itch.io

Co-op based games like Bird Fight are very interesting to me because it allows the opposing player to take the place of the computer in the discussion of interplay. While elements of computer interplay can still happen the predominant form happens between players. If no elements of randomness are added into the game, it could be argued that the game revolves around 'pure skill' in the sense that if you are good enough at the game, you can beat anyone. This attribute can be a double edged sword with regard to a player wanting to continue playing. If a player consistently plays with people who are better then them, then they might feel like they have no chance and stop playing or have a negative experience. However, if that same player dedicates themselves to learning the game more and becoming better, it can be a very rewarding experience to win in 'pure skill' games. To me, it didn't seem like there was any interplay between players and the environment/computer which could be an intentional design choice. However, if interplay between computer and player was to be added, some ideas I had were making it so the bullets bounce off the walls a certain distance, or having enemies appear that can reduce the lives of either player, etc. There could even be the 'pure skill' mode with no computer additions and the game mode where other interactions can happen. Another comment mentioned Smash Bros and I think this example is very similar. In Smash, there is the options to turn off random item generation for a 'pure skill' matchup vs a more dynamic matchup with randomness. I think that the control scheme gives a direction towards the design of the game as well. Both players able to control from the same keyboard while looking at the same screen, it removes any 'screen peeking' that many games have when playing on one screen. This is in part due to the fact that the game only takes place on one screen, but I think that it is still something important to recognize because it removes yet another element in any perceived unfairness. Aesthetically, the game is a light hearted cartoon style reminiscent of Looney Tunes art style. This makes the game appealing to a wide range of people from young to old. The rules of the game are fairly straightforward and simple which also appeals to beginner gamers and experienced gamers alike. The simplicity in the objectives and rules is once again consistent with the idea of the game being based on 'pure skill'. Because of the simplicity, players are allowed to direct most of the focus at getting better when facing different opponents. They can develop different strategies based on player behavior and move into the mind game territory within versus type games. In conclusion, I think that this game has a lot of simple fun that can turn very complex depending on who is playing.

Immediately upon loading the game, an atmosphere is being projected by the music and text. The usage of an erratic and practically unreadable font makes it seem almost alien like. The music is deceivingly calming with a background beat that feels ominous. Coloring of predominantly black and white suggests some sort of dark tones as if the player is shrouded by darkness. The choice of the developer to include instructions on how to play the game should be noted because it shows that the learning and focus of the gameplay is not centered around learning the controls but rather learning the patterns within the game. On a first playthrough each song is new to the player and it would be likely for them to fail. However, because the song notes stay static across all playthroughs, the player can actually remember the notes of a song and even play it without looking at the screen. This design decision rewards multiple playthroughs and dedication to learning the game. It could also play into the reason for having no random elements in the game. The developer probably intended for it to be purely skill based based on these decisions. I found the mechanic of clicking the notes in itself to be very satisfying when you get all the notes in a big combo. There was no need to add in the color change to green on a correct press for the game to function, and yet it adds a lot to the playability of the game. Imagine if the green color was not in the game. The only way to know if you had pressed the notes correctly would be to wait until the end screen to see if you woke up the person or not. This would be extremely frustrating from a player experience standpoint because learning the timing for the key press would take many attempts of trial and error. I think it shows how the addition of a small detail can drastically change the user experience when playing through. Coming back to the aesthetic of the game, the sound of the notes on the piano is one of the most defining factors of the game. The way that the notes sound almost out of tune sometimes gives the feeling of something being "off". The other defining factor in setting the mood for the game is the large picture that takes up a large part of the screen. It is extremely difficult to discern what is in the picture but the way that the figure depicted seems to be looking directly at you as the player conveys a feeling of uneasiness, as if they know you re there. There is also a sense of tension and stakes created for the player due to how the story is laid out. If the player does not do the actions correctly some consequence will occur. On the first playthrough, the player feels like they need to hit every note and that makes it very exciting. After more playthroughs, it becomes apparent that not that many correct notes are required, but that feeling on the first playthrough is very unique.

