Snake

Snake game is a arcades video game originated in the late 1970s. The popularity of the snake game is perhaps maintaining until today. The snake game was founding its highest popularity when Nokia mobile phone made Snake game to be their standard pre-loaded game in 1988. That time, Snake audience and player became massively increased.

Snake game on Nokia mobile phone

Interactive
Snake is game is really really simple. A player controls the head of the snake which is represented in long thin creature emulating a real life snake, and he/she controls the direction of the snake head (left, right, up, and down) to avoid of hitting its own tail or walls as the snake will be moving and cannot be stopped while the game is in progress. The snake eats a piece of food which will make its tail grows longer and longer.

Setting
This game is originated during the late 1970s which confront the fact the the graphics at that time was still very simple and not good compared today. The setting of the game is there are walls that surround the playing area. The playing area's background is simply black. There is a hole in the wall which will allow the snake will go from one to another side of screen (like a portal). However, this is not necessary. There are a lot of customisation of the snake game. Some don't have wall, and some have walls.

Snake game on Nokia has different levels and play areas.

Concept
The game concept of Snake game is there is a snake and there is a piece of food appearing somewhere in the play area. The player needs to control the direction of the head of the snake (up, down, left, and right) and its body will follows to get the food and to avoid of hitting its own tail or walls. The snake will move and cannot be stop, and the snake also cannot go in reverse. After the snake ate the food, its tail will grows longer. Whenever the snake has eaten the food, another piece of food will appear somewhere in the play area.

Goal
The goal of the game is to get more points by eating the pieces of food.

Challenge
The challenge of this game is to avoid hitting the walls and its own tail. The more food the snake eats, the longer its tail, and the faster it slithers. The longer the snake, it will increase the difficulty of the game. It is also a strategy and requires the player to think the way to avoid the snake hitting its own tail as the tail will grow longer and longer.

Strategy thinking are needed to complete the snake

Russian guy shows how to complete the Snake

All images are derived from: Google Image
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Asteroids

Asteroids is an Atari video arcade game released in 1979. This game was one of the most popular and influential games of the Golden Age of Arcade Games. This games has been being sold 70,000 arcade cabinets. This game is a two-dimensional view and uses vector display.

Interactive

The spaceship is shooting the asteroids

In this game the player controls a spaceship in an asteroid field which periodically traversed by flying saucers. The spaceship can be rotated as well as be moved. The spaceship is also able to shoot and destroy the asteroids.

Setting

The space-like environment is really felt in this game

The setting of this game is space-like environment where there are asteroids flying around the playing area.

Concept

The concept is to avoid the spaceship touches the asteroids, or else the spaceship will get destroyed. The spaceship is able to destroy the asteroids into small parts. However, the spaceship needs to destroy the small parts of the asteroids as well to get them disappear from the screen.

Goal

To shoot and destroy asteroids and saucers while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire.

Challenge

The advance the level, the difficulty of this game is higher. The higher the level, the more asteroids appear on the screen makes the game more challenging. The challenge also felt from the beginning of the game where the player has to control the spaceship (rotate and move) to avoid the collision with the asteroids, as well as they have to shoot the asteroids. For me personally, I definitely need time to get my self familiar with the control and the game itself.

The spaceship destroying the asteroid

All images are derived from: Google Image
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Duck Hunt

Duck Hunt is a Japanese original light gun shooter console game. Duck Hunt (ダックハント Dakku Hanto in Japanese) was developed and published by Nintendo and released in 1984. This game is playable in both single and multi-player with up to 2 players only. The story behind this game is simple. There is a gentleman whom is going duck hunting with his dog. After the gentleman successfully shot the duck, his dog will get the duck. This game has two options which are to shoot the duck, or to a clay pigeons.

Interactive
This game has an additional equipment which is NES Zapper. NES Zapper is used to shoot ducks that appear on the screen. The player can freely move the gun around the screen to point and shoot the ducks. In all modes, the player only has three attempts to shoot the on-screen targets when they appear. This game is played from a first-person perspective.

Setting
The settings are different from one mode to another. However, the similarity between the settings are large yard with trees, emulating the real environment of duck hunts and clay pigeons fight.

