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Weihao’s PacMan game is a unique derivative of Pac-Man, where you play as Pac-Man and eat the pellets, but instead of them being statically laid out across the board, they randomly appear and disappear. It is rather stressful when you first start, especially since at first, the arrow keys were also manipulating my browser scrolling. The actual rules and verbs of the games are not necessarily complicated though. I instinctively used the arrow keys to move, which after a few rounds, I realized encompassed all actions and were connected with the complete rules of the game. You can use them to move and if you touch one of the pellets, you consume them, increasing your score by one point. 

It’s such a simple rule to eat/overlap the pellet and gain a point, but a lot of gameplay can be built around that. We see two primary examples, one where the pellets only appear temporarily and one where they are stationary but we have limited time. Other options could be explored in further levels as well, with ones which slide away from you, are magnetically attracted to you, or that you don’t want to eat them. The two examples included go pretty far though, particularly since the action of eating is so satisfying. This is accomplished perhaps by the psychological effect of eating alongside the rewarding sound played when you collide with a pellet. They go far enough to create an interesting game though mainly due to the time limit. 

This time limit introduces a lot to the game. Primarily it is the sense of urgency as you play, providing the actual challenge, since 10 seconds is not a long time to collect pellets. It’s actually over before you know it and can feel quite bad, since you’re often heading towards some pellets but they’ll disappear and you won’t have enough time to redeem yourself. It’s easy to feel quite disappointed if you don’t collect enough and lose, with the dialogue telling us we have to restart, pressing in the wound. 

The 10 seconds is not too long though where you feel like you’re wasting time if you keep losing. Being able to complete the level in time always feels like something you can do, no matter how many tries it takes. The combination of the satisfying nature of the game and its actions as well as this small investment, make it not possible to give up on this game. This feels even more the case once you reach the second level, which instead has a few stationary pellets. You got over the hurdle of the ever moving pellets, so these feel even more achievable. That is a complete lie though. The stress of the time is even higher here, as you know where the pellets will be, but if you can’t get them all, it’s likely due to your inefficient path. To make matters worse, you have to start all over. But now you know you can get there, so you’re stuck in that loop again.

Overall, the game takes a few simple actions and rules, presents them in a satisfying fashion, with a super quick turnaround to make the game highly replayable and pleasantly frustrating.

11pm’s “Deep Deep Ocean” is a stark departure from their previous game entries, but it is nice to see their growth from their original Bitsy game, all about learning “Who is Phil.” Entering the game, the player is instantly flooded with emotions and ideas of the surrounding world. The design not only sets the scene as underwater, but showcases the world as alive, and truly deep. In the locations the player can move to, there are no reflections and no visible waves. The dialogue helps to set the scene as well as in the Pacific Ocean, but the feeling of being deep underwater felt particularly important to me as a player. We don’t understand a lot of what goes on deep in the ocean, so I was left with curiosity around what types of experiences I would face as I ventured on. 

I soon travelled deeper into the ocean, highlighted by the game with a vertical transition and lack of any reflections in the new scene. There I met some fellow sea friends. Each sea animal had quite their own character, highlighting that this wasn’t any normal sea experience, and the deep sea truly has some strange things going on. They worked as tools to access the various minigames. Beyond that, the elaborate coral design made the experience feel exciting but also allowed us to feel subtly orientated without being too specific, which makes it more realistic and also helps provide a sense of direction with an environment as technically confusing as the deep ocean.

Beyond simple visual design, the design was important to the story, with the coral tubes acting as transportation mechanisms for the minigames. 11pm worked with these sprite and color constraints of Bitsy to truly bring the world to life in a way that is realistic but while also enabling the mystery feeling of this deep ocean. Entering each one, we are tricked, thinking we are entering a spa, but have some task to complete. It feels a little frustrating as a player, but it is a good frustration that leaves the player wanting to find the true spa. 

As the player soon finds, there is no spa, at least for them. They even end up on the other side, giving some sort of spa, having to hit arrow blocks. Due to the experience of working on each one, the dialogue and attitude from the characters after returning, and the beauty of scenes, it’s really not the worst feeling. As players we were provided with unique experiences and were allowed to build our own little story in the “deep deep” ocean, with northing forced upon the player. We were allowed to take our time, appreciate, and explore and better understand the potential mystery of what the deep ocean could potentially be like.

