Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

Zoey Zhao

15
Posts
2
Followers
A member registered Sep 16, 2021 · View creator page →

Creator of

Recent community posts

The game "listen" is based on the designer's previous "puzzling" upgrade. It is a game of Sokoban, but with more interesting rules added. The game is progressively more difficult, which makes it easier for players to master the rules of the game. In the first level, I learned that the game required me not only to push the boxes to the target location but also to turn them green through the blue squares. This is similar to the rules of the designer's last "puzzling" game. The rules were simple, so I quickly passed the first level. When I entered the second level, I moved the target object into position as I did in the previous level and turned all the blue squares green. But I didn't go to the next level, which confused me. That's when I noticed a red square in the middle of the screen. I thought it might need to change color more than once, such as going through it once to blue and then again to green. When I passed it repeatedly, I found that its color did not change. Then I guessed that maybe the red squares meant I needed to stop on them at last. But apparently, it's also wrong to do so. I tried to push the cross past the red square and found that it changed to blue. At this point, I can go through it again to turn it green. Compared to the designer's previous game, this is a new rule that increases the difficulty and fun of the game. When coming into the next level, I found there were more red squares. But luckily, the blue squares are all lined up on one row, which makes the step of color-changing them a lot easier. But after removing the cross I found that the whole screen was filled with blue grids. And in the process of moving, it is not easy to control the color change. It is hard for players to complete the color change and push the cross to the target position at the same time. I used the strategy of turning the red squares blue, then pushing them to the target location, and finally turning the blue squares green. During the game, I needed to always be careful to avoid pushing the cross into a position where it could not be moved anymore.

The game is designed to make it easy for players to understand the rules. For example, the player needs to push the cross, and the target position is a square with a vacant cross in the middle. So players can understand what they need to do at the beginning of the game. The game uses red, green, and blue colors, they differ greatly and are clear for the players. In addition, the designers used different sound effects. With the player's movement, the success of color change, and the arrival of the cross at the destination, the users will hear different sounds. This can assist in reminding the players of each step of the operation.

"Potato clicker" is a game to relieve stress. All it requires players to do is to keep clicking on the giant potatoes. The ultimate goal of the game is to reach a score of 100,000 and add a beard to the potatoes. To make it easier to get to this score, the designer created two additional buttons. Players can use 200 points to redeem a tool that adds 5 more points per click. Players can also use 500 points to redeem an auto-click tool. At first, I thought a score of 100,000 was impossible to achieve in a short period of time. I would probably need a very long time (half an hour or more) to keep clicking to get enough points, which is unlikely to be accomplished by the player. It's easy to get players started with these simple rules, but they can quickly get tired and give up on the game. Even though I have used both tools, I still had a hard time reaching my target score. Just when I was getting frustrated, I found out that both tools can be used multiple times. For example, the tool for automatic clicks can be used three times, while the tool for adding five more points can be used repeatedly. In this way, players can see the score is increasing rapidly. Meanwhile, the target score will become very easy to get. The player only needs a few minutes to add the beard to the potato. So I think the main purpose of this game is not to make players click more, but to seek better strategies. A good game is an important point is a special idea. This game is very interesting when it comes to design.

Another thing that should be noticed is the interface. When the player presses the potato, it will become smaller. The player releases the button and it gets bigger again, changing back to its original shape. Players can see the changes in the potatoes with each click, which will give them a sense of satisfaction. Below the potatoes, there are two automatically rotating potato-shaped fries, which makes the screen more vivid. When I first played the game, I clicked these two in order to see some special skills. However, nothing happens. The fires are designed just for a better look. If the designer can add the interaction between potato and fries, the game may be more interesting. For example, if you reach a certain score, the fries will become more. In addition, when the player clicks the auto-click button, an icon of a finger appears. It looks like it is constantly clicking on the potato. And every time a button is pressed, a new finger appears, which helps players see how many times they have pressed the button. The fonts for the scores are also interesting and different from the regular ones. The font style used by the designers has spots in the middle, adding to the funny appearance of the game.

Overall, it's a simple but fun game. It would be more interesting if the designer could add more goals for the player to accomplish.

The main mechanism of this game is the main character eating colored beans. Players need to click the arrow keys to control the movement of the main character. The rule of the game is very simple, but it is fun. The time of the game is 10 seconds in total. Players do not need to spend much time studying how to control the main character and the goal is to get a higher score.

