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My initial experience playing the game was unexpectedly fleeting, as it probably was for most other people who had the opportunity to play PacMan (WeiHao Xu's). Because the game begins as soon as its loaded and ends after a set few seconds, it took a few playthroughs for me to cement my first impressions. Like the game it was inspired by, PacMan was quite intuitive. Using the arrow keys, I was able to control the PacMan sprite and move it about the screen. Then, using my empirical knowledge of playing previous Pacman titles, the obvious objective of the game was to consume as many little orbs as possible in the given time frame. And so, that is what I had set out to do. Now the objective sounds simple enough, and with practice, collecting as many points would then be only a matter of pursuing all the densest pockets of potential points. A slightly annoying twist, though, which requires the player's adaptation is the randomness of the dots. Not only do they appear in random parts of the playspace, they also completely respawn every second. This in turn, defeats the purpose of crossing the screen to devour the big clump of points on the other side since they will despawn before they can even be reached. Now then, the strategy becomes, first judging the approximate radius around the PacMan which he can reach before the next wave of dots spawns. Second, a bias towards dots nearer to the center of the playspace is arguably preferable since if a clump of dots near the edge of the screen may pull PacMan away from future clumps that spawn in the interior, and now the PacMan's radius of dots he can reach within the second not encompasses unplayable area outside the playspace that won't spawn dots for PacMan to gobble. Thirdly, you must be in the good graces of RNGesus. Or more explicitly, one needs good luck to score well in this game. Because the timer is so short and the dots respawn so frequently in this short time, a significant amount of points that you score are almost entirely luck based. No amount of strategic play in this game will account for the sheer amount of points one's luck will earn them, but that does not rule out any strategy at all. This fine balance therefore encourages much replayability when it comes to earning high scores. No matter how many times you play your best, you may just get a little luckier at predicting the spawning of dots and earn an even higher score, and conversely, you may have arguably played your best possible in some instances but the unfavorable spawns of dots may ruin any chance of a decent score. For this reason, despite not having the same visual flavor and as many interesting gameplay mechanics as its forefathers and how primitive it feels, seemingly having been made with the p5.play library, this incarnation of PacMan really feels like it captures that essential essence of an arcade game.

When it comes to Sapphire Void, to be completely honest I didn't once reach the middle despite all of my efforts. Though the game is simple enough when it limits the player to a single verb, after some time playing I felt a strategy emerging out of my accumulated failures. While the interplay is certainly limited in this game, each time I noticed I had lost a point of 'health', I was always moving my mouse too slowly or quickly. Instead of discovering a secret, optimal technique, I was introduced to the imperfect nature of the collision physics between the circle and the lines. Maybe this is because the size of the circle's collision box (un)intentionally changing: dependent upon the speed at which it moves, or it could be a rendering quirk inherent to the game engine. The latter is probably more likely as the collisions were pretty inconsistent as, sometimes with the right speed, the circle could phase through a barrier. Equally confusing was the game registering collisions when the red circle was visibly between the gaps. This made me wonder as to the existence of some 'meta' strategy which could abuse the quirkiness of the game's collision mechanic to effectively transport the red circle to the center of the void in record time. Suffice to say, I never realized any strategy of the sort in my experience playing Sapphire Void, though.

Contrary to this unorthodox style of play, the mood of the game's soundtrack coupled with the simplicity of its gameplay give it a very calming and relaxed atmosphere when played as the developer seemingly intended. While it is not too punishing, the feeling of playing the game is exactly the opposite. Needle-point precision is necessary in guiding the circle between the lines, because the geometry of the circle and the spaces you have to navigate Sapphire Void leaves practically no room for error. Consequently, this invites the player to experiment with different paces at which to play, as playing to slow may leave you prone to the quirky collision physics while playing too fast will inevitably lead to a mistake being made and a health point lost. If going too slow means 15 painful minutes of anticipating every pixel, and going too fast means dying, repeating, dying, repeating, and dying again synchronized to the game's soundtrack then some balance must be found if one wants to reach the center. Unfortunately, though, I never reached the center of the void so I can not speak on experiencing a reward for all my exploits. Whatever it was that laid there for me, I began to weigh if it was even worth the effort. All these elements blended together then seem to reveal the game's subtle purpose, to incite rage in the player unlike its initial vibe. If that is indeed the aim of the developer then, well in my case he certainly achieved just that. The game with all its simplicity had captured all my focus and investment, and so I rage quit.

