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
Play similar game to Snake!

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
Play Asteroids!

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
Play Duck Hunt!

(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
Play Super Breakout!

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.
Play Robotron!

Game Design Week 7 Workshop

In today's workshop, we were learning how to design a 5 Room Dugeon RPG Adventure with based on a story. This game was created by Johnn Four and Strolen. In this game there are 5 areas, each of the area has a certain quest to be completed. In order to finish the game, the player needs to follow the story. In our workshop, we used Microlite 20 settings to play the game.

One story based on acts. There are 2 different part structures of acts in this game. The first act is again divided into 3 act structures, they are the beginning, complications, and final resolution. The second act is divided into 5 different act structures, they are exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and revelation. The second act structure is way more complicated then the first one.

The story began with the player is required to enter the first area. In the first area, in order to enter the are, the players are required to answer a secret question. The question is simple and requires a logic thinking, so that the player could answer the question easily but still needs to think a little bit. After the player answered the question, the player will enter the area. In this area, the players are required to fight against a golem. In this area, we also designed some ravines and traps. These traps and ravines will decrease the players' health.

In order to get into the second area, the player needs to find a entrance gate of the second area. The second area is designed with a chessboard design floor. The player will meet his friend, Al in this area. This area is a place for snakes and flames. The player needs to avoid them or meeting them, or else their health will be deducted.

Next area, the players are required to rescue some prisoners. The tricky part is that some of the enemies are the players' opponent, hence, the players need to be careful. We designed 3 prison which full of prisoners, but only 1 prisons are full with good prisoners which the player need to rescue.

In the fourth area, the layer will defeat some of his opponents. In the previous area, the player gets a sword and in this area, he/she is using this sword to fight with the opponents.

After all opponents are killed, the player will continue to the fifth area. In this final area, there will be a treasure and a map. The player then gets the treasure and the map. However, after the he gets them, Al, which his friend from the second area and kill the player.

This workshop taught us to create the story of a game, and we give some climax to the game. This climax will not be expected by the player.

Karate Champ

Karate Champ (was originally Karate Dō in Japan) is an arcade game released in 1984 and was developed by the Technos Japan). Karate Champ is also available for home versions platform when Data East, the publisher began to publish this game in the United State in 1985. Fun fact about this game is in the 1987 Video Game Masters Tournament, the world record of Karate Champ was 259,800 points. This game is included in a fighting genre games. This game could be played in either single or multi-player mode.

Interactive

Karate Champ is a fighting genre game which obviously requires many actions. There are two types of action in this game, they are attack and defence.

There are many available attacking moves in this game, such as

• Lunge Punch (high/low)
• Reverse Punch (standing/crouching)
• Round Kick
• Front Kick
• Low/Back Kick
• Back Round Kick
• Jumping Side/Back Kick
• Foot Sweep
• and Reverse Foot Sweep

Different attack moves will also produce different points.

Apart of forward, back, jump, and crouch, the defensive moves, however, is available in two types, they are

• Block (High/Low)
• and Summersault (Forward/Reverse)

Setting

This game uses different types of settings. However, the default one would be in Karate field where two karate champ fights in the middle. In the upper part of the screen, we could see there is a 'Karate' sign, and there is 1 master judge, and 2 (probably) senior/assistance judges. In the lower part of the screen, there are 11 karate guys who watch the competition together. The feel of karate competition could be felt by the Karate sign, judges, and the audience.

Other setting could in various places such as at the city, cliff, sport field, etc. Wherever the setting, there is always 1 master judge wearing blue top and black bottom.

Concept

The player pretends to be a karate competitor and he would be fight against another player or computer. Two karate guys could be seen coming from two different groups, one's wearing white gi, and another one's wearing red gi. This game follows the common karate competition where the judge would call out phrases "Fight!" to start the game, and "Winner!" when someone's already won. To win the game, a player has to successfully hit another player.