The setting of game mode which focuses on shooting ducks

The setting of game mode which focuses on shooting clay pigeons (white circle in pictures)

Concept
The concept of the game is pretty similar to the duck hunt in real life, as the player is required to shoot the moving targets (ducks) on the screen in the mid-flight before they disappear. There are a total of ten targets to shoot in each round. In single mode there will be one target and two target in two-player mode will appear on the screen. The player only has three attempts to shoot the targets before they disappear. There is also a minimum number of target shot in order to advance to the next round. Sadly, a failure will end up to the game over. The higher the rounds, the difficult the game will be. The targets will move faster, and the minimum number of target successfully shot will also increase.

The other mode which is to break the clay pigeon has a similar concept with the one to shoot a duck.

Goal
The goal of this game is to hit/shoot a moving target with three attempts shoot before the target disappear.

Challenge

The higher the rounds, the more difficult the game

This game is comparatively hard to play. Personally, the first round is already somewhat difficult to shoot the duck. Perhaps, the reason is because I use mouse over NEZ Zapper to shoot the target. I believe, using NES Zapper itself will be much easier to point, focus, and shoot the target. The challenge of this game also the only-three-attempts challenge. A player only has three attempts to shoot the moving target before it disappears. The minimum number of target to be shot also increases as the player advances to higher round/level.

I think that the game emulates the duck hunt in real life successfully. Duck hunt in real life is somewhat a challenge on some people, why should the developer make this game easier?

All images are derived from: Duck Hunt - Wikipedia
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(Super) Breakout

Breakout is Atari arcade game which was introduced in April 1976. This game is taken from a concept by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow. This game is inspired by PONG game, which uses ball and paddle. However, in this game, player needs to break all the blocks/bricks which appear in the higher part of the screen in order to successfully finish a level. Super Breakout is the upgraded version of Breakout arcade game to home video console game.

Interactive

The look of Super Breakout, the upgraded version of Breakout

Pretty similar to PONG, this game also has paddle and a ball. The paddle can be moved left and right. The ball, however, travels across the screen, bouncing off the top and side walls of the screen. This game also has bricks/blocks to be destroyed.

Setting

In Breakout arcade, the set is a simple space-like environment with bricks on the higher part of the screen and one moveable paddle on the lower part of the screen. However, improvement to the graphic can be really felt with the improved graphic environment to the bricks, paddle and the ball

Concept

The idea is to destroy all of the bricks which appear on the top third of screen. The ball will travel across the screen, bouncing off the top and side wall of the screen. Every time the ball touches a brick, the brick will be destroyed/broken and the ball bounces away. The player controls the moveable paddle to control the bounce direction of the ball. When the ball reaches the bottom of the screen, it means that the player loses the turn. To make it more challenging, the paddle shrinks when the ball hit certain brick colour.

Te bricks are also organised to make the game more interesting and challenging. Some of the bricks also have a variety power-ups. These power-ups includes the double the ball, to increase the ball speed etc. However, this feature is might only available in other upgraded version (might not be developed by Atari).

The higher the level, the more complicated the composition of the bricks.

Different composition of bricks are made to make the game more interesting and challenging.

Goal

The goal is to destroy all of the bricks and avoid the ball to reach the bottom end of the screen.

Challenge

The earlier look/design of Breakout Atari 1976

There are 4 colour bricks in this game. Yellow will earn 1 point, green bricks earn 3 points, orange bricks earn 5 point, and the top level red bricks earn 7 point each. Whenever the ball breaks through the red row and hit the upper wall, the paddle will shrink. Not to mention that the ball speed increases at specific intervals such as after four hits, twelve, and after the ball touches orange and red rows.

All images is derived from: Breakout and Atari Super Breakout
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Workshop Week 9: Designing a Puzzle Game

In workshop today, we learnt how to design. Earlier in the lecture class, the lecturer taught us the 8 steps designing the puzzle game from scratch.

The eight steps are:

1. Inspiration
2. Simplification
3. Design Specification
4. Construction Set
5. Levels
6. Sequence
7. Testing
8. and Presentation

The first 4 steps are the step to specify the rules and regulation while the other steps are to build the puzzles.

Our task this week was to design a puzzle game.