High Score: 202, Prompt 1:

The central uncertainty of this tabble tennis juggling game is the direction and speed of the ball much of the time. It's obvious that the paddle will redirect the ball back upward, but there is still a degree of uncertainty as to the horizontal element of its direction as well as the velocity. It really plays like how juggling a table tennis ball on a paddle does in real life, where you can cushion the bounce of the ball by moving away from it before it bounces and strike it away with immense force by moving the paddle toward the ball. In this way it is quite predictable as to the behavior of the ball after bouncing it, but not immediately calculatable. This is supplemented by the fact that the exact degree of horizontal motion in the ball post bounce feels somewhat random, though it clearly isn't entirely random  as the ball will go straight up if struck with the center of the paddle collision box(circle?) and to the left or right if struck on the respective side of the paddle's collision box. Another rule at play in the game, though I can't tell if it was intentionally coded or not, is the insane increase in velocity upon the ball ricocheting between the paddle and the ceiling of the game space. While the direction of the ball is easily predictable off the ceiling and walls, it can really build momentum up fast when colliding between all the walls and the paddle to a near unpredictable extent. Because of this, it is rewarding for the player's score to play it safe and stick to many small juggles near the center of the paddle to avoid these uncertainties.

Prompt 2:

The challenge of the game, though not explicit, seems to be to use the sheep guided by your mouse as a tool to push the flying cubes through a hole from one side of the screen to the other. The sheep has a max velocity so it cannot keep up with speeds of the mouse cursor beyond that max, causing for it to lag behind the cursor making the player anticipate and adjust to this to use the sheep and collide effectively with the squares. This added layer of difficulty whether intended or not, makes the game more challenging than if the sheep were always directly under the cursor. While it doesn't seem entirely predictable, the circular motion of the rectangles isn't totally random either. This makes it possible for the player to predict the relative path of the rectangles, and coupled with their quick velocity makes it just the right amount of doability for it to be frustrating during the act and rewarding upon completion. It should also be mentioned that after successfully managing to push a rectangle to the other side beyond the hole, they don't stop flying around. This means they are still an obstacle while you are trying to capture the remaining rectangles as it could fly out back towards the other side of the hole if not careful and set you back in progress. This feature is probably the most frustrating of all and seems like a deliberate design choice by the designer to thwart the player's progress.

Prompt 3 : 

It seems as though the game is telling a story about the potential dangerousness of the outside world, and seeking shelter with those you can trust and who care is an important rule to live by. The game starts the player outside during a violent earthquake and once the player interacts with the nearest sprites they tell the player to seek shelter to escape the earthquake. The most immediately available shelter, though, is not very welcoming. The interior is strange and confusing with little, unfriendly cherry people zooming about and unapproachable furniture that immediately seats you at a table if you try to interact with it or sends you straight to the door leading back outside. Once you leave this house, the subsequently nearest one is Dr. McDonald's, an unsightly house locked from the inside. To be completely honest I fail to guess at the meaning of this visual symbolism, though it was funny for some reason. After attempting to enter the haunted McDonald residence, the next nearest and final shelter awaiting the player is the one where the game ends. Once inside, you as the player can interact with all the hearts inside who welcome and embrace you and congratulate you on finding a shelter from the earthquake where you can be both safe and comfortable. In conclusion it seems as though the game aims to convince the player that it is rewarding to spend time looking for some sort of shelter that is safe from the outside but also within from harmful forces.

Prompt 1 : 

In first snow, the scenes are filled visually though the actual area the player can move about in is heavily restricted in the beginning. This forces the player to progress in only one direction and really depicts the way the world feels to a child in these scenes where the lack of ability to move outside the linear paths is much like the rules a kid has to follow. In the scene where the player walks home along the path, they are blocked off by snowflakes which they must remove form the path by pressing z and catching them, much like how a child gets distracted by things of interest while following these linear paths laid out for them. In later scenes where the play area is more open, this gives the player the freedom to move around and play like a child at the end of the day. The scene where you are meant to run around and catch snowflakes for however long you like really complements the freedom of the space, exemplifying this even more. And the final scene, though not as free as the outside, the open space within the confines of the house walls is a comforting balance between the freedom of play and restriction of priorities. You playing as the child are meant to interact with the hot cocoa, fireplace, and other things to prepare yourself for another day of priorities and play before you head to bed.