Goal

The goal of this game to get more points by attacking the opponent. A player who gets the most point would be the winner.

Challenge

This game does not have health bar or hit points. An attach successfully landed would end the round, and the player would get a point or half point. The player needs to protect himself by using some defensive action while he gets to attack the opponent to get more points. According to me, this game uses high chances. The faster you attack before the opponent could perform any defensive moves, then you get the point.

All images is derived from: Google Image.

Play Karate Champ!

Donkey Kong 3

Donkey Kong is a fixed-shooter arcade game series. In this post, I will focus on the third series of Donkey Kong, which is Donkey Kong 3. Donkey Kong 3 was released for the family computer as well as arcade. Donkey Kong 3 was published by Nintendo in 1983. Donkey Kong 3 can be played in single-player and multi-player mode.

Interactive

Donkey Kong is a simple game which requires player to give a simple action as well. The player is allowed to move the Stanley (a bug-man) either to the right or left. The bug-man also sprays a bug spray to the insects the ape stirs.

Setting

In Donkey Kong 3 arcade version, we could see trees, two beehives and two sticks which the ape moves up and down. In the lower part of the screen, we could also see flowers which Stanley, the bug-man needs to protect.

Concept

The game concept of Donkey Kong 3 is there is a bug-man called Stanley. Stanley has flowers which show in the lower part of the screen. Donkey Kong is an annoying ape which makes Stanley's greenhouse in danger. The ape stirring up the beehive which produces angry insects that will soon destroy Stanley's flowers. Stanley needs to save his flowers by shooting bug spray on Donkey Kong as well as the insects. The insects are variety from buzz bees, beespies, queen bees, creepy caterpillars, butterflies, beetles, moth, beebombs, and vine eaters. The caterpillars will come down from the trees which show on the both side of the screen. Stanley would force the ape upwards and finally to the top of the screen to finish the level and get into the next level.

Goal

Stanley needs to protect his flowers from being stolen by the insects. To finish the level, Stanley needs to spray the bug spray to the ape to make the ape upwards until it reaches to the top.

Challenge

The challenge of the is to kill the insects while to make sure the ape doesn't come off from its place (keep shooting him until it reaches to the top of the screen). However, the more level, the difficult and the more insects are coming up. This makes the player will be overwhelmed.

All images is derived from: Google Image.

Play Donkey Kong 3!

Pac-Man

Pac-Man was released in 1980 in Japan and was developed by Namco. Pac-Man became a social phenomenon that sold a large amount of merchandise and also inspired, among other things. As in Pac-Man released, it invented a new type of genre ad appealing to both genders. Pac-Man popularity was really high back then, that is why people often credit Pac-Man being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all the time.

Interactive

Pac-Man is a very simple game. It allows up to 2 players play at the same time. Pac-Man is controlled by the player through a maze, eating dots (which is usually called pac-dots). The player is allowed to control the Pac-Man to 4 different directions, which are right, left, up, and down.

Setting

Pac-Man game uses a maze-like environment which has pac-dots spread all around the maze. In the middle of the maze, there is a little home of the Pac-Man enemies.

Concept

The concept of the game is to eat all of the pac-dots. There are 3 enemies, which are Shadow (Red), Speedy (Pink), Bashful (Turquoise), and Pokey (Orange-Browny). These 3 enemies have the ability to eat the Pac-Man. However, there are 4 special pac-dots (which are bigger in size than usual pac-dots) that can allows Pac-Man to have the ability to eat the enemies, but in temporary times. When Pac-Man ate the special pac-dots, all the enemies turn in to blue like a ghost. Each enemy eaten, Pac-Man will get 200 points. Additionally, each pac-dot and special pac-dot eaten, Pac-Man will get 10 and 50 points sequentially. When all the pac-dots have been eaten, the game will load into the next level.

Goal

The goal of this game is to control the Pac-Man to eat all of the pac-dots with out being eaten by the enemies. 