All in all, “Deep Deep Ocean” utilizes the constraints of Bitsy well to create a realistic, yet mysterious world, that leaves the player wondering what else strange thing could be next. I mean who would expect an arrow order clicking game created by sea creatures. I know I’m left curious to see what else could be lurking in the depths of the ocean, but also a little scared, with nothing turning out as expected so far.

Prompt 3: Describe an interesting moment of interplay.

“Fitness Challenge” starts with a basic set of verbs, essentially moving horizontally, jumping up, and rolling down. Using these verbs, you don’t necessarily change the view, or even the camera, but your velocity has a constant base of moving right and the camera constantly moves right matching that base velocity. In the beginning, players are given a chance to explore these verbs, to understand the controls and their repercussions, as obstacles are few and far between. You must jump sometimes while other times you must roll to avoid obstacles and survive. 

These verbs and restrictions allow for interesting forms of interplay as the base velocity increases and the color and music of the game becomes more intense. This environment induces a feeling that your actions will have consequences, most likely dire ones, and you feel very tense. You soon find yourself being challenged, as your actions, even when no obstacle is in sight, can have large effects. The player is moving so fast a new obstacle could appear so quickly, for example requiring you to roll on the ground while you were just jumping in the air, or vice versa. The actions build up on each other and the player can react to these changes in the environment, even moving horizontally to help recover from particularly tough situations as an even further level of interplay. As the game progresses, this gets even harder though, requiring more caution and thoughtful movements.

Prompt 2: Describe the challenge of the game as if the designer was working to thwart you.

The game doesn’t make it necessarily easy to win, by always having the ball move at least in some direction. There are no extra external forces and it is up to you and your paddle, letting you have control over the gameplay, but the velocity of the ball persists at least a little despite your best efforts. It’s not forgiving of mistakes either. As soon as you make a quick movement to save the ball, everything quickly goes downhill. Your velocity is transferred to the ball and if the ball has any horizontal direction, you’ll be in a tough spot. 

Even in the off chance you don’t make a mistake as the ball continuously moves across the screen, you have a paddle and a ping pong ball, you naturally have a feeling to see how your movements affect the ball. You are punished for this, just like in real life when you’re learning, with the ball flying all over the room you’re practicing in. This makes it more challenging, but it definitely is more fun than just slightly moving your paddle, so you can easily feel encouraged to continue this more wild style of play. Sure gravity is your primary, concrete enemy, but in reality it almost seems like your self control is the true enemy.

Luckily, the designer gives us a little wiggle room, with the handle also working to hit the ball instead of just the primary paddle surface. It feels satisfying just like if you would use the handle in real life and gives you a bit of an extra leeway while still not completely nulling the existing challenges of the game.

Prompt 2: Drawing on Doris Rusch's account of games as expressive media, describe how the abstract rules simulate some real world system.

“The Vill” is quite the village, with cute little heart people, and houses full of moving and talking cherries. It’s not exactly real life or matching the real world but there are real world problems and life-like interactions. We step in to this role of surviving an earthquake, and while it’s not the only option, I as a player walked into the first house I could find. This house may have not been the best choice though, as like the family in many mansions in the real world may not welcome me, I was also not welcome in this mansion. The cherries present would tell me I shouldn’t be there and in certain parts of the room would send me to other parts of the building. I definitely did not feel welcome, even though it was during a hurricane.

I took my leave but the shaking continued, so I tried for another house, not unlike I would if I was scared in this actual situation. You can imagine my disappointment when the next house was locked and abandoned. To be honest, the dialogue almost sarcastically saying “what a shame” matches how I feel, as I would be a little scared to go in such a house ever, let alone in an earthquake.

The final house was full of my neighbors, who had such nice things to say, and I was able to properly explore the house. Even if some places are abandoned, some are off limits, there are often people happy to look out for you and provide you with somewhere safe, I guess it just takes some extra time to look sometimes. Overall, while the village has some quirks and some of the circumstances are not realistic, I find that it reminds me of my experiences in a small neighborhood composed of a variety of people. 