Prompt 4:

The importance of choice is particularly consequential in this story. Every passage in this is a choice, where the highlighted words are the choices the player makes in progressing the story in a direction that closes or widens the distance in the relationship between the narrator and a boy they're crushing on. Each passage provides a visceral opportunity to face the force of doubt that tries to convince you  that its not worth taking the risk to pursue someone special. Although, as the player you are detached from the consequences of failure, the ambiguity of what the following passage could be if you accidently overstep and show too much interest is enough to feed the nervous demon in the back of your mind. I said 'fuck it', though, when I played through the game the first time and threw the shy choices to the wind because I wanted the narrator to get their chance to be with this boy that made them happy. Though, there are passages with only a single choice, and in contrast to the ones with multiple, these feel completely different. As the player, conversely, you experience the opposite of ambiguity, as most of these single choice passages, you are drifting along through the story with the unsatisfied narrator, each proceeding passage with less to anticipate until you get that choice again. The choices and lack thereof in this story emphasize the doubt and desire that battle in one's mind when contemplating romantic pursuit and the choices themselves directly influence what the player feels they can and can't anticipate for the narrator from their actions.

Prompt 2:

In murder, the entire narrative is experienced from the perspective of the detective with the exception of the final passage which serves as exposition. Though, what matters is the information provided in the passages is only what our hero detective would know. For the most part, each passage is structured where it details information relevant to the murder investigation at the location or person the detective is visiting at that moment in time. Because of this structuring, the passages are no longer than a typical paragraph and are pretty uniform in length. Each of them has one or two highlighted words to click which indicate the focus of the next passage. Only one of these words, in passages that have multiple, leads to a unique proceeding passage. For example, one passage allows the choice of clicking the words 'knife' or 'book'. Upon selecting knife you are provided with case information helpful for making future decisions but it returns you to the passage where you must select 'book' which provides case information and then proceeds directly to the next passage. Other passages where the player is explicitly given the choice of two decisions that may result in chasing different case leads leads the player to assume the choice they make would result in different conclusions to the investigation. In my playthrough I ended up getting Lee prosecuted because the evidence against him was seemingly overwhelming. Though, the final passage made Lee's innocence seems ambiguous, as if the absolute truth about Brian's murder was unobtainable. This passage felt detached from the timeframe of the story from the perspective of the detective and game me personally the impression that any other path taken in resolution of the case would have resulted in this same ambiguity, sort of wrapping all the endings together.

Prompt 2:

In the sketch, the drawing tool allows for you to practically draw anything you want. The addition of moving clouds in the background in the sketch is no real problem if the drawer does not want them in the final sketch, since it is quite easy to just draw a rectangle with the shape tool that blankets the canvas, covering the clouds. Though, it does slightly complicates things in the scenario that the drawer wants to retain a still image of the original background with the clouds in some spot. While it is by no means impossible to recreate it with the tools by drawing over the original canvas, the addition of a simple button that plays/pauses the moving of the clouds would be a functional resolution to this inconvenience without having to do a more complicated workaround. To clarify, creating the desired image is still possible with the tool, it is complicated by the impossibility of stopping the original clouds in the sky.

Prompt 1:

This drawing tool, in a physical form, feels like what a modular stamping tool would be like. The different shapes you can stamp are limited and can be selected from in the dropdown menu, like attachments you would swap at the tip of the tool for each shape. This tool is already not too practical for broad use in typical drawing since its for stamping one shape at a time, and this is further reinforced by the random color button, which would be a button on the pen, too, to switch the color of the stamped shape. This is obviously an artistic quirk of the tool making it less optimized for recognizable drawings, but rather for something more random. It would take considerably less time and effort to use the tool randomly by stamping different shapes of varying color, orientation, and scale all over a canvas for a visually pleasing final product. The rotation and scale sliders in the drawing tool may be implemented as twistable or slideable analog pieces that correspondingly rotate and scale the shape of the stamping tool. As for how the empty/filled shape mechanic would be implemented into the physical tool seems less intuitive. I think the most natural way this mechanic translates into the physical tool would be application of pressure with the tool on the canvas. As shapes in the lower half of the digital canvas are empty, pressing the physical tool against the physical canvas with lower amounts of pressure would result in the outline of a shape rather than it be filled, and vice versa for the higher shapes.

Prompt 4:

Solving the final level was an interesting twist on my understanding of the mechanic introduced a level earlier, that being chickens. The objective of the level is to, as the shepherd dog, guide the sheep to the shepherd. As the dog, the sole verb at your disposal is to move in the 4 directions, and moving next to a sheep pushes it in that direction one space. This changes slightly when near a chicken, as the sheep try to avoid staying within 1 tile of a chicken, so on the next turn, if they are near a chicken they will move 1 space away from it regardless if its being pushed away by the dog. In the previous level this mechanic was moreso an obstacle, where the only path to herd the sheep to the pens was between all the water and chicken tiles (which could push the sheep into the water and restart the level). Like the final level, the semifinal level had only one route to push the sheep, through, and once this route was understood and found it was only a matter of not misclicking and herding each sheep to the pen. Though, in this final level, there were far more routes to consider taking, and after several attempts trying to guide the sheep around the chickens between the many creeks, I found the successful route at the bottom of the level. After catching on to the chicken-sheep mechanic, I figured how to use moving the sheep to particular tiles to move the sheep to where I needed it to be so that I could push it further along the path. This indirect movement of the sheep in the last level was an interesting interaction between the main verb and new rule.

