Final Major Project: Spectacle

Posted on 27th October 2022 by Mingyi Liu

1. FMP: Critical Reflection

1.1 Final Outcome

Description

Spectacle is an experimental art game, it was designed to emphasise subjectivity against Spectacle; In moving from the physics-free perspective to the third person, the player will dissolve the Spectacle itself by collect the related symbols and find a way of acquiring a new form of individual, gaining the power of the symbols to look into the eyes of his/her off-screen self in the end.

1.2 Game Flow

L1 EYEBALL VILLAGE

THIS VILLAGE FULL OF STRANGE CREATURES AND BUILDINGS WITH THE SYMBOL OF EYES. Player need to collect all eyeballs to generate a physical substitute. This scene is designed to be the exist form of Spectacle.

L2 MICROBIAL POND

The player gains an entity after collecting the eye, becomes an eye and can swim in the pond, just like a single-celled organism (just like a straw worm) in a nutrient solution. Here, the player encounters many other beautiful cells. This scene is designed as an experimental pool of the elements that make up the Spectacle.

LEVEL 3 EYE TO EYE

Players need to find ways to combine elements to form a witch’s face and fit her with eyes. Ultimately, the player will look into the eyes of herself. I tried to complete the dissolution of the spectacle with this ending.

1.3 Aethestics

1.4 Critical Reflection

Connection with final essay

In my thesis “The perfect spiritual model? – How can we design experiences into meaningful In my thesis “The perfect spiritual model? – How can we design experiences into meaningful game contents”, I divided real experiences into different subjects, studied a universal approach to transforming real experiences into meaningful game contents and derived a framework for experience design based on case studies of “Sayonara, Wild Heart” and “Stray”. This framework was then applied to the production of my FMP：

This process can be broadly divided into：

Find the essence of the experience
Divide key elements from the experience

In my attempts to use the framework as a starting point for experiential game design, I have followed the steps involved in the framework, such as defining the subject type and the goal of the experience in the first step. However, while this framework can also be helpful in scope, it is better used for testing existing games. For example, in the first version of my proposal for experiencing the sensation of ‘distraction,’ I tried to break down the feeling of being distracted into the steps of the game and wrote the initial experience of the game accordingly:

GAME FLOW	DETAILS	GAMEPLAY	VERBS	SCENE
Start game interface menu	Replicas of countless everyday objects in a floating state	null		A
level selection interface menu	The camera pans down and reveals that the source of these images is the protagonist’s brain. Three of the images are icons for level selection	null		B
The protagonist gets up and prepares to start the day, but finds it impossible to concentrate	Eyes, nose, mouth floating animation			1-1
He stared at a rabbit decoration on the table, and suddenly the rabbit moved and jumped around on the table		mouse up	mouse up	1-2
He tries to eliminate this rabbit by clicking on it, trying to get rid of it		mouse click	mouse click	1-3
Rabbits begin to breed infinitely, the screen is full of rabbits		ani		2-1
When he eliminated all the rabbits on the screen, the screen appeared a rabbit hole		mouse click		2-2
Click on the rabbit hole to enter a light and fantasy world (attention zoo or playground, consisting of alienated everyday objects)		mouse click		3-1

In this design process, I did not spontaneously follow this framework, but came after writing part of it to check whether this was a human or non-human experience, what the goal of this experience was and whether it would give the player the same feeling. This is not to deny the validity of the framework in my thesis, but it has to be acknowledged that this framework is more appropriate as a reference.

In the current project, I want to design an experience with not one but multiple subject transitions, where the game presents the process of no physical object – physical object – no physical object, with a first-person-third-person-first-person camera switch as a sign of the subject transition.

Cooperation

I worked with a student from MA Illustration and Visual Media, who provided me with the 2D artwork, and I designed the game and level art.

Comversation is quiet flat, not strong enough to hold the narrative.
Some details remain to be added to fill the world.

2. FMP: Concept and Insprition

2.1 inspiration

The spectacle of a society completely dominated by the mass media, where all tragedies and controversies are treated as a show, and all events, big and small, are turned into entertainment. Because people also desire spectacle, society has begun to focus only on the production of magnificent fireworks.