I think the obvious aesthetic choice for this game is an arcade-like style. This is because you have a one-screen area where the entire game takes place as if it was in an arcade cabinet. It also utilizes a very retro style theme song and sound effects. The bounce sound effect even sound similar to how a ball bouncing around a cabinet would sound. This combines with the gameplay style of one singular object that the player controls to interact with the environment, similar to games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig-Dug, etc. Looking at the objective of the game also plays into this arcade aesthetic because it is oriented around getting a high score. This is different than other types of games with dynamic objectives that change throughout the course of the game. Because of this design decision, players can repeatedly play the game to get better without worrying about the game changing later on. The coconut picture is the one aspect of the game that is not similar to arcade style aesthetics. This is because it is a high resolution image rather than a pixel based sprite. Another interesting aspect of the game is that it does not give you any information about what to do (not withstanding the page description). The enemies that shoot blocks at you are not explained and would likely be discovered through trial and error. The game also uses coins for the target object which is a very common item throughout retro style games and can be immediately recognized as part of the objective without having any explanation. I think this game also has an interesting mechanic in that the cannons can be eliminated from the game, effectively extending the survivability of the coconut. This adds in a skilled element to the game past the general enjoyability and I can see how that could add re-playability to the game as players strive for higher scores.  The combination of this strategic aspect and the more casual aspects of the game make a simplistic but complex interactive loop. There is an element of uncertainty in the game based around how the ball will bounce and where the enemies will spawn. This creates a unique experience every time you play the game and no playthrough feels the same. Interplay was used all throughout the gameplay with the ball bouncing off the walls in response to the direction you hit it. The cannon enemies also change the direction that they shoot based on the position of the player. This is in contrast to the cannons firing in a standard pattern that could be learned and practiced against similar to a boss fight. More interplay could even be added by changing the wall that the walls work. Maybe instead of being static, they can change orientation/direction based on where the player is on the screen. This would make the game even more dynamic between the player and the environment. Another ball could even added that can collide with the original ball adding more potential for getting coins but also creating more strategy in how to hit both balls.

Prompt 3: The core verb of the game is the movement of the squares side to side and downward. Once the square reaches the bottom of the frame, it stops and the player loses control. If there is already a square below it, two things can happen. The first is that the falling square will push the existing square to the side and stay at the bottom. The second is that it will disappear because it is the same color as the square below it. This is how the player gains points in the game. Because the blocks stay on the screen forever until they are pushed all the way to the side, the player does not have to remember anything important. An interesting and possibly unintended part of the core verb is that the player can actually use the up arrow to just suspend the square indefinitely and move it side to side without it falling. This allows them to have whatever amount of time they want to be able to move the square precisely. Adding Prompt 4 to this, I think interplay could be added here. Maybe after a certain duration of time, the game forces the square to automatically start falling down. This would add more pressure and difficulty to the game and present a moment of interplay between the game and the player. The pushing of the blocks to the side is essentially the only moment of interplay in the game where it forces the player to possibly lose the chance to match a certain color or have to move the color of their next block to a new location.

Prompt 1: The game has a very simple goal of keeping the ball from falling down with straightforward controls. The uncertainty in the game comes from how the ball will bounce off the paddle. Many times it is not very easy to guess which direction the ball will bounce, especially when it hits near a corner. The rectangle in the center of the screen also adds an element of uncertainty because it might redirect the ball in a completely different direction then expected. Victory is not defined by the game and is up to the player to decide what point value they feel is considered 'victory' for them. Fundamentally the game is all skill with how the player can predict the ball's movement and account for it. As the point total goes higher, every bounce feels more important because the player doesn't want to have to start from the very beginning. The main difficulty and uncertainty of the game is through the ball bouncing and thus if the player masters predicting the ball's bounce, they can go on forever. The one element of real randomness in the game is the angle that the ball will launch at when the game starts. This forces the player to adapt on the fly and not just memorize the ball's bounce patterns off of the first bounce. Depending on the angle of the bounce it can be impossible for the player to move the paddle the necessary distance in time and this becomes the main thing to react to as a player.