Prompt 3:

The core rules of morandiphoria are quite simple, and are very much sokoban inspired. The main difference, though, is rather than putting each individual 'crate' object on their own targets, they all share the same target. And, as is shown by the last level, not all of the crates have to reach the target for the level to be cleared. This is indicated by the target filling up as what seems to be the liquid from the crates filling the target of the level. This is important because once a crate has been pushed onto the target tile it disappears. Once a crate has disappeared from the level, it is no longer a  collision obstacle for other crates the player can push to the target. This mechanic creates a certain complexity for the player to consider when pushing crates toward the target, since trying to push the crates towards the target without considering the order in which one does it may block the players movement in places, creating a situation in which the player must restart the level as it becomes unsolvable. This is reinforced by the player's lack of a pull verb to move the crate out of an unsolvable situation when its been pushed into a bad spot. The teleporters which the player uses to teleport the crates and themselves must also be used wisely, as the crate will appear on the opposite end its pushed into the exit teleporter from the entry side teleporter. With the lack of a pull verb, this mechanic also must be considered so that the player doesn't reach an unsolvable state in the level.

Prompt 5:

The core verb of a the player's disposal is movement. This is because of the nature of the Bitsy engine, but with the use of sprites and walls, the game steered the use of this verb towards the ultimate objective--hiking-- quite well. The starting room only allowed you to move in two directions, one of which leads to your bed to the right, ending the game immediately. Restarting the game with that piece of wisdom, you're left with the other option of going left. Since you must move through the immediate item in you're path on the left, the verb indirectly forces the player to interact with the item, detailing explicitly the subtasks needed for the player to begin their hike. After this point, though, most of the exits which connects the games rooms are two-way. This rule in turn plays off the movement verb allowing for the player to achieve the subtasks of the game in any order, allowing for replayability to a good degree. Similarly textured sprites can be found along the paths throughout the rooms in the game that can be revisited to remind oneself of the game's tasks. Most of the movement in rooms is restricted, with the verb being constrained to the bottom of the room, whereas the rest of the room is inaccessible pixel art. This makes intuitive sense given the portrayal of the rooms as top-down, 2-D, though out of sheer curiosity I would try to walk up all over the place since the placement of exits and items if typically 1 tile higher than where the player typically can walk, I found myself exploring where I could and could not walk up to, often walking in and out of the same room into the hallway more times than I would like to admit. Nearer to the end of the game when you embark on your hike, I had expected to explore the 3 different terrains more vigorously than walking straight across the bottom of the final room, which was the same across all 3 hikes. Nonetheless, considering the effort in designing 3 different hikes in the Bitsy engine, I was content with using my imagination for each hike, since the focal point of the game was more about preparing for the hike rather than actually doing it.

Prompt 3:

The rooms are  organized where they take up their own bitsy room, utilizing two-way exits which connect each other in the house.  Typically these exits were symbolized by a tile representing an open door. Inaccessible rooms in the house were closed doors. Cardinal transition effects emphasized the connectedness of the rooms depending on the direction the player takes to enter it emphasizing the idea of their connectedness. For example, walking up the stairs had an upward transition effect, and conversely walking down them had a downward one respectively. Most rooms were empty, with no more sprites or items to interact with than a couple. The main kitchen had empty bowls and a bed the cat was not tired enough to use, which was likely conjected given the restrictions of the intractability of items/sprites in the Bitsy engine. Not every room had the same amount of things that the cat could interact with either, keeping each new one unique and worth exploring. The confined nature of the house based on the way the levels were laid out gave it a very constrained atmosphere, despite the free-roam nature of the game. The only moment I felt free was walking outside and running around in the grass and that was only for a moment. Perhaps it is a result of me not playing enough, but the rooms were not really worth re-exploring, though. This was because the only item I remember obtaining was a piece of tuna left in Andrew's room. I thought that perhaps this would cause a branching list somewhere in another room, but I don't remember finding one. The tedious restrictedness of the level design really brings to life the mood that the player really is an aimless pet.