I want to explore the relationship between attention and spectacle using a medium with diverse methods of interaction.

2.2 aims and objectives

framework

I Created a digital environment of three levels that contains the eye elements, it that way I want to present different angle about Spectacle through the symbol of eyes. After roaming around exploring the village of eyeballs (the already existing form of the spectacle) as a disembodied character and collecting eyeballs (the constituent elements of the spectacle), the player enters the experimental pool, becomes one of the eyeballs and undergoes a baptism in which he/she finally acquires a new form of life, gaining the power of the eyeballs to look into the eyes of his off-screen self. In the game, there are detailed input-output system allow player to interact deeply.

2.3 Brainstorm

I made some brief at the beginning try to identify the best one to express the experience of being human or non-human, and things may happen among them:

1. The beginning is from the father’s point of view, where the game is played for the last time with his son, and the son stays where he is at the end, with the father far away, and finally from the son’s point of view. Each level corresponds to a different moment in the life of a different son, and each level uses the PROCESSING bar for points. There is a UI on both sides of the head showing the two players and the narrative pops up through the UI of the avatar in an isometric style.

2. A man trapped in the crater of a planet begins to hallucinate surrounded by stars, turning the twinkling stars around him into the home of his dreams, and eventually he dies and becomes one of those hallucinations.

3. The man in the sensory zoo is surrounded by countless symbols and sounds, visual information and gets lost, he spells out the map of the zoo and follows the route of each park to turn these variants back into animals and eventually walk out.

2.4 Case study and reference

The night journey

The game begins in the center of a mysterious landscape on which darkness is falling. There is no one path to take, no single goal to achieve, but the player’s actions will reflect on themselves and the world, transforming and changing them both. If they are able, they may slow down time itself and forestall the fall of darkness. If not, there is always another chance; the darkness will bring dreams that enlighten future journeys.

Then I began to think:

What is the game mechanic of enlightenment? How can we model such an intensely personal yet archetypal experience in a game?

MEDITATION GAMES

Meditations is the collection of games that followed from this project. Each project is different – some are very short, some are more complicated. Some meditations are light and curious. Other meditations might be sad or difficult, curious or introspective, personal or playful. Each day will allow you to explore another creators’ work and thoughts.

Look deep into one experience and divide that into small frames, and figure out how to translate into game experiences. Those two inspired me on focus on the interaction. So I want to the detailed input-output system in UNITY.

PANORAMICAL

Manipulate the look, sound, and feel of more than a dozen mesmerizing landscapes in this immersive musical adventure through space and time.

I referenced its use of a physics-free perspective and used it in the first level of the project. In addition to this, I also used his art style to create a similar nostalgia filter using the unity plugin post-processing.

3. Development

overall goal

timeline

why this project among all ideas?

3.1 Technology

Ai: Patrol

Fungus

Based on the reference game, I have broken down the control system into tables, scripted and implemented the different sprites according to the functions required.

INPUT	DETAILS	OUTPUT	FEEDBACK	Target
mouse up	once entered	ScaleUp	dymamic sprites	aesthetic
	once entered	sprites avoid mouse	dymamic sprites	narrative
mouse click	short click	delete elements	destroy	mechanic
	short click	the number of elements remain	transform	mechanic
mouse drag	from the scene	the number of elements remain	picture combination	mechanic
	from the storage	add elements	decoration	narrative aesthetic

verbs chart

I made a mind map of the programming requirements I needed, categorised them by function and highlighted them in red when they were complete, to keep track of the development process, besides that, I also linked the tutorial for each function for the purpose to rocord the author and form a library.

3.2 Level Design

3.3 Art and sound

In order to present a grotesque and absurd art style, we referenced HÄXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES.

Kirstenson denied the existence of witches, believing them to be old-time women who were disabled or weak, or mentally ill or sexually repressed nuns who were tortured to the point of confusion and forced to confess to their sins in order to survive, inventing stories of witchcraft to testify against others, including themselves, hence the increasing number of witch hunts.