Prompt 3: Describe the procedural rhetoric employed by the game.

The newest installment in the Phil the Rabbit series, simply titled “Phil”, may not seem the most complex when you first see the title, but soon your love and care for Phil take over. The procedural rhetoric is based around the player’s interactions with Phil and the inherent desire to understand his behavior and make sure he doesn’t get lost, he really is a wild one at heart! As the player you don’t have to interact with Phil. You could simply enjoy the nicely designed scenes, walk around as your character, but it’s very hard to ignore such a cute creature. In the off chance you do, the game prevents you from going to the next scene until you talk with him, but I have a feeling that’s very very unlikely. To help make the possible interaction obvious, the game has Phil jump around, so you know he’s not just part of the background.  

Our curiosity gets the best of us and we find ourselves talking to Phil, who runs off again, and as he cutely bounces away, it is tough to not curiously follow him. The dialogue indicates we never finished our conversation and it’s easy to want to know more. Now the player is left to chase Phil. Even if at first they don’t want to, he keeps going in circles, so it really draws the players attention. His attention is soon drawn by the grass though. We soon find this rhetoric continued as next time we reach him the dialogue tells Phil to wait. 

Overall the rhetoric and goal is pretty convincing. While I did enjoy the visual identity of the various scenes, I never felt like I didn’t want to catch Phil and talk with him, so it was quite satisfying to get to him in the end and see him happily with us in a sort of pen, safe and sound.

Prompt 1:

I started off playing this game with a bunch of excitement and curiosity for the future, as it had me enter in details about myself and some of my favorite things. Soon we find ourselves introduced to “Butty Cat”, who seems to be a cat. Cats can get pretty crazy and soon we have a choice of choosing if she is “cozy” or “annoyed”. As a player, this can feel stressful as it seems like it will impact the rest of the story, and since I felt that way, I went with cozy since I didn’t want her to be stressed as well, plus enjoying the morning sunshine was something I could really connect with. 

I was glad I made this decision as she seemed rather satisfied with the “relaxing morning”, but that’s cut short as she wants to then go outside to enjoy the weather. For some, this may be great, but it made me feel a little stressed as it was quite an abrupt change of pace while I was enjoying the sun. Then it all goes downhill as she jumps off the sofa, but slips and gets hurt. At that point I knew we should have stayed inside enjoying the sun. 

The dialogue helps us dive into the attitude of Butty Cat here, as we see her “march” to the balcony door. She didn’t even get far, settling directly “in front of the glass door”, making me feel better about leaving the inside. As long as we don’t have to walk too far. I definitely vibe with Butty Cat’s laziness. Just like Butty Cat though, as she saw a pile of strawberries(the fruit I selected in the beginning) in the yard, I was met with some confusion. That’s completely not where I expected them to show up and I actually forgot about that at this point. 

Overall, the action of clicking, the textual descriptions, and Butty Cat’s dialogue really help the player feel and experience Butty Cat’s day to day life. I am hoping my day can be like hers soon...

Prompt 5:

“A Day Disney” strategically utilizes the basic acting of clicking to invoke a lot of emotion.  The dialogue helps build up the excitement of visiting Disney World and exploring, but it is the act of clicking that allows the player to step into the world and feel like they are visiting Disney World themselves. Each click lets you complete basic actions, primarily traveling between parks or different part of parks. So every time you click a location, it almost feels like you(or the character) are picking your feet up and travelling between parks. This is facilitated not only by the action, but the text, which not only describes experiencing the places, but seeing them and the feelings that the avatar faces. 

Unlike some other stories, the actions are pretty structured, with a consistent ordering and the ability to go back and forth. While this may seem to limit the uniqueness of the story, you have your unique order and your own choice of what to do. Your experience will be completely different than any other player playing the game. This is expanded on with the choice to always leave the current park or even go home when you want. Disney can be a tiring experience and the fact this is an action that the avatar can almost always take, helps the player feel that as well.

Prompt 3: Describe how you played with the game.

