Game Journal: Exercises & Researches

Exercise 2.1: Think of a Game 

1. Think of a game, any game. Now write down a description of the game. Be detailed. Describe it as if to someone who has never played a game like it before.
1. Jenga - the game consist of wooden blocks that are stacked in as a long tower. once it is built, someone who wins the rock paper scissors goes first and from that the turns goes clock-wise. Every turn, players should, using one hand, to take out a block and stack it at the top. it is free to place in any different directions, on the corners and etc. the game ends when the tower falls. the person who broke the tower gets the penalty from other players.
2. Now think of another game—a completely differ- ent type of game. The more different this game is from the first one, the be er. Describe it. 
1. lovers in a dangerous spacetime - this game could be played individually or played by 2 -4 players. players are controlling the spaceship and in the spaceship, there are different stations of weapon, engine, map and shield to control. players should cooperate and move station to stations to balance the spaceship to move, protect, and attack. there are 4 stages of the game and each stage has 4 levels with a boss level. the goal of the game is to rescue captured 5 types of creatures. after rescuing all of them, the player can go to another level to complete them.
3. Compare your descriptions. Which elements were different and which were similar? Dig deep and really think about the underlying mechanics of each game. 
1. similarities: both games have more than one player to play. probably the most obvious similarity is the players searching best block/station to play at their best condition. 
2. difference : jinga is a puzzle, physical game and lovers in a dangerous spacetime is a online game. Jenga has competition between players and try to bring other players to loose. however LDS is a cooperative game that players work together to accomplish the levels. 

Exercise 2.3: Objectives 

List five games, and in one sentence per game, describe the objective in each game. 

Pocket monster - to become a pocketmon master by training, compete and catching monsters.

Outlast - escape from asylum

Resident Evil  - survive from zombies/possessed people

League of Legends - wreck the opponent’s Nexus

Overwatch - capture the objective points 

Exercise 2.4: Rules 

Can you think of a game that has no rules? If so, describe it. How about one rule? Why is this exercise difficult? 

cookie clicker game has one rule that player click on the cookies and other options. however, I can not think of a game that has no rules. since rule is the main core of element that makes a game a game.

Exercise 2.6: Challenge 

Name three games that you find particularly challenging and describe why. 

Sekiro - Bosses don’t appear in a specific order, some bosses can show up in the middle of nowhere. 

Cuphead - Cuphead has too many obstacles to remember. In order to avoid attacks, the controls should be very precise. Bosses has too many attack patterns that players need to at least do several rounds to know the attack patterns. 

Flappy Bird - this game is challenging in a way that controlling the movement is difficult. the bird falls extremely quickly compared to the small flap of of jump. With this restricted movement, obstacles become more challenging as the game progress.

Exercise 6.4: Blue Sky Brainstorm 

In this exercise, use the techniques previously described to do a brainstorm for a “blue sky” project. By blue sky, I mean that this project could not technically be made today, but we are going to pretend it could. The challenge is to come up with ideas for a “remote control” for a stereotypical character. Choose a character from this list: 

• Door-to-door salesman 
• Busy mother
• God
• Superhero
• Politician 

First, brainstorm about the character: What does the character do? What makes the character interesting? What aspect of the character would it be engaging to control? How does the character react? Does the character have free will? Next, brainstorm features for your imaginary controller. What will it look like? What could each bu on do? Remember, this is “blue sky,” so the bu ons can do crazy things. Have fun with this! Come up with as many ideas as you can. 

Research: Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a strategy board game made by Rio Grande about the medieval time and the players are playing as French Lord trying to acquire other opponent’s territories of Carcassonne. It needs two to five players to start and takes 30 - 60 minutes for a game. This game consists of land tiles (cities, roads, grasslands, and mix), followers and scoring tracks. Each player will have 7 followers. There is no board but the game is to create a map with land tiles. Therefore, it starts with a player draws one tile from a stack and place on the table. Tiles shouldn’t be placed randomly but the adjacent land should match: roads with roads, grasslands with grasslands and cities with cities. After the land is placed, the players choose to decide to place the followers on the land, only if no other players took that space. if you complete any of these areas, that count as a point/s. the player should use as many followers to gain those areas. When the stack of lands runs out, the game ends and the player with the most points wins the game.

Research: Sky: Children of Light

Sky: Children of Light is an adventure and puzzle-solving game developed by Genova Chen with his team, thatgamecompany. He focused on environmental design that evokes peaceful feeling. The overall environment is utopian and delightful. Chen even describe the game as romantic adventure game. This game plays up to 7 people and is a collaborative game that families could play together. Players fly through 7 regions to uncover a mystery. The intention of the game is to collaborate to solve the problems and challenges together. The decorative and stylised art works and musics really bring warm and friendly feeling that matches with the positive interactions.