WITCH HUNTING IS ALSO A PHENOMENON INFLUENCED BY THE SPECTACLE, PEOPLE ARE ATTRACTED TO THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM THEMSELVES, AND SOMETIMES THIS GAZE IS NOT BENEVOLENT. In order to present a process of player merges with spectacle, the world meed to be weird enough and different from the normal world.

So after I designed some features of creatures and buildings and some environmental elements, Kai made some draft of some of them.

Then we wanted to hide the face in the scene, so we made an experimental attempt to make a prototype of this image through paper sculpture. Putting together a pop up book of sorts will help me think about the game and how to explore my subject from a different perspective.

Level1

Level2

Level3

Effect

Shader

postprocessing

3.4 Narrative

3.5 playtest

dev log

DATE	ELEMENTS	DETAILS
8.15	narrative	reference
10.20	mechanic	M1：click and destroy
10.27	mechanic	M2：drag and drop
10.27	mechanic	M2：drag and drop，failed to active the pop up of “WIN”
11.2	TA	add the effect of post processing retro on the main camera
11.4		add load scene buttion
11.5	mechanic	M3：endless run just like google
11.9		1. Extend multiple mouse button functions to increase interactive feedback 2. Use dotween to achieve more juice feedback 3. Initial level design 4. level selection (scroll effect)
11.10		1. Add more input and outout dynamics to prepare for more diverse interactions (using dotween) Question: How to load next scene not by trigger box collider but through Calculate the number of “coins” collected or processing bar?
11.11		1. added different sound effects to the mouse input and the effect of scaleup 2. intend to use the processing bar to record the completion of the level, wrote three versions of the story and one of the story of the level design So far, the basic game functions have been implemented
11.12		detailed level design，listed input and output features

Desktop 2022.10.31 – 02.53.17.11.mp4

Mushroom Adventure

Posted on 22nd June 2022 by Mingyi Liu

Presentation

The concept

A. Theme:

I intended to use the process of ‘The Midnight Gospel’ to build a walking simulator game that depicts a bomb going off during dialogues between humans and non-humans, and therefore express my thoughts about anti-war.

The mushroom manipulates the boy's body to see the nature it grew up in from a human perspective, encounters a bomb in a village that wants to kill itself, and ends up watching the bomb explode with the human boy - a visual feast for the mushroom, as fantastic a hallucination as it makes for the human, and death and war for the human boy.
Full of nonsensical and hilarious dialogue throughout but leading to a heavy ending.

B. Brainstorming (try to list some features that reinforce the theme):

a. 2.5d perspectives.
 Put 2d sprite in a 3d environment to create a stylized effect, to create a feeling of illustration book.

b.walk simulator.
 Refer midnight in paris and the midnight gospel, try to mix the animation, movie with game through lots of text dialogue, but players can still explore the world as well (which requires the world has to be highly explorative)

c.Health system.
The life value of mushroom head and the boy are keeping lost along with time, player should maintain the life of both the mushroom head and the boy, and they require different props (which also encourage player to explore the world).

C. elements by category( see mindmap below):

a. Technical element
   unity, fungus, dialogue system, 
b. Mechanism element

c. Narrative element
d. Aesthetic element

Game details:

Name:Mushroom Adventure
Type:Walking simulator
Aims and objectives:Mushroom head operates a boy's body manage get back to the top of mountain
Tool:unity

Game design mindmap

This mind map covers all aspects of the project in terms of mechanics, technology, art, and narrative, and I’m used to documenting my design decisions and implementations in this way.

You can access this link for a close view if interested:

https://gpdjepk6ed.feishu.cn/mindnotes/bmncnTZRLNZ4nlmQQSNOnVahYva#mindmap

Game dev flow

Playtest

Reflect

The message I wanted to convey was not really strong.

The problem may be that the players are not very involved. I had some ideas for mechanics to keep the player engaged, but they weren’t directly related to the story. I was thinking of splitting the story into two parts, the main story and the fragmented narrative, with the main story progressing by completing levels and the fragmented narrative being earned by collecting a certain number of items in individual levels. However, due to time constraints, I only implemented the main story draft, and for the fragmented narrative part, I implemented the collection function, and did not have time to design the content.

2. Not bold and experimental enough in presentation.

3.Not good enough at time control. I spent too much time to learn how to achieve some mechanics and art effects in unity, do technical arts to make it amazing on the aesthetic level.