Challenge

The challenge of the game is to avoid being eaten by the enemies. The player has to make their own strategy so that they are able to eat all of the pac-dots with out being eaten by the enemies.

All images is derived from: Pac-Man — & Wikipedia.com

Play Pac-Man!

Game Design Week 5 Workshop

Today in workshop, we studied about elements of RGP board games. It includes making character, understanding the rules and regulation, skills, purchasing equipments and weapons, and defining the character characteristic.

First of all, I personally think that RPG games are only those video type of games, which we able see the characters move visually. However, today I learned something new, which is learning to play RPG board games.

Description

Title : Microlite20 Purest Essence

Created by : Robin V. Stacey, Darrell King, and Al Krombach

Stats: Strengh, Dexterity, Mind

Races: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings

Classes: Fighters, Rogues, Mage, Clerics

The game documentation also includes rules and regulations, level advancement, monsters list, equipments list, adventuring equipments and gears, spell lists, and guide to game master. In this game, we are allowed to create our own magic skills and other stuffs.

This game also provides character sheet which is pretty cool. We could keep track of our money (wealth), characters specifications and descriptions, weapons and equipments, skill rank, and character statistics.

The game was fun at the first time, we are allowed to choose our desired characters details. We also purchased weapons and equipment. However, when it gets to play the game, the game master was often confused on understanding the game play. It was also complicated when everything needs to be calculated using dice. As the matter of fact, some needs to be calculated in different type dice. For example, we to calculate the Hit Points, we need 6-sided dice. However, when it comes to calculating the attack of monsters, we need some type of dice. Depends of the monster, there are some monsters which need 8-sided dice and 10-sided dice.

Pong

Pong or usually marketed as PONG (all upper-case letter) is a two-dimensional tennis sports game, and is one of the earliest arcade video games. PONG was released in 1972, was published and developed by Atari Inc., a video game company founded in the same year by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Back to when PONG was released, PONG was one of the video game, which reached mainstream popularity.

Interactive

PONG is a very simple game, yet exciting game. PONG imitates the gameplay of tennis sport, which has two players. One player plays on the left side, and another plays on the opposite side. In PONG game each player controls an in-game paddle by moving it up and down. The players use paddle to hit a ball back and forth. When the ball touches the paddle, the ball bounces to the other side. The aim of this game is to get more points, points are earned when one player fails to return the ball to the other. To move the paddle, the players need to press 'W' or 'S' keys to move it up and down consecutively, or simply move the mouse up and down.

Setting

PONG is a two-dimensional game. Back to the earlier days when PONG was released, the setting of the game is black and white, where paddles, ball, and the barrier are in white; the rest is in black colour. However, today, we can play this classic game on Atari Arcade website, and the game is redesigned to be more attractive, and more colour involved, such as gradient colour white for the ball's colour, paddle's colour of each side is now distinguished, and the rest are in gradient colour of black (not a flat black colour). There are some cool effects added as well, such as the effect of the ball moving, the ball bouncing off of the paddle, and the effect of celebration when one side gets points.

Original Design of PONG

The Design of PONG Today

Fireworks effects adds excitement of the game

Goal

The goal of PONG game is similar to tennis game in sport, which is to earn more points. To earn more points, one must be able to return the ball to the opponent side, and if the opponent side could not return it back to the other side, then the opponent side is fail, and the other side gets the point.

Challenge

The challenge in PONG game is, the paddle can't be moved to the tip of the corner, this makes a little gap which a ball can pass. With this gap, we can control the paddle so that the ball would pass the gap. However, to control the paddle is not easy, due to the ball is moving and we have to predict the correct location of the paddle.

Again, another challenge is to return the ball to the opponent side. The ball movement is dynamic, according to the force of paddle gives to the ball. Because of the dynamic, we have to predict where should we move the paddle in order to get the ball touches the paddle and returns the ball to the opponent side.

All images is derived from: PONG — Atari.com & Wikipedia.com
Play PONG!