One feature of the game is randomness. This is because the location and number of beans appearing are random. In order to eat more beans and get a higher score, the player needs to move quickly. This game is challenging because the colored beans are constantly changing positions. When there are no beans around the player, he or she will want to move to the next position. But the beans change so quickly that it is hard to get to the place where they need to be eaten. Sometimes it is very lucky that there are plenty of beans around the main character. The player doesn't need to move too far to get a lot of points at once. Sometimes I become disappointed because the beans are all far away from me. The beans will become more and more as time decreases, which satisfies the player. Because the less time there is, the more players desire to be able to get more points in a short period of time. This game reminds me of Gluttony, they have similar rules. It would make more sense if the beans could change position more slowly, like once every 5 seconds.

The main character of the game is a yellow object. The direction of the main character's mouth will change with the direction of movement. To make it look more vivid, the designer added animation to it. The designer has added a little bouncing animation to the main character to make it cuter.

Another noteworthy point is the sound effects. The background music is added to make players feel the tension and will speed up the speed of clicking according to the rhythm of the music. In addition, whenever the main character eats a bean, there will be a special sound effect to tell the players that they have gotten an extra point.

The game sets up multiple levels. In the beginning, it always shows “Unable to get to the next level.” I have tried many times to get the score to the next level. If the designers can gradually increase the difficulty in each level, it may make players more willing to spend time on the game. The second level of the game is to eat all the beans in a limited amount of time. For me, the second level seemed easier because all the beans were stationary. The player moves with a purpose to make each step count. Meanwhile, I found an interesting thing, it seems to be a bug. When time stops, the player can still control the main character until victory.

Prompt 3: Describe an interesting moment of interplay.

The core verb for this game is to catch the candies. Players have to catch candy canes as many as they can in three seconds. When the player clicks on a candy cane, it disappears from the screen, and the score is added, meaning that the player catches it. After catching a candy, the player needs to react quickly and click the next one. Most of the candies will fall from above at different speeds. There are two candies with unique movements, and they fly from the left and right sides of the screen to the opposite side individually. The first time I played, I didn't catch any candy because I didn't know where they were from and where to move. But because the candy appears in the same way and the same position each time, players can more easily succeed in getting higher scores. While players are catching a candy, they need to observe the next target candy's location quickly. Each candy's speed is different, some are fast, and some are slow, so players need to click and observe at the same time.A three-second countdown will appear in the game. By counting down to three, two, one, tells the player that the game begins and should be operated. At the same time, the remaining time of the game shown on the screen increases the game's tension. However, when the player's attention is on one candy, other fast-moving candies will interfere with the view and make the game more challenging. And the game time is very short, the number of candies is much more significant than the number of players can catch, which makes players feel in a new danger.

Prompt 1: Describe the central uncertainty in the game.

This game is designed to avoid a quasar in the middle. The player controls the arrows to reorient the ship. Because the suction of the quasar was so strong, I had a hard time controlling the spaceship, which made me unsure about winning. I need to control according to the real-time position of the ship because the suction is continuous. And the change of the ship's position at one point may require successive clicks of different arrows. I often got frustrated because the clicks weren't fast enough, and I didn't have time to react to the sudden change of direction of the ship. After playing for a while, my strategy was not to be hasty but to control the direction little by little. I started to observe and think that the ship would automatically move to the middle, so I needed to know which direction I should control quickly. The enemy in this game is the quasar. It doesn't move but has the strong pull power to the center. I need to keep clicking the arrows to control the direction instead of holding to control the movement, making the game more challenging. One of the randomnesses of the game comes from the random appearance of planets. After the ship reaches a planet, the player does not know where the next planet will appear. Two planets may be close to each other, or they may appear at diagonal positions on the screen, which is the farthest distance. The farther away the two planets are, the more complex the game will become for the player. At the beginning of the play, because the ship's own movement is too fast, resulting in my inability to know its movement trajectory.

Prompt 1: Describe how the shape of the space influences the feeling of play.

The game is centered around the "hero". The story begins in an empty space where the player interacts with another hero. He tells the player to finish the trial on the left. Then the player goes up through the ladder to a platform. The ladder is the entrance to the place where you talk with the character also the item that connects the two scenes. 

After talking, the music changes, and the player has to go into a cave. The cave is displayed in one-third of the entire screen. The scene becomes narrow, which makes players feel they are in a real cave. At the same time, the tight space will make players feel the tension. In the cave, designers used rocks designed for only one player to pass through, combined with the horse. As soon as you touch the player will let the game end to increase the fun of the game. A staircase connects the cave to the outside world. The view opens up once again. Going from a narrow place to a broad place will give the player the satisfaction of passing through the cave. 

Then the player goes down. In order to enter the third scene, the avatar has to pass a narrow through a narrow corridor. A high-speed horse and the narrow hallway increase the difficulty of this part. After entering the new place, players can discover this scene is from wide to narrow and then wide again. The narrow field of view makes the player wonder what will happen in the next place. Throughout the game, the designers repeatedly used limited and open areas to increase the interest 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.

