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The core verb of the game Rain Terror is the word dodge. This is central to the player's goal and the player's available actions. Another core verb that could be applied to the raindrops is the word fall. This is the central way the game tries to stop the player. One more verb available would be the word score, as in score points. This happens passively and the player doesn't directly take this action but more indirectly via the many subactions contained in the word dodge in this game. The interesting interplay and is the player has all the control in terms of choices with actions. The rain will always fall and the player must decide how they want to dodge if they want to at all. This dynamic between the player and the rain combined with the passive score generator that only gets reset if the player gets hit creates interesting moments where the player doesn't even need to take and action to succeed. The initiation of the verb fall prompts the player to make a choice if they want to continue to succeed. The game constantly prompts and the player constantly responds. The game only seems to currently work at one level of interplay but contains a variety of different available strategies. There is also nothing the player needs to keep track of in terms of interplay as all the actions that are taken by the game appear to be at least mostly random events. The only interplay is the player deciding how to take the dodge action, if at all.

This is a really interesting idea for a game. After playing for quite some time I am not sure what victory even looks like in this game. It seems to be one of the types of games where you just continue on until you eventually lose, trying to get the highest score possible. I was unsure at first how to actually score in this game. I managed to survive quite some time without ever interacting with any of the balls. It was only after actually trying to use the left the click feature that I discovered how the score actually worked. A hurdle for me was definitely just not understanding how success was tracked in this game. After this the largest hurdle I faced while playing this game was simply the physical skill and the hardware issue. I imagine it would have been much easier with a mouse, but as I only had a laptop to play with using the left click feature on a trackpad was very difficult. It also seemed as though the balls moved much quicker than the player was able to. This made my original strategy of trying to just quickly react to the balls as they approached and make quick dodges much harder. I had to shift to trying to predict where the balls would land but eventually, the spawning of the balls became too much incorporating the left click feature seemed crucial to success in this game. The hardest thing to perceive was the hitbox for the balls and the timing of the left click.

The space in the game Pick of Destiny seems to be organized or structured around a town and surrounding nature. Some scenes present in the game are vast and clearly interconnected in such a way that leads the player to believe they are in an expansive forest. Incredibly wide exits in entrances are often used to demonstrate that the user is in fact outside, in spite of the many constraints to where the player is able to actually travel to and from. Trees are used as walls to limit where the player is able to explore while still maintaining the feeling of bigness the overall map gives. The map is laid out to mimic the real world with hills, forests, cemeteries, fields, towns, and many other things that exist in our world. There is not much contrast in terms of space or in terms of color. Everything is basically of the same color and while there is a larger variety of sizes in terms of space it is mostly just larger open areas. As it is set outside this means that all the space in the game needs to be large and open. Any large objects are always dwarfed by the sheer size of the open space of the outside. The collisions are slightly disjointed with how the layout of the map is and are also slightly inconsistent. However, overall the collisions are fairly predictable and the triggers occur whenever the player tries to exceed the bounds of the game's space.

For me personally, the most memorable moment of the gb-studio-project game that I encountered was weirdly the moment where you encounter the person on the roof. I spent a great deal of time up there and in that area trying to figure things out. Whenever I play a game I try to immediately go outside the bounds of the game. I ignored the first few roads and people, preferring to explore and discover what the bounds of this world are. This area with the roof and the ladder leading up to it was the first place I encountered that had no more avenues to explore. After thoroughly exploring every part of this last area, I finally went to interact with the person on the roof. His speech bubble didn't surprise me but what did was his movement. At first, I thought he simply moved away from the play. I later realized that he mimicked the player's movements. Except he would continue in whatever direction the player click and would not stop until he hit a wall or hit the player. He is originally trapped on the roof but after some careful movements, I managed to get him off of the roof via the ladder. With this I managed to get him on the ground and walking around, even walking off of the screen at times. Then I managed to get him to walk out of his designed area. Sometimes he would just stop at the exit but sometimes his character would simply disappear. Overall it was surprising that software this simple could still have bugs.

