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Prompt 5: Describe what kind of procedural rhetoric the mechanics convey.

In Nail It, the procedural rhetoric that the mechanics convey is a lot like actually striking a nail in reality.  Throughout my college years, I’ve had to put together plenty of Ikea furnishings for myself, my siblings, and friends, and this game gives me the same feeling in a way.  The win condition in Nail It is to strike each nail three times, where if the player misses a hammer strike, the player won’t satisfy the win condition and the game will reset.  In a strange yet very relatable way, this mechanic of not wanting to miss a nail when striking the hammer is certainly conveyed in real life.  I can’t even count the number of times I was hammering a nail in too quickly, only to bash the hammer head right on my thumb.  And even though my thumb may be throbbing, the “game” of nailing furniture together isn’t over; I always had to get back in the saddle and hammer away until the furniture piece was finished.  The game conveys the same rhetoric, where if the win condition isn’t satisfied, the game isn’t simply over.  The player has to get back in the saddle and try once again.  The only way to beat the game is to win, just like the only way to stop hammering in real life is to complete the nailing task at hand.

Prompt 3: Describe an interesting moment of interplay.

In Ping Pong, the core verbs assigned to the sprites were to move up and down in order to create a collision with the ball traveling across the field of play, preventing a goal from being scored by the other player.  In terms of how the world itself changes as the player moves up and down, there really isn’t any change.  However, the most interesting aspect of the game is a sprite that isn’t controlled by either character: the ball’s movement speed.  The ball’s movement speed is relatively fast, which provides a shorter reaction window for the defending player to position their paddle correctly in order to prevent a goal.  And, even if a goal is prevented, the player is possibly still in danger because of their exposed positioning.  For example, say the ball is heading towards Player A, and in order to prevent a goal, Player A must move their paddle all the way to the top of the play area.  The ball flies away in the other direction, where the ball is now in Player B’s court.  If Player A doesn’t reposition themselves towards the center of the play area while Player B is trying to prevent a goal, then the bottom of the play area is completely exposed in the case of a return shot, since Player A won’t have enough time to get from the top to the bottom of the play area before the ball crosses the goal plane.  If the player wishes to anticipate the next shot on goal, then they must be in the correct position in order to give themselves a proper reaction window.

Prompt 5

The most memorable moments of the game was trying to chase Phil around the various levels, which was an interesting interaction in my opinion.  Many of the games didn’t have a sense of urgency like this game did, which is a unique feeling this game provides.  Rather than taking things slow and trying to immerse myself in the environment around me, I felt like I had to chase Phil, otherwise I worried he might get away.  I found myself almost entranced in trying to get to Phil as fast as possible, taking the shortest route to close the distance between myself and him.  I didn’t have the luxury of just running around randomly, especially once Phil transitioned to another level all together.  The most surprising thing about the level to me was how I was able to move and chase Phil while Phil was still moving in what seemed like a routine.  Whenever I tried to make some sort of loop with animating actors, the playable character would freeze and never be able to move.

I think one thing the designer could never be prepared for is a possible exploitation of the game and specifically Phil’s movement.  If the player were to back Phil into a corner, I’m not sure where the game would go from there.  However, I was never able to trap Phil, even though I found myself testing this mechanical limit to the game.  Perhaps there is a sort of “out” for Phil written in the game’s code that prevents this from happening.

Prompt 2

The role I have in this game is actually very practical and realistic, even if it is taking place in space.  As a Space Uber Driver, my character’s existence revolves around the services industry, which is a huge industry in our everyday lives in America.  With such an emphasis on being of service, the core mechanic of this game really is to satisfy the customer, even when the customer doesn’t give explicit instructions.  The game itself had very little outline, but I think that’s a positive in the grand scheme of things.  For example, I had no idea where or what Volcanium was, but a lot of times while working in the services, there is no outline or some list of explicit instructions.  The only thing that’s important is to finish the task of satisfying the customer/rider.  Going off this same point, I did like how the game changed from a 2D platformer to a scroller style game, sort of emulating the ever-changing challenges that come with working in a service industry job.

In terms of interacting with triggers, one of the interactions I experienced was a level-changing trigger, where the character would exit the space shuttle and enter into a 2D platformer level.  In addition, I would imagine that the hazards within the platformers were also triggers, where the level would reset itself.  However, there were also plenty of walls I ran into while making my way through the platformer levels, which made the levels more challenging and more rewarding once the level was finished.