This game," 初雪", is about a girl meeting the first snow in a year. My role is a girl who seems to study in an elementary school. Another boy is walking around in the first scene, the classroom. The boy makes players feel like they are really in a school because there are other classmates. The main mechanic in this game is walking and interacting with items. In the first scene, the girl has to turn in the homework and leave the classroom. The girl goes outside and enjoys the snow scene in the second scene. In this scene, the snowflakes are resources. They fall on the ground, and the players have to catch them to continue walking. It makes the game like real-world because children like to catch snowflakes in real life. In the third scene, the girl goes back home. She can interact with hot chocolate, fire, sweet potato, and bed. The rule is to get close to these items and press the "Z" button to interact. These are things that people could have after getting back home from cold places. Drinking hot drinks and using the fireplace to keep warm these actions make the game more real. In the end, the character goes to bed and fall asleep. After sleeping, she has a dream of going outside again to see the first snow. These four scenes add up to a day in a girl's life, going to school, watching the snow, going home, and going to bed. Each part is very consistent, so it is very much like the real world.

(1 edit)

Prompt 1: Describe your process of reading.

When I started playing this game, the first choice confused me. Without any prerequisite story, the player is given the choice of holding hands or hugging. I chose to hug, but I'm not sure how this will affect the later plot developments, making me curious about what will happen. As I continued, realizing that this could be the narrator's love story after I found "she" and a "boy" appeared. So my choice would affect their relationship. When I had to select the second option, I chose to rig the order to help them work together instead of not helping the boy. After finding I was making choices for the girl, I would like to take "positive" action to be brave and together. The story continued, and I knew that with my selection, the two of them were interacting more with each other, which made me feel very excited.

After choosing to walk him home, which I think is an excellent choice to make them closer, I know the boy has already had a girlfriend. I became feeling a little frustrated about that. The subsequent development of the story made me think that they were sweet and distant.

After I l knew that they met again, I still chose to be "brave enough" to make this story go on. However, they are still friends in the end. The last sentence, "Let's hear that again, maybe I can learn something here," takes me to the first page again and solves my problems at the beginning—Why do I have to choose "holding hands" or "hugging"? 

Prompt 2: Describe how the passages are organized.

This is a game about Phil and Butty cat related to the designer's last two games. On the first page of the game, players need to fill in the blanks about their name, favorite food, favorite number, and favorite food. I think it is a kind of "option". Although it is not a choice among the few options given, it is the players' choice to fill in the content entirely by themselves. These choices will appear later, which provides players with a better sense of engagement. 

After clicking the story starts now, players would have two choices, selecting Butty cat's feeling, cozy or annoyed. I guessed before I chose. If I decide cozy, then the story should go in a positive direction. If annoyed is chosen, then the plot should become frustrated. But I can't guess where the next level will take place. 

In most cases, the choice is what the player says as the main character, and players can not go back after choosing. I do not think players should go back to the last step. Because players sometimes make entirely different choices, such as Maybe you should go and check it out? It's probably Phil, look! These three are not the same approach so that they will lead to different results. So it makes sense not to be able to return to the previous step. In my opinion, the designer gives the players all these choices that would make people feel like they are really in the story and interacting with the characters.

Prompt 3: Describe how you played with the game.

This game has many kinds of brushes, just like its name, "patterns galore." Players can choose different shapes and colors of brushes. Players can choose their colors from the palette or use random colors, which gives more variety to the paintings. The randomness and colorful colors make me feel like I'm playing a game rather than using a piece of software, which means variety brings playability to this game.

When I first started playing this game, I was repeating a certain pattern and rotating them. Later the adjustable rotation and different shapes reminded me of a kaleidoscope. To achieve this goal, I used small triangles in the middle part. Then use the rotation to enclose them in a circle. Use larger rhombus shapes in the outer layer, rotating them again to form a circle and change their color. You can finally complete a pattern like a kaleidoscope by repeatedly changing the shape, color, and rotation of these operations.

The three buttons in the game supported me to finish the final piece successfully. The undo button allows me to take a step back in time if I make a mistake, without emptying the entire canvas and repeating all steps. Sometimes, the redo button is also handy because the undo may be incorrectly operated to cause more deletions. In this case, players only need to click the redo button without drawing again. Because the shapes created at the top of the canvas are solid and the shapes at the bottom of the canvas are hollow, it inadvertently makes the whole shape look better.

Prompt 2:

In Joe's game, there are three brushes. The first brush has dots of varying sizes, sometimes several in a straight line, sometimes only one. There are three colors, white, blue, and dark blue. The second brush is a triangle of different colors and sizes. The first click identifies the vertex, and the second identifies the bottom edge of the triangle. The third brush has colorful eclipses. It is horizontal on the left half of the screen and vertical on the right side of the screen.