The opening scene is a simple one. It is a vast black screen with blue outlines. This tells me that the full screen is a transition link. A simple click will take me to the next scene. The text left on the screen refers to the base inspiration for the story we are about to play through. The main inspiration was the tactical role-playing game Rat King. While I have never played Rat King I have played tactical role-playing games before so already this gives me an idea of the experience I am about to have. The fact that these are the only things on the opening screen seems very important to me. The title and its inspiration are the only things necessary to prepare the player to engage with this story game while also nodding to work the creator likely enjoyed. The next passage is a further explanation, but in more depth and detail about the very nature of the story game the player finds themselves in. The time period is interesting to me and seems like it will play a major role. The player is given nothing but the year and the fact that they have found themselves in an ordinary town. There is no physical location given so it can be hard to assume what exactly is ordinary for town life in 1950, as this greatly differs depending on where you live. Lastly, this passage tells the player that there is more to the town than what appears.

The player has options for choices at almost every moment. I say almost because the player critically does not make any choices when dealing with the consequences of their actions. The options or choices presented to the player remain constant throughout the game's story. The story offers the player the choice, as the title suggests, of whether or not they want to feed the various animals as they walk past them. I had a suspicion that I would constantly be asked whether I wanted to feed some animal or animals and that not feeding them would bring about some negative consequences. You are able to go back to previous places and make a different choice. After discovering that keeping all my food causes me to be killed by a moose I did want to go back and feed some of the animals. After reworking some of the choices I made previously I was able to get to a more favorable ending. The story felt very controlled. As the player, there was a certain level of freedom but only on the surface. Ultimately there were no real choices to meaningfully change how the story played out. The shape of the story was very linear with a simple start and a simple end. The main theme of the story seems to be simply walking the path. Literally and metaphorically the main character is forced to walk through the path and make choices that have unforeseen consequences that can only result in one end.

One thing I ended up really wanting to do but could not figure out how to do it exactly was changing the paintbrush back to the starting one. I am not sure if I am misunderstanding the instructions or if it is simply not something that was designed to be possible in this version of the game. Considering that the other controls were written down quite clearly it seems that returning to the original first brush present in the game is not a feature that was made to be possible. I also wanted to return to the original black color of the first brush but noticed that this also did not seem to be a design feature present in this iteration. The tools do seem to be limited by the given stated instructions. I do not think that adding the ability to change back to the original brush shape and the original brush color without restarting the game completely would be too difficult to add to painterly at this point. As far as the feeling I got from this; I just think it would be easier to draw and mess around with the full range of brushes. It feels a bit frustrating to be shown and given a tool and color to use only to lose it if you decide that you want to look at another. It is possible this was intentional to make the player think hard about thier choices and have to plan out what you want to do this the first tool because you will potentally lose it

Considering the game shapes and colors as if it involved physical objects is difficult, to say the least as what can be done in the game could never really be accomplished with physical objects in the real world. However, as the title describe we are dealing with shapes and colors. More specifically we have various different circles and various different triangles. There is also the ability to draw lines free-hand. Essentially what we are dealing with leans more on the chunky block-like painting than any granular or smooth painting. This is more closely related to rapidly printing a  shape with occasionally changing the size or dimensions of the shape. There are also options to alter the color at random but overall the stuff manipulated is very blocky. The exception is the free-hand line drawing tool that is very smooth. The tools with random elements very much do have a life of their own where the randomness creates a sense of personality that is not controlled by the one manipulating them but happens regardless. There is also a discernable pattern with repeated shapes and colors in certain areas. A real-world recreation would be very difficult to produce but I might be able to. One way would be to give the person a shape dipped in paint that they can press down shapes. The dragging function in this game would likely be lost, but the random color and shape functions would be produced by periodically switching out the player's tools. Overall I don't think this could be recreated with physical objects without losing out on core aspects.