The first idea was my idea to create a game to save a child from a witch's magic spell. This idea came from a random movie with involves magic. The player needs to place mirror from the available mirrors to reflect the spell and lead the spell into something else or even the witch herself.

However, we thought that this was quite complicated and we changed the idea a bit. At last, we finally came with the new idea which also involved the witch along with her evil magic and a child. Moreover, unlike the previous idea, we used pipes instead of mirrors.

So, the game was simply to place and organise the pipes to lead the magic spell to the witch. The spell will go through the hole the pipe and the player needs to organise the pipe to lead the spell get back to the witch.

The rule is the pipes have to be organised perfectly, meanings that the holes between two pipes have to meet and interact with each other. If the one's hole meets another body of pipes, the pipe which wrongly placed will be destroyed, and the spell will bombard and get to the kids/witch's target.

Another rule is when the hole ends to a wall, and makes the spell touches the wall, the wall will also be destroyed and the spell will spread around and some of the spell will get to the child.

Whenever the child gets hit by the spell, then the game is over/re-play the level as the player is considered fail to protect the child.

The required skill to play this puzzle game is maybe lateral thinking.

The puzzle game types are item use and logic.

The goal of this puzzle is to protect a child.

The puzzle here are the pipes so the player needs to place/organise the pipes and keep the spell off the child. Player can manipulate the puzzle by rotate them. The puzzles can be chosen from the available puzzles given in each level of the game.

The game will roughly look like this:

Where the figure on the higher part of the screen is the child, and witch is the opposite way. Also, the available pipes will be listed in the lower part of the screen (this can be changed later).

Game Design Week 8 Workshop

In today's workshop, we learned on designing a simple game including its world and quest. Game world means to create the map and it should be interesting and fun to play. The map should also provides the bottleneck which will slow down or even stop the continuity of the game.

In our game, we have discussed and we determined the goal of the game was to find and get treasure on the map. The player will have 5 quests and all of the quest must be completed in order to get the final reward, which is treasure.

The setting of the game is in the cave environment where the players will meet with his enemies and has to killed the enemies or get killed instead. There will be also some obstacle which the player should avoid. The design of the cave is designed like a maze. Moreover, the map also provides the player extra coin/gold which the player can use to shop in the secret shop. The item in the shop will be various such as a health poison, strengthening poison etc.

Robotron: 2084

Robotron (or marketed as Robotron: 2084) is an arcade game released in 1982 and was developed by Vid Kidz. Robotron is a fixed shooting game which features two-dimensional graphics. The 2084 in the game title means year 2084, in fictional world where human and robots have a war and against each other in a cybernetic revolt. Robotron is a single-player mode game. This game was released by Williams Electronics. Back to the 80s this game was one of the most frantic game ever, because the the game was set to give a panic reaction to the player by presenting the enemies (robotron) coming from multiple directions.

Interactive

The player is able to move around the superhuman using joystick in one of eight ways. The superhuman is also able to shoot the enemies (Robotron). When the superhuman touches any enemies, the superhuman will explode. In arcade version, there are two joysticks, the left is to control the movement of the character, and the right is to control the direction of character's weapon fires.

The superhuman is the figure in the middle in white. The fire he shoots is represented in the blue one-line which is getting to the bottom right in above picture.

Setting

The graphics of this game is very simple. The figures are represented mostly in two colours. The setting is vague because it only uses a black colour as its background and the view is top-down perspective so we couldn't really see any other stuffs. The suitable word for the setting is probably space-like environment.

Concept

The concept for this game was simple. In the year 2084, this game delivers a story that robots are turned up against the human race. The robots are no longer safe, and think human as a threat. There is one nameless superhuman who are attempting to save the last human family.

Goal

The goal of this game is simply to save the last human race from the existence by shooting the fire laser to the robots without being touched by the robots since it will destroy him.

Challenge

This game was very famous on giving panic feeling to the players by presenting the multiple enemies coming from different directions. The more you shoot the fire, the closer the robots are going to be. So the player really needs to shoot the fire efficiently and kill all of the robots before they touch the character. The more level, the faster the robots move towards the characters and it sometimes gives the fear feeling to the player as the character is surrounding by the robots.

There are so many robots approaching the super human which is super challenging.

All images is derived from: Google Image.
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