I wish I could have buttons to clear or undo the screen when playing this game because the first and second brush takes up more space with each stroke. And because of their randomness, they appear in positions where I don't want them to appear. If I could only refresh each time, I wouldn't be able to create the pattern I wanted all at once and would waste more time. When I'm using the third oval brush, it only changes direction on the left or right side of the screen. I wish it could change the size a bit to allow me to create a more varied ellipse.

When I played this game, my feelings were as "abstract" as the title. I don't think size control is destructive. But the advantage of not being able to control the size of the brush only randomly is that it fits the theme better because there is a strong connection between randomness and abstraction.

prompt 4:

I find the last level in this game is a little challenging. When I played the previous four levels, I learned that the minion could go through the fire and the player could go through the water. But the first few levels are relatively small areas, I won the game without knowing it. In the beginning, I thought if I pushed the character onto fire or ice properly, the tiles would disappear. However, it didn't work at the last level, because I found them appeared again. I spent one or two minutes figuring out that players can turn ice into water, and the minion can turn fire into ash after passing them. Meanwhile, ash and ice can be pushed as well. Ice and fire will disappear when they meet. 

When I first played the last level, I tried to turn all tiles into something safe to pass because I didn't fully understand the rules of the game. So I spent a lot of time doing something that could not help me win the game. When I played the second time it was much quicker because I knew that I only had to push the minion to its destination. I must have one safe path to let the player and minion get through and be able to reach the goal. But I still haven't figured out where the ice and fire reappear in this game. But since the player's goal is to win the game, this issue may not be the most important.

(1 edit)

prompt 3: 

The rules of morandiforia are based on the Sokoban game. The game is very simple, but with some improvements. To begin with, the player must simply push the buckets to the target place in a relatively straightforward way, similar to the Sokoban game. In the process of playing the game, we know that the most significant goal is to fill up the big paint bucket with three small ones. As soon as the bucket is full, the exit will appear, allowing the player to go to the next level.

It's interesting to note that the designer adds a teleporter in the second level in order to allow players to move from one location to another, which is much farther away. By using symbols of the same color, the designer informs the player where they are starting from and where they're aiming for. The addition of such items appropriately increases the difficulty of the game, but without making the player feel too difficult to handle. During the game, I found that it was also important to determine which direction should push the bucket. For example, if I push the bucket down to the teleporter, and it sticks to the lower edge at the destination, I would not push it up anymore. There is also the fact that if the target is near the teleporter, then the player may always need to change position back and forth, which adds to the challenge of the game. So it is interesting to see that players need to consider not just the next step, but several steps as well to win the game. 

The designer uses different tiles to create various objects in this game. In the first room, and the ties are circles in squares, which makes them look like machines. I think it greatly fits the theme of this game—asteroid immigrant. In the second room, another example of tiles is a plane. Though there is only the head of the aircraft showing in this room, creating the scene of the airplane. Although the background is green, twinkling stars and moon make the whole environment like night, creating a lovely atmosphere at night. It just reflects what the avatar says, it's a great place to be. The third room is much similar to the first one except for twinkling stars. This makes players know that the avatar has arrived at the asteroid. The tree and grass of the farming place have brought me the most attention. The designer uses simple animation to make the whole scene become dynamic. For example, the small movement of apples on trees, and two forms of grass. Meanwhile, I notice that the apples and grass move in the same direction so that it looks like a wind is blowing through. In my opinion, this is exactly where the designer is fighting with Bitsy. Cause to It is not that possible to add complicated animation to tiles. Therefore, it can only be achieved by changing the two forms of the object to enhance realism. But some activities are missing, like getting enough points through farming. Players just passed through some rooms without much interaction.

The designer uses blue, green, and black in this game of the first few rooms, which makes the player feel like they are really in the environment of a computer. Besides, the green used is very bright. It is easy for players to find out useful items. For example, the problems to be solved and the exits. Considering this game is for students to learn to convert binary to decimal. Cool colors like the color of tile—blue, making children feel calm and not irritable or restless. The background of each room becomes lighter and lighter. It's a great way to tell players you're getting closer to victory. In the last room, the background turns from black to white. It makes me feel like that I've overcome the difficulties and come to the light, leaving the virtual world of the computer and came to the real world at the same time.

There are not very many types of tiles but is easy for players to know the area of operation, helping players have a clear idea of where they should move next in the game. In the last room, the walls on the side are made up of zeros and ones, which fits the theme of the whole game. 

The second room which is the first one to choose the answer brought lots of attention to me. It cost me a little time to figure out how to escape from the room. But it is still clear and easy to find the right way to do it.