One rule in the game was the ability to move and interact with objects, moving the objects as well as yourself. Specifically, when to move into an object the object may move with you. This rule plays out in two different ways. The first is when interacting with the bomb objects, the player character is able to move the bomb object by pressing up against it. The bomb object will then "stick" to the player and be brought with them whenever the player takes the movement action. However, the object will only be pushed or pulled meaning it will not travel with the player side to side. The fruit pop, however, will also "stick" to the player but it will move with the player in all possible movement directions. This will continue to stick to the player indefinitely y until the attempts to make the move action into an immovable object at which point only the fruit pop will make the move. This two-part rule is fruitful because it allows to player to more interact with the map and rearranges it in a way that more fits the player characters strategy. It also creates potential conflict because the player character may not want to move an object when it does anyway on accident. It is useful and even necessary for most of the game and has different potential interactions on every single level. This means the player can start to anticipate how future interactions between these two objects and movement actions will happen in future levels.

The hunt, conceptually, is very simple but has a lot of layers to it and seemingly the potential to be developed into a much larger game. At its core, the idea is to navigate your character to capture or hunt down the non-player characters on screen. You have movements and the non-player characters also have movements that they will take as you do and according to your moves. All movements happen at the same time and their objective (presumably) is to escape, while yours is to capture them. Crucially this occurs in a boxed room with no exits so it is impossible for the non-player characters to get too far from the player character. Eventually, the non-player character can be cornered. This isn't a completely unheard-of concept but in the context of puzzle games, it presents a unique opportunity to explore this concept in a different light. Rather than being about simply being fast or being agile, it makes the concept of hunting down fleeing targets to be much more strategic placement and decision making. This creates a decision for the player at every action. Conceptually this puzzle is different because it offers the ability to solve it in very different ways. Most puzzles require to you ton think and plan out your movements and strategies. The hunt does this as well but it also allows the player character to take a more skill-based approach and use speed and agility to run down the non-player characters. These to options seem fairly unique for puzzle games.

Prompt 5:The ability to freely move through space within the designed constructs is critical to this game. Without the up, left, right, and down movements in the form of walking, you would not be able to achieve this game's most important or most used verbs. These verbs are collect and explore. The main goal is to collect an assortment of items to be placed in a bin and to do this you need to freely explore the world via the rooms available. It would likely be better if bitsy's movement wasn't so disjointed and slow. The player is given the free range of movement that bitsy allows engaging with the verbs explore and collect. The only limits are the rooms themselves having walls. I think this freedom or control is given to simulate a sense of how a dog exploring the world searching for items might feel. This reinforced by the other interactions you can take to is not a part of the main goal of the game such as peeing on a fire hydrant checking a food bowl, or going to a dog park. These do not really accomplish any goal but serve to further explore the experience of a dog with freedom. One action I tried to take but could not actually do was the further exploration of the woods. I tried to exit through the top but was unable to, as no room was connected to there. I thought this would be possible because there was no clear border at the top while other sections of the game had clear borders.

Prompt 3 - The rooms are organized to be a river with an occasional shore, but for the most part each room is simply water the water appears to be flowing one way with no way for the player to move backward against the stream. This is achieved by providing allowing only one exit and adding animations to the water that go in one direction. Each exit is signified by particular blocks the appear to stick floating in the water. The exit simply takes you to the next portion of the river, incrementally moving through space until you end up back at what appears to be the start. Though the start has changed which indicates a clear passage of time as well as space. The player very linearly travels from room to room in space represented by paddling on a river. Each section of the river is a different room and the rooms are differentiated by the tile placement within each room. Early on the rooms are bright and the shore can be seen next to the river, but as the player continues to travel the shore disappears and the rooms get much darker. Even when the shore returns it is much more barren than at the start of the game. This creates the effect that there is much more space for the player but the space created is all empty and dark. I imagine all this was done to create the effect of a person traveling down a simple river with a current where eventually the river gets dark and a spooky atmosphere is created.