s obviously a point that we are supposed to reach but we can take our time in reaching it. Rather than have images do all the talking, the player makes up the images in their head.

This may be why people tend to like a book better than the movie that was made from it. All of us probably have different images in our head when we play this game. For instance, when I read, “the tree moving in the wind,” I saw a tree slowly blowing in the wind in my head. The fact that it was slowly blowing could have been because my mind created a specific feel for the game when I read the first few sentences or it could have been because I was moving through the game so slowly. It definitely feels to have for depth than just an interactive fiction. I had conversations with a bitchy queen! I felt a sense of space when I was walking in and out of rooms.

I couldn’t really see much of a difference between the games. The language of each was equally frustrating. If anything, the dialogue seemed much shorter in Death Like Ants.

awilke:

Steven Sojka and Amy Wilke

Assignment 2

New Game board rules:  Get off the “island” with 3 eggs.

1. Each player starts with 3 eggs and 1 dinosaur on the board.

2. Player draws UNO card and moves number of spaces on card.  Player tokens can move any direction but can not switch direction once they have started moving a direction.  Unless they have reached the end of the board.  If 0 is drawn the player does not move any spaces but gets to roll the die.

3. Player rolls dice after moving token.

4. Player can move dinosaur number of spaces on die.  dinsaur tokens can move one direction once they reach the end of lava field this is symbolized by the direction the dinosaur faces.

5. If a dinosaur lands on an oppents space, that player loses 1 egg and puts the egg in the “volcano pit.”

6. If number on dice matches number on card, that player may steal an egg from any opponent.

7. If a player token lands on another players dinosaur the player with the dinosaur gives up an egg to the player with the player token or that player can regain an egg that was put in the ‘volcano pit.”

Getting of the island with a total of three eggs can be an interesting motivational goal.  I like the mechanic of dinosaurs with eggs and the adversion to the volcano pit.  The rules are simple and clear and the dynamics of the mechanics keep you activly interested in the game.

Amy J. Wilke

Very concise and easy to understand. Paste those to the box.