Prompt 4
While playing through Bricks, the first thing I did to try and find the stairs was I tried pushing bricks around—which did work. However, upon reaching level two, there were bricks pushed in the corner, and I knew I’d have to try something new. I first tried to pull a brick by walking next to it and walking in the direction I wished to pull it; however, this was to no avail. I did try to pull bricks multiple times and tried to pull them in multiple directions. Eventually, I realized there were some pushable bricks in the center of the room, and I found that when I pushed a brick in one direction with another brick directly behind me, the brick behind me would follow in the same direction. I give the game creator a lot of credit for putting those pushable bricks in the middle of the room, since the function of pushing bricks was something the player was already familiar with, and by using this function, the player was able to discover a new function of the game. There always felt like a way to solve each the levels, and most of them didn’t have a “start over” solution, where the pieces are in the wrong spot and there’s nothing the player can do about it. For this reason, the game never got frustrating, because the solution to the puzzle never seemed out of reach. A lot of the appeal to this game was that there was no directionality to it; it was the player in a room, and the goal was to find stairs underneath the bricks. Every brick moved felt almost like a gamble, and the reward of advancing to the next level was a great feeling.