Prompt 5: Describe the mechanic of clicking.

The mechanic of clicking in this game is probably the most subtle yet most important aspect of this game.  It’s very easy to get lost in the soothing, calming introduction the game gives you, with sweet sounds and some more alarming ones like ambulance sirens.  The visuals in this game grab the player’s attention far more effectively than the link does.  Given all these different sensory aspects of the game, it’s not hard to overlook the clicking mechanic.  But why does it work so well?  

Amidst all of the sensory stimuli, the link to the next passage isn’t obvious right away.  The player is incentivized to “sit and stay a while” (to use a turn-of-phrase) at each passage, and absorb everything that each passage has to offer.  None of this would be possible if the mechanic of clicking wasn’t so hidden in the background; the impact that the game has on the player would be unfairly cut short.  And when I say ‘hidden in the background,’ I don’t mean that the links were hard to find.  They were mostly short words or phrases and certainly stuck out well enough once the player wanted to advance to the next passage.  But the fact that the player doesn’t notice the passage link immediately upon opening a new page is what makes this game so enjoyable.  The mechanic of clicking is really the last thing the player wants to do, making each passage stick out in the player’s mind and making the narrative as a whole a lot more impactful. 

(WC: 257)

Prompt 2: Describe how the passages are organized.

The player has many options in this game, all of which change the game in one way or another.  Each option—in my many playthroughs of this game—seems to lead to a different outcome, and it projects the amount of time and thought the game developer put into this narrative.  The player truly feels in control of the storyline, especially after playing the game more than once.  The many options offer replay-ability to the game, and because the links are clearly defined and easy to understand, there is very little chance the player will get lost in trying to find the different endings.

Whenever I selected one link option over another, I had a vague idea on where I was going to end up.  For example, when I selected the Air Jordan’s link as opposed to the handful of carrots link, I had a pretty good idea that my Runaway Rabbit was going to run away in style, albeit perhaps hungrily.  However, selecting a link didn’t necessarily give the next prompt away, and it was interesting to see how the previous word or short phrase connected with the next passage, and how that passage deviated and distinguished itself, all while leading to yet another choice of links for the player to make.  In this game, the designer gave the player the option to go back to a previous passage, but I personally feel that this option shouldn’t be used at all by the player.  I think that with the way the story is set up, kind of like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ type of game, every selection should be permanent, adding to the permanent control the player feels over choosing the best path for Max the Rabbit.

(WC: 289)

Prompt 2

In my heart-of-hearts, I would really like to explore the creative options that the player is allotted in this game.  However, the thing that’s really stopping me from exploring these options is the randomness of two of the three tools—Boom and Bop.  Bam is a tool the player has a relatively high amount of control over; by selecting Bam, any point that is clicked on the canvas will create a colorful target shape, allowing the player to create a pattern of targets if they so please.  However, with Boom and Bop, the player’s control over what happens is very limited.  The player’s control is essentially bounded by where the player clicks on the canvas, but what happens next is well out of the player’s control.  I feel like this one oddity, Bam, throws the game off a bit, in that the player has a high amount of control compared to the other two functions.  It’s not necessarily destructive to the game itself, but it does mess with the organization of the game—that organization being complete and utter randomness (aside from the player’s control of where said randomness occurs on the canvas).  I don’t believe changing this aspect of the game would be too difficult, and I think that making the target’s size randomly vary would bring back that sort of “random organization” that the rest of the game is filled with.  Perhaps, in addition, the colors of the target could be randomized, just like how both Boom and Bap have randomized colors.

(WC: 254)

Prompt 5:

The game designer, as the game’s title suggests, clearly had an open mind while creating this game.  In my experience of building my own drawing game, I pretty much had one main goal in mind: let the players draw however they please; the player is responsible for the creativity on the canvas I’ve created, not me.  However, it is this shattering of my expectations that makes me enjoy this game so much: I, now as the player, have very limited creative control with what happens on the canvas.  It is this feeling of limited control that drives the correlation between this game and drugs.  And when I say drugs, I don’t only mean the hard stuff (which I’ve never even entertained the idea of trying), but I include over-the-counter medications like Tylenol or Benadryl.