Illusion was more than a piece of software, but really a form of play. Of course it was fun to make cool pictures at first, especially with the circular tool, just by messing around. It was satisfying to build circular tubes across the screen with that tool, reminding me of ones little animals will travel through. This all resulted in me being curious in the rules as there were obviously some consistent rules that the brushes/tools were following to choose their shapes and connection points. 

I moved my mouse around, clicking and not clicking, trying up and down, various quadrants, even different speeds just in case. It often got pretty messy so I had to keep resetting the board, but I started to build a better mental model of the rules, and found myself wanting to create more than some complicated pipes. I love figuring out these kind of rules and the brushes presented are great for this kind of play, as they aren’t too challenging, but perhaps not obvious at first. For example, my favorite tool, the circle, had its height change depending on the y value of the mouse and the width change depending on the x value of the mouse. This enabled you to create relatively perfect circles along the xy diagonal.

With my bundled knowledge, I was finally able to put my art skills to the test, creating a pipe system, with support provided by the automatic lines from brush 1, and texture provided by brush 3. As I created them, I imagined them as water slides, and that made it all the more fun!

Prompt 1: Describe the game as if it were a physical object.

Scattering or Falling didn’t exactly feel like a physical object, it felt like I was manipulating one. With the starting scene of triangles spreading around as my mouse moved around the canvas, I first imagined them as gas particles, but I found myself able to make them bigger by holding my mouse button. While this didn’t exactly zoom in it gave that sort of feeling of adjusting a microscope, and I soon found myself seeing them as little microbes traveling across the area from the viewfinder of a microscope. 

Just like I could manipulate the background light in a microscope, I was able to adjust the background color, and once I was happy with that, the microbes seemed even more alive. Switching to a circle, felt like changing the lens or changing to a different petri dish. The circles dropped instead of spreading around, which didn’t feel as much like a microscope, but holding the mouse definitely gave that feel of zooming in on circular cells. To not suspend my belief, I found myself thinking of this as viewing the movement of blood cells and switched the color to a red to help my immersion.

What’s great is that just like a real microscope, there is the tactile feel of pushing in the trackpad. Sure, it’s not as fulfilling as turning a dial, but the feeling was still there, and the idea you go too far in it’s almost too much. Overall, I don’t think this was the intended feeling of the game at all, so I’m curious to see how others felt while playing.

Describe how the images, sounds, and writing change your experience of a puzzle. Where is Phil? is the sequel I have been waiting for. I learned a lot about Phil in the previous installment, Who is Phil?, but his life was so interesting I found myself wanting to know more about the how and why of it.

The story of this game interacted with the sounds and rules to help fulfill my curiosity about Phil and his interactions with his family and the world around him. We start off the game by understanding we need to collect all the grass to continue on based off of the dialogue. Phil must really love his grass, as it also made an appearance in the original game. What drilled this idea into the player’s head though was how when Phil interacted with grass, he detached from his owner, likely enjoying the grass too much. Then the player had to go back and get him. Luckily for him, it was to go and get more grass.

The sound of his excited bunny hops really pulled the player into this experience with Phil, with them traveling and working together to get all the grass. Every move was calculated but also fun. It wasn’t always easy though, with the interaction of the various rules, sometimes it was challenging to get him to go to the correct spot. The player can really tell that while Phil may love grass and his owner, he’s not exactly the easiest to get along with sometimes. In the previous game, we could see that with him tearing up clothes all over the house.

The story developed as the player cares more about Phil, wanting to get him as much grass as possible, and find even greener pastures. Then traps are introduced and when you accidentally move him on to one, it’s so sad to see him get hurt and the level reset. I felt like I needed to get him even more grass to make up for my mistake. Phil is a great bunny and all of these elements of the game worked together to help me realize that, and understand what being part of his family would possibly be like.

Puzzling is composed of a few simple rules, extending from the original Sokoban game. To my playthrough, I found the pressure sensitive toggles on the ground which toggle when the player steps on them the most fruitful. All of them must be activated for the level to be able to be completed. They're a key mechanic, with their color change surprisingly(and satisfyingly) alerting you to their presence in the first level. Despite this, it’s quite possible to finish the first level without noting their necessity, thinking they are just part of the path to possibly travel through or just walking through them by accident. When you get to the next levels though, their necessity becomes clear and rather exciting, as you need to consider not only how to access them in the first place, but also how to maneuver yourself to properly activate them.