Collaboration Unit-Stay with dolly girl

Posted on 16th March 2022 by Mingyi Liu

0.Group members

NAME	MAJOR	DUTY
Mingyi Liu	*MA Game Design*	*Games Design& Arts*
Yunke Wang	*MA Game Design*	*Games Design& Engineering*
Shih Kai Chuan	MA illustration and Visual Media	Narrative Design& Arts
Anlin Liu	*MA Game Design*	Interactive Design& Arts
Ziyu Yun	*MA Game Design*	Interactive Design& Arts
Peiwei Luo	*MA Game Design*	PM& Sounds Managements
Jingya Li	MA Sound Arts	Sound effects
Dereck	MA Sound Arts	BGM
William Carkeet	MA Sound Arts	BGM

1.Design Details

1.1 tools

Our group use Lark for recording meeting notes, writing design documents, file transfer and recording playtests, we use unity to do game development , we use Plastic SCM for version control.

1.2 game concept

In the game there are tutorials that teach players how to move and how to jump to fit the physical logic and behavioural norms of the game world. At the beginning of our lives, we have parents who teach us how to walk, express ourselves and a range of social behaviours; who teaches them these rules? Perhaps the answer can be found in the interaction with non-living beings. We want to focus on how the brain learns these behaviours that we take for granted in our interactions with the world.

So perhaps the use of robots as vehicles for narrative design can replicate this learning process. Many films and TV shows use robots to discuss the questions of “who we are, where we come from and where we are going”. In Blade Runner, for example, the company that created the bionic man implants them with fake childhood photos to trigger associations and thus complete their self-awareness; in Westworld, the creators of the robots provide them with a ‘maze’ of puzzles to induce them to think on their own as they solve them; in In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there is a company that specialises in memory erasure, making it as easy as eating and sleeping；in Black Mirror Season 5: Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, there is a robot doll based on a pop star idol, Ashley O, Ashley’s agency copied all the information in her brain to create a chat machine with the same name and could be bought as a normal toys.

Therefore in the concept of this project I have referred to the concepts in the above works, and then I combined those with the concept of “My Odyssey( Player as a personality back-up trying to find a way to avoid be deleted )”—one of my game that was developed in 2019—and got the final version of the game concept: if a well-grown adult backed up herself, and upload herself to a robot or a device, there must be a process for her to fit in and Activating brain functions again.

So in this game, I created a company that sells companion robots and set up a triangle around the company: an elderly couple, a memory engineer and the company, all three of which intersect in this virtual world because of the companion robots.

When thinking about the theme of the game, we also considered the issue of naming it and eventually found the most suitable name for it—“stay with dolly girl”. 60s Dolly Girls was a fashion trend when girls would dress up in childrens-style clothing. This concept can perfectly connect the motivation of the engineer(player), the old couple and the company; as player have to fill the brain of the doll robot to finish the job and also finish the game goal, the old couple want to keep their dead daughter by their side forever, and the company aims to sell the idea of doll robots will provide the eternal companionship to customers.

1.3 game narrative

The player is a personality-filling company worker whose daily job is to fill the robot with false childhood memories by linking the neurons in the brain in order to complete the robot’s cognitive behavior.On this day, he receives an unusual, assignment from an old couple whose daughter has died, and the player is asked to populate a doll robot with a digital backup of her dead daughter.
The entire game is a process of the player fitting in her daughter’s digital soul into the robot’s physical body (a process of synchronization), so that each level is a link to the completion of this digital soul cognition, corresponding to a different content of each level is also linked to the daughter’s preferences during her life.

1.4 game mechanism

There are three main space in the gameplay screen:

a.feedback space—robot’s brain;

b.operation space—player control a spot to connect other spots;

c.targets space—there are three sets of targets present the goals, and will refresh randomly along with the time.

d.timer space—there are three round of play, one round got a limited time.

so the gameplay loop will be this:

Player controls the main element(the cell) to connect other five elements(doll’s neurons, each of those representing the respective brain sections ) ——try to fit the target sets above——fit at least one set of targets——The corresponding partition is partially rendered.