Prompt 5: The game's memorable moments for me were catching the fish and throwing the coin. Each of these required something else to be completed first and felt like an unlock. The emergent story I found popping out to me was a slightly horror-ish vibe. It feels like we are trapped in this dying forest with no way out and we have to try and survive by working as a community. The player, the rat, and the deer all have to "work together" to overcome obstacles. The skeleton on the wall and all the dead trees outside makes the forest feel abandoned. At first, I was walking around aimlessly and felt super useless when I couldn't really interact with much. The first interaction with the deer sets the tone of the game overall as they give you a description of the places and tell you to avoid certain areas. Throwing the coin in the well doesn't seem to have any major impact on the area and may serve as a moral question of whether you should take it from the rat or not. In the second area, meeting the squirrel who says that no one ever goes there is an interesting interaction. It is an inherently useless interaction from what I can tell mechanic-wise, but it incentivizes the player to continue exploring to see if they can find any other hidden NPC's. As I as playing, I was expecting to see more changes to the world based on what I interacted with, but most things stayed the same. This may or may not be intended but it gives off the feeling of futility in this dying forest and that you can't have much impact other than trying to survive with your family.

Prompt 4: The game takes place in a self proclaimed dungeon. By the background and sprites used, it appears as if it is a medieval dungeon that is not meant to be escaped from. I immediately associate darkness and a feeling of being hidden within it. The skeletons on the wall make me feel like I am doomed to die here and that is why my character is trying to escape. To be put in this place, I probably was convicted of a crime. Maybe I am innocent or not, but that is not made clear. I think that this plays well into the use of evocative spaces. Skeletons everywhere consistently gives off this feeling that nobody escapes from this dungeon. The use of beans and bean cans is almost comically jarring because it is not something you would expect to see in a medieval dungeon. It adds some element of humor and silliness to this otherwise dark environment. The player is dressed in some sort of armor and has sword so it initially seems like you will have to fight some enemies, but the skeletons you encounter do not attack you. As you collect these beans, you just eat them without really caring about why they are there. The game even explicitly mentions that they have some importance to these worshipping skeletons, but you just eat them anyway. To me, this made me feel like our character isn't really supposed to be a 'hero' but just a desperate person trying to escape the dungeon.

Prompt 5: Clicking in this game is important because it allows the player to make choices and foresee where the story might take them before clicking. This is because the words to be clicked usually have something to do with the next passage even if they are not a choice. The choices do not necessarily have a consistent pattern, but they are usually parts where the story has possibilities to branch. The clickable options that do not have a choice usually will not branch the story. Clicking could generally be described as 'unlocking'. This is because each time you click, more of the story is unlocked regardless of choice. There is no instance where clicking goes back, so it is always unlocking something that was not previously seen. In some specific instances, clicking could be considered walking or conversing. But these only apply to certain passages. Clicking also could be seen as 'focusing on' as well as 'actively doing things'. There is a scenario where you just click 'wine' and focus on that word to progress to the next passage, but you can also click the option 'Talk to Trinity' which is an active thing for the character to do. There are not many words highlighted in each passages compared to the overall word count. This allows the player to easily focus on what the next passage could be about or the choice that they need to make. Compare this to a passage that has multiple lines highlighted which might confuse the player on what to expect in the next passage.

Interesting Matrix references as well :D.