Getting back to the point, in this game, the game designer retains some of the creative control stored within the game’s p5.js code, forcing the player to work within the game designer’s limitations.  This is comparable to how a drug inherently forces a person into its own limitations.  For example, a patient hooked up to an anesthetic I.V. has very limited control over what they can do; the patient can pretty much breathe, but other than that, the patient is forced into a state of induced sleep.  Likewise, alcohol limits a college student in their motor and cognitive functions, where said student can still retain the ability to move and think, but perhaps not in a way that they intended.  If I had to choose one drug in particular to compare this game to, I honestly wouldn’t be able to come up with one, and I truly think that’s the whole point of this game.  The game developer is communicating to the player that they have three options/drugs to paint the canvas with.  However, each paint option has different limitations, functions, and uses for the player to get hooked on.  In the end, the drug this game makes the player feel is really whatever the game designer wants to give them.

(WC: 345)

Prompt 3

The main interaction the player had with the game was how the character interacted with the moving blocks of lava, and the goal was a static endpoint at the edges of the level.  The moving blocks of lava provided a feeling of suspense to the player as it slowly inched towards the player.  The interaction between the character and the lava blocks at first did seem like an inconsistent occurrence, but with more experience playing the game, the lava block function eventually made sense to me.  It dealt with a “line of sight” kind of function, where the block would move the number of squares that the player was within the line of sight of the lava block.  I think that the game developer really kept this function in mind as the levels progressed, since some of the levels became very open rooms where the character was meant to dance around in different patterns, desperately avoiding the lava blocks at all costs, waiting for a hole to open up for the player to sneak by and eventually reach the goal.  The goal placement was also a challenge for the player to reach, and no level of the game ever felt too easy.  Each challenge was fairly difficult, and the feeling of getting around the lava blocks was a great feeling of relief, escaping the claustrophobia-inducing lava blocks.  Completing each level gave a satisfactory feeling, a feeling of accomplishment, and I credit the game developer for invoking many different emotions in a puzzle game.

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.

The text dialogues in this game are relatively simple and straightforward, which is exactly what I would expect them to be, seeing as how this game revolves around Jingles, a curious cat.  Specifically, giving the player quick and easy dialogue not only forces the player to think like a domesticated cat would, but it also “starves” (for lack of a better word) the player into quickly moving onto the next object to find and interact with.  To illustrate this point, I’ll mention one design choice that the developer DID NOT make.  The dialogue in the game didn’t really provide any sort of “bigger picture.”  What I mean is that the dialogue didn’t imply any sort of existence of a world outside of the cat’s personal life/thoughts.  The game’s dialogue didn’t go on and on about the brand of tuna that Jingles finds, nor did the game expand any further on why Jingles’ water bowl was empty.  But should the game try to include something like this?  No, it shouldn’t, and as a player, I’m glad it doesn’t.  Animals don’t have complex thought processes like humans, meaning they never question why something is the way it is.  Rather, to an animal like Jingles, something is the way it is because it just is.  As I played through the game, it reminded me of how I personally think my dog’s thoughts sound.

In a sense, because of the quick dialogue boxes, the player becomes the curious being in the game.  We as humans are always searching for more information, trying to put the bigger picture together, and in the end, that’s what sparked my curiosity about the game as I paged through the tall grass trying to see if there was anything that I missed.

The colors in this game were used mostly to illustrate the different feelings and environments surrounding the adventurous protagonist.  Within the final room, the castle, the background was red, as if to imply the aggression permeated throughout the room as the player hacks and slashes their way through their foes, in order to rescue the damsel in distress.  In other places, however, the player experiences the bright yellow colors of a sunny day on their adventure as they make their way across platforms above a water basin.  Even in the very first room, assumed to be the protagonist’s home, there is a pink and purple hue to everything, which gives a sense of calm and safety.  Despite the changing colors for each new room, the game never felt confusing.  In other words, the game felt linear and the player’s next objective felt very straightforward, which I think is a good thing.  In making the game straightforward, the developer gave the player a sense of duty to keep pushing forward on this adventure.  This is further solidified in that the player cannot return to a room once they have advanced to the next room.  The feelings the player interprets from the different colored rooms are experienced and gone in an instant with no option to return.  Once the player leaves his pink, comfortable home, there is no return to it, and that feeling the player experienced is now a memory.  The color choices are bold and in your face, as if to leave an impression on the player for each different room they enter.  This was a great choice by the developer, especially since the player cannot return to a room once they leave it.