Our game mechanism are inspired by “Florence” at first, and was aimed to complete a narrative game with light game play. Then we realised that Florence might look simple, but they had done a lot of polishing work on the interaction design, which was actually refined but not simple, and we might not have been able to achieve such a goal in this collaboration since we got limited time and resources. Then we decided to took David’s advice—finishing a minigame collection. So we noticed a kind of collect and avoid game like this:

1.5 game flow

1.6 game arts

a.game start

b.computer

c. gameplay

Duality

Posted on 14th February 2022 by Mingyi Liu

workflow

Design Goals

Combine the duality of X-ray security machines and game appreciation

Experience Goals
To allow players to gradually lose their choice in an entertainment world where they are constantly making binary choices, expressing the dichotomous tendencies that such Confirmationbias can bring about, thus creating an information cocoon

Player Goals
To continually review games in front of an X-ray machine

prototype

reference

王权

请出示证件

tinder

Avoid and collect game

Posted on 12th January 2022 by Mingyi Liu

Aim

Design goal: Design a vertical platform jumping game.

Player’s goal: Go to the top.

I just wanted to get familiar with unity and implement some retro gameplay in this brief, nothing special other than that.

Prototype

Critical reflection

This brief was inspired by Pac-Man and I wanted to use this project as an exercise in traditional video games. If I go further into production, I would add a point system, a health system at the system level, moving platforms, trap platforms, disposable platforms, etc. at the level level, adding movement, attack behaviour to enemies at the mechanic level, etc. to explore a higher level of playability.

Resource:

Unity platform resource.

Game for a space

Posted on 11th January 2022 by Mingyi Liu

Aims

I know that the brief’s rational mentions doing a prototype of the actual space, but when I saw the title, one of my favourite science fiction short stories just came across my mind, and I had a strong desire to use it as inspiration for a parkour game about a space miner who tries to escape a giant smooth concave mirror in space. It seems this one combined the brief of this one with escape game and unity engine game?

Sketches

Design detail

Background:
 The protagonist is a space miner whose daily job is to travel in space to explore other planets for new energy sources. When he arrives on a strange planet, he falls into a deep pit in the shape of a concave mirror, thousands of kilometres in diameter, made of unusually smooth material and with zero friction, he was only accompanied only by his toolkit and other strange objects that have fallen in by accident too.
Mechanics: 
 The movement can be only generated by friction, and friction can only be generated by the interaction between players and items.
 The player has to use his interaction with the toolkit to generate friction to move, and then gradually meet other objects and can use their physical properties to move in various ways, with the player's speed gradually increasing as the game progresses. 
Camera: 
2.5d
 Highlight ideas: 
Smooth mirrors reflecting the galaxies of the universe! Perhaps these virtual stars could be designed as bonus props with varying attributes, such as some stars that briefly speed up the protagonist and others that restore stamina levels (it makes sense to see beautiful stars that restore the player's stamina levels! This would require a health system)

Critical reflection

I have so many ideas for this game, but I’m currently stuck at a very frustrating stage: I can’t imagine how to make an interesting level out of such a big, empty, deep pit, and it’s also under the situation of my intention to make the player accelerate along with the game process (I wanted to make the player feel the excitement of survival in such way, so the overall emotional curve will be an upward trend). In this regard, I focused on the interaction: the player will learn the tutorial by interacting with the toolkit at the first time to get into the mechanics, and then gradually progress to various other objects that accidentally fall into the pit, and to interact with virtual star mirrors.
However, there is still a lack of structured level design, which really requires an urgent update….

Inspiration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_and_the_Mirror

Twine or bitsy game

Featured

Posted on 11th January 2022 by Mingyi Liu

Aims

Use the bitsy tool to create clips of the parade in paprika, combined with appropriate gameplay.

Inspiration

Bitsy’s features may seem simple, but it is unexpectedly suited for expressing emotional themes. “https://hangedman.itch.io/sonder” uses simple 2-frame animation to create an excellent musical atmosphere, “https://linda-nd.itch.io/day-in-the- life” provides a deep sense of immersion with minimal silhouettes and a cinematic camera feel, which got me thinking what should drive my bitsy game?
Then I thought of my favourite animated film “paprika” ——A clip that the bad guys invade the real world through dreams, driving people into various moving objects and acting crazy. I intended to combine the feeling this gave me with the gameplay of maze to create a psychedelic game.
I have written dozens of games that can be created with this tool and will continue to make them later, bitsy is so good for expressing improvised ideas.