Prompt 2: The player is given this allusion of having the option to choose their answer at the start, but as the game goes on, it quickly becomes obvious that options that give you a choice are not really a choice. The game will still circle back to the question again forcing the player to choose the other option if they want to see any other text. Using this logic, the player is able to know what certain question options lead to and accurately predict the next text if they wanted to. I think this game is highly defined by its passage structure and is what the player is meant to eventually discover. The passages are really just a giant looping circle where you can always return back to the same question over and over again. This shape is really important to the story because it adds to this notion that time is confusing and not rational. Defining time in itself can be circular as the definition always leads back to itself. At some points of the game, it feels like the player is stuck in this loop of the same question over and over again with slight changes to the prompts and your answers. It makes it feel like a time loop but also that there is still some progression being made which would mean its not a loop. Maybe at the start, you would want to go back to the previous question to give a different answer, but eventually you just want to escape the loop. I am not sure if there is an end to the loop though, because I did not find one. It's possible that maybe the player has to wait a month on the screen to see the end of the game, but it is not made obvious that there is an ending. Once again, this could be by design to make the player feel trapped in a never-ending loop of trying to define time, thus being in a time loop themselves. Very meta.

Prompt 5: I won't compare the game to an actual drug, but it was actually very satisfying. My favorite mechanics was the particle brush because it felt very smooth. The differences in transparency between each circle create a really cool effect. Instead of being a line of circles of the same color, you get random colors, different sizes, and different transparencies. It reminded me of those classic gumball machines with all the different colored gumballs. A great quality of life thing that felt very needed in these types of games is the more finite adjustments with the sliders. The game is simultaneously giving the player control over some features, and removing that control in others. So when I draw a circle, I have full control over everything about the circle regarding its exact color and size. If I didn't like how it turned out or wanted to edit it into a different shape, I can just erase whichever part I want. However, if the player then moves to the loop tool, they actually have no control whatsoever. The tool just creates a diagonal line of circles that flash colors and has no customizability. Without getting overly philosophical while still trying to answer the prompt, I think this how it feels to be a person. You get to control some things in your life very concretely and precisely, and other things are out of your hands. Overall, I think that this game builds off of basic features with unique ideas and much needed quality of life changes compared to a more barebones version of this.

Prompt 4: In this game there are three brushes with the first one being a pretty loaded tool. It has controls for the color, size, and an eraser function. I was uncertain at first at how the color change worked for the other brushes because the other brushes don't have a tooltip about any color. So I didn't think you could change the color for brush two and three initially, but I later discovered that they could change by going back to brush one and change the colors there. The second brush was a surprising use of the canvas because the width of the brush changes based on which side of the canvas your cursor is on. This is where I think the little tooltip at the top of the screen was helpful as a player in relieving some of the uncertainty. The third brush was probably the most random and uncertain out of the three. The tooltip that usually gives info to the player is vague when it says that it paints a pattern so I didn't really know what to expect based off that. Then the actual brush has a pattern of randomly changing colors that the player doesn't have any control over. The choice of the ellipse shape is also not given any explanation so I wasn't really expecting that shape because the previous brushes were lines/circles. In comparison with the other two brushes once more, the third brush is not based on the player clicking, but rather just paints where the mouse moves. I think if the creator wanted to add more uncertainty, they could remove the tooltips. If they wanted less, then fleshing out the tooltip description might help.

Prompt 3: I will be talking about the interaction between your two mirrored snake sprites. This mechanic isn't even unlocked until the last level, however I think it is the most interesting mechanic outside of moving the boxes. The interaction could also be manipulated slightly to have inverse controls or some other movement modifiers throughout the level. It made me feel as if I had to be much more careful with my actions because I could do something to the other side unknowingly that will lock me out from completing the level. When I initially was attempting to solve the level, I ended up getting one snake to the bagels, but I then was unable to get the other snake to the bagels because I had moved a box incorrectly by accident. If the overall rules were changed, I think this rule would need some reworking because it relies on the fact that both snakes need to complete the 'same' objective, but have different obstacles. So if the rule regarding boxes changed, maybe the mirror mechanic would have no purpose. An interesting thought I had was if you were able to revert your actions fluidly within the game mechanics (not using undo), then the mirror mechanic would feel much less risky. But because the boxes can be pushed in ways that they are not revertible, it makes the player contemplate each movement much more. I don't have much else to say about this rule interaction, but I really liked the sound effect chosen for the crate movement because it sounded like it was actually sliding and not just a thump sound.