As the player, it can be easy to focus on the basic Sokoban mechanic or the golden items you must collect, but these toggles are always there. They don’t let you forget that with them changing color as you casually maneuver crates over and past them. Things get more complicated as multiple are introduced and you want to deal with them right away, but that may not always be an option. 

Generally they don’t add too much of a challenge though, but they help give you another goal or stepping stone to work towards. It is pleasantly frustrating if they change back to the unactivated color when you’re positioning crates as you know you’ll likely just need to visit them again after the positioning is done.

To expand on the capability, the paths could be used more so in combination with positioning of the crates, so once a crate is in place, you cannot toggle a path if you haven’t already, so you need to consider order of the toggles perhaps even before or interspersed with the crate positioning.

Bitsy limits your choices of color, but “Persistence” utilizes its small palette for both functional and emotional reasons quite well. The game starts with a girl, perhaps a princess, supposedly stuck in a castle, with warm colors all around: a light blue sky and an orange building and landscape. As soon as she leaves and enters the city though, we see the sky is darker and the buildings are a very gentle green. In the forest by the river we see the same colors, with all environments besides the castle having these softer colors. Alongside the presented dialogue, this helps make the isolated experience the princess faces more clear and highlights the fact it is truly monotonous.

The next change in color the player is presented with is within the dialogue with a boy, who shares the same sprite color, facing some difficulties of his own. It’s simple, but his text is displayed with a blue color, rather than white. This has the functional purpose of distinguishing his dialogue from the girl’s, but matching the blue background, makes him sort of blend in even more with his surroundings. This matches his portrayed feelings as he didn’t really expect anyone to notice him as he was surprised to see the girl and overall his dialogue also portrays him as a bit sad.

The player soon finds themselves in an entirely new environment, as it becomes night and the girl begins to head home for the night. It’s not pitch black, but rather darker hues of purple, even near the castle. What’s most jarring is the boy is now no longer standing out from his environment, matching the foliage around him, functionally indicating the player is no longer able to interact with him and their conversation is over. It seems to bring a sense of curiosity around the boy and if he is always there, since he never moved, helping entice the user to return another day to find him again. Returning the next day, the boy’s color matches the player’s again, indicating his ability to be interacted with but also the connection they seem to have, at least during the day. 

Prompt 1: Describe how the choice of colors works in the game.

“Who is Phil?” is a great question I didn’t know I necessarily had before playing, but I instantly became quite curious. Luckily, for the player, a lot of elements of the game work to answer just that. One specific element is dialogue, which is portrayed either as Phil the rabbit's own monologue or better describing his actions. 

The game really wants us to understand Phil, and what better way than being him and acting as his curious self. The game provides many interactable sprites and items, which the player, just like Phil does, feels the need to discover and mess around. What engrains the idea that this is something Phil does though is the dialogue. Even in the first scene, Phil and the player are excited to find “fresh veggies”, letting out a “Woo!” as well as Phil’s favorite toy. There’s even a name tag with all of the demographic information about Phil, extending this biographical game to some facts instead of just characteristics. 

Dialogue is pretty limited in Bitsy, but the creator even utilizes effects like shaking text to illustrate Phil tearing up his owner’s clothes. He really is a rascal! There’s one thing missing from the player’s experience in the game as Phil, and that is interaction with his owner. Each scene showcases the care and love the owner has, but for a while, there is no direct interaction.That is until Phil curiously goes near the phone and his owner asks “Phil, doing ok?”. The player, wanting to respond or know more, goes to the phone and again hears “I am coming back, Phil”. Some pets are an afterthought, but with the multitude of toys and entertainment present in his environment and his energetic responses to them, we see the owner cares. The owner, wanting Phil to not worry until they get back, wraps it up nicely in a bow, showing that Phil is an important part of the showcased household and the owner’s family.

Prompt 4: Describe how text is used.