Prototype

Critical reflection

I tried to use flickering animations to create a sense of atmosphere for the procession and used flickering obstacles to create difficulty for the maze. Despite the small size of the game, I still get tired of creating dialogue, drawing artwork and designing levels at the same time, probably because I didn’t plan the full game content in advance. I will to take another look at the game during next iterations from a holistic perspective, and aim to improve the narrative and art presentation.

A game with only 18 cards

Posted on 11th January 2022 by Mingyi Liu

Aims

Design goal: to create a card game with clear rules and some gameplay, taking into account details such as the number of players and the number of cards held per person if there are only 18 cards.

Player goal: to eliminate other players (collect the maximum number of cards or make others lose cards) in order to win.
Experience objective: to experience a certain level of danger at all times during the game, both in situations where the player can threaten other players and in situations where the player can be threatened by other players.

Prototype

Both the shapes of the two prototypes are in regular squad.

Prototype 1: Assimilation

1. Framework: 3x6
2. Cards: blackx9, whitex9
3. Mechanics: 
Cards of one colour will assimilate cards of another colour that are adjacent to them horizontally or vertically, which means Every time a card is flipped, the adjacent card with opposite color will be flipped as well
4. Game flow:
 a. Both players need to choose their colours.
 b. Fist scissors to decide who turns over the cards first.
 c. Play continues until there is only one colour on the table and the player whose colour is represented wins.

Prototype 2: Restriction

1. Cards:Ax6, Bx6, Cx6
2. Rules:
 a. A restrains B, B restrains C, C restrains A
 b. Two identical cards can cancel the restraint of the previous level
 c. The restrained player will be captured 
 d. Up to three players, those without cards will be eliminated

Critical Reflection

For prototype 2:

If two same cards can cancel out the previous player ‘s attack, in this condition, player 1 shows c and player 2 shows b to restraint, and player 1 held a “c”. if this player want to defend the attack, does c in the card pool count as one of the combo? If not, there will always be a lag in the previous player’s defence against the next player’s attack. It requires further playtest.

Inspiration

Conway’s Game of Life

Uno

Name my features-No components game

Posted on 11th January 2022 by Mingyi Liu

Rational

In September, I gave my nephew, who had just turned three months old, a bed bell that consisted of five Muppet calves that, once switched on, the group of calves would turn to music. I had only given him this toy because I wanted him to find something in constant motion to exercise his attention span. Surprisingly, my sister called me one day and told me that the baby’s preference for toys had changed very quickly and that he would not be interested in any other toys for a few days, but on the contrary, this bed bell had become his best friend, he would talk to them, make soft coaxing noises, and sometimes it was as if he was arguing with them, which was very funny. So I wondered if this behavior and physical play were both part of an early form of play behaviour?

I read several papers on this subject and found that many scholars had summarised and categorized the differences between children’s play behaviors at different stages of life, and found that by the age of three months babies were beginning to be able to swing their hands at objects or reach out to grab hanging objects.

Personal Aims

Design goal: Try to design a social game that brings people closer through physical reactions.

Mind Flow

My investigation then extended to the relationship between physical play and oral narrative (both of which require a focus on the player’s abilities and the human body itself) and I found that No components games are biased towards oral narrative, there are rules, but there is no fictional world. So rule, here it is.

I also have found many examples of drinking games, party games, and children’s games. For example party games related to talking: daft definition, Say The Same Thing.

And then I began to design my first no components game, I named it “Over-enthusiastic”:

 1. The scope of the phrase is limited to the character name( with a limited length).
 2. One person rolls the point and says the name of the character corresponding to the point.
 3. The other person tells the origin of the character's name, if it is right, he/she will win the right to roll, and if it is wrong, the other party will get the right to roll.

This game is a kind of game to prolong, and a game for online chat that allows two people to quickly get to know each other’s preference.