Prompt 4: The level I will be talking about is the last level. Although all the levels have the same win conditions, it was slightly confusing how each sprite worked because I wasn't sure if there were certain win conditions pertaining to them. On the last level, it took me a little bit to realize that I was forgetting about the sand win condition, so I had the boxes on the targets and thought I won. I then realized that I used the pickaxe incorrectly and blocked myself from removing the sand, so I had to undo at that part. The steps to get my blue sprite to the other side was also challenging because I had just learned how the yellow sprite worked and the gap that opened from the wall wasn't very intuitive for me. I think the most unique mechanic was the swapping of blue and pink based on the movement into specific walls. I chose this level because it was the most complex level in terms of the items used, however, I think the 3rd level was actually the hardest because of the ordering in which you have to move the blocks based on clearing the sand. I found that if I focused on how I might move the blocks onto the targets, a pattern of moving would be easier to see. This is in contrast to just pushing the blocks, moving the sand, and then looking at how I might utilize all the 'character' sprites. The design choice of the pickaxe removing the sand was very unique compared to a lot of the other games and added a 'satisfying' element to solving each level once all the sand was removed.

Prompt 3: The organization of rooms in this game is the crucial element to the game. The objective is to escape the castle. The ability to go back and forth between rooms is an interesting choice for an escape game. This makes it feel more like an exploration/puzzle escape game rather than a scrolling platformer such as mario. The player does get locked out from part of the rooms eventually once they find the secret exit. This is an interesting choice because it departs from the rooms more carefully on the second playthrough to see if they missed anything because of thiprevious assumption that you can go back and forth. A player might feel more incentivized to explore. Transitions between the rooms generally have no animation which creates the feeling of just opening a door and immediately being in another room as opposed to walking down hallways in the game. The hidden entrance is also a unique addition to the game because it adds a new 'mechanic' for the player to search for. Players might not actually know to look for the correct entrance in the upper right corner and instead try the doorway in the bottom corner. This adds a bit of mystery to the room and adds to the setting of being trapped in some foreign castle. A sense of progression is also added when you come back to the starting room and the prisoner's jail cell is opened. The fact that you need to talk to the person in the jail cell to unlock the hidden entrance also forces the player to interact with a designated sprite.

Prompt 1: Color is immediately used for effect in this game within the title. 'Find Red' might mean some different things. The player might just look for red colored items, a red room, or a red sprite. In this case, the player is meant to find the sprite called 'Red' who seems to be a fox. While maybe not what the creator intended, the red color used for the fox is interesting. This is because in the rest of the game, the colors are fairly dark or faded as the player is meant to be inside. But when you go outside to find Red, it's a bright blue sky and the fox sprite is a bright red. Maybe the blue sky is just the first representation of the sky the creator thought of, but they also could have made it raining, gloomy, snowy, etc. So the brightness of outside might hint at the emotion that is meant to be felt by the turtle, an in turn the player, when finding the red fox. Aside from the fox and sprite colors, the colors of the rooms are also used to convey the setting. The mouse's house is a hole in the wall, so it should be dark. The turtle's tank has a green background because a turtle is green. These colors used in the house are also much darker than outside. The player doesn't encounter any human character, so maybe the assumption can be made that the owner of the turtle left and that is why the house is so dark. There is also an unique use of color in the mouse's text box that no other character has. The mouse is so desperate for cheese that the word cheese is emphasized with color. Overall, the color is used to create a setting, but also convey what the characters want. Hope you enjoyed my analysis :)