As well, I tried my second one “Name my features”:

 1.First draw up a theme, such as a favourite colour, and then start the game after everyone has spoken in turn.
 2.1 Say the numbers 1-9 at the same time and the person who says the same number says the other person's favourite colour.
 2.2 Start with a number at random and say the numbers in order. The person who has said the Multiplier of the start number, will be required to say the favourite colour of the beginner.

Critical Reflection

After the playtest, both prototypes have corresponding problems that need to be solved.
For “Over-enthusiastic”, the roll point in the key mechanism would require dice, violating the requirement of no component, and if using rock-paper-scissors as rules instead, it would correspondingly limit the number of words in the phrase to 2, 5, and 10.
For “Name my features”, the test result was a little more stable, but the different branches also create different problems. If the “2.1” rule is followed, and there are more than 2 participants, then there will be a situation where more than one person saying the same number at the same time, which makes the game more difficult and confusing. If the “2.2” rule is followed, subsequent players can keep the game going by always remembering the color that the first player said, making the game less difficult and less fun.

Resource List

Age Determination Guidelines: Relating Children’s Ages to Toy Characteristics and Play Behavior

Chief Zodiac-A race game without dice

Posted on 11th January 2022 by Mingyi Liu

Personal aims

Player’s goal:

Reach the finish point, which is the center of the map.

My design goal:

Create a game that spreads the responsibility of randomness and movement over the other board game components, which are, role cards and terrain cards.

Experience goal:

Combined with the ranking of the twelve animals in the Chinese Zodiac story (a unique Chinese way of indicating the time of birth, equivalent to the twelve signs of the zodiac in the West) (the rat, the ox, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the rooster, the dog and the pig), players can randomly select animals to experience the story in which the gods held the animals race competition to determine their ranking.

Thought about randomness

The biggest problem with board games without dice is the lack of randomness. When discussing this brief with a friend, he brought up an interesting question: if all the elements that affect movement in a board game are called dice, is the removal of dice intended to remove randomness, or is it just a matter of giving dice a different form?
If the dynamics of a video game are enforced by the player, then the dynamics of a board game are largely enforced by the dice. What is infinite in a video game, with keystroke-controlled displacement, becomes a finite number of action points in a board game, and this finite number of action points is determined by the dice in a traditional board game. so if I take away the object that has the task of generating randomness, I need to put that responsibility on other tabletop game components, such as characters and maps.

Imagine a situation where a character’s ability can determine how it moves, and terrain can determine whether the character can move.
Different roles have different movement abilities (some are fast, some are slow), but there is a corresponding system of restraints, which can be either numerical restraints or restraints between the character’s attributes and the terrain.
1. Numerical restraint: Fast movers have a low stamina value, slow movers have a high stamina value
2. Attribute restraint: Terrain cards can be divided into three types: land, sea, and air, and if the character is a rat, he can move on the road, but not in the sea or air.

Early-stage prototype

Cards:

Role cards:

The rat, the ox, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the rooster, the dog and the pig.

2. Terrain cards:

        a. Land: Plain, thorns, forests;

        b. Beneath the surface: River, Swamp, rock;

        c. Air : cloudy, normal.

Critical reflection

I refer to the traditional tabletop game variety of dice-determined movement distances as movement distance randomness based on the same map, so in this proposition, I try to achieve double randomness (different characters have different displacement abilities and terrain restrictions) for random characters based on a random map (the map consists of a patchwork of different hexagonal map tiles).

After playtesting, I realized that the sky card needs further consideration, as only the dragon can fly among the characters and is one of the fastest moving characters, although with the addition of the cloudy card for it, does the grid occupied by the cloudy card have any other effect on the other animals in the actual playthrough?

After that, I also came up with a mountain-style map design, similar to the Zuma game, but with height on the elevation as well. This type of level requires players to start at the same starting point and progress from the outermost circle of the level towards the middle, the first player who managed to reach the end of the middle wins. This type of map incorporates a layer height mechanic, meaning that it may go through several layers from the start to the end, and certain characters, such as rabbits, can move across the layers, but it will require more corresponding restrictions to keep the game fair.