andreimsjsu

[andreimsjsu]

Blog Post 7: JackBox Game

Though I wasn't in class to actually play the Trivia Murder Party and the FibbageXL, I have extensive experience playing JackBox Games with my friends and family. It's a host of games that involve multiple people, usually ranging from 1-8 players. You get to join from your phone and participate in a range of games that involve trivia questions, providing your own answer, drawing, or even giving a presentation based on the inputs of other players. Player engagement is the main point of these games.

One of the games played in class was Trivia Murder Party, where players ask trivia questions, and if they get their answer wrong, they have to face a deadly minigame. It's fun to see other people make the wrong choices with the timer for answering, giving additional anxiety when making a decision. Audience can also play as an entity if there are more than 8 players, and can even potentially win, which makes the game more engaging.

Fibbage XL was the other game, which consists of players answering questions with lies, and the most popular lie, which is voted to be true, wins the game. This game requires you to build a lie that your opponents would find most believable, and that can very depend on the audience. In a class setting, that can be a little harder since you don't know the people as much, but that can also play as an advantage for unpredictability. You get to feel a lot smarter when making points since you see the people fall for your lies.

If I knew class was playing JackBox, I would've joined for sure...

[andreimsjsu]

Blog Post 9: Course Reflection

I honestly wish I were more involved in the class and got to make a video game with a partner, but I always submitted everything late and probably could have learned way more if I stayed on track. However, the portions that I did stay for gave me a good understanding of what making games can look like. At first, I thought making board games was going to be a boring task, since there isn't much visual engagement, but I realized how much planning and testing go into making a game. You have to worry about things like replayability, keeping the player's engagement, and making the game accessible and playable solo and in a group. And I also got to learn just how important the collaborations are and how much faster things can be learned and improved through them. Other people's feedback can provide directions on which way the development should follow, and can bring new ideas and problem fixes. This course was generally a good overview of what it's like to make games, learn about them, post about them all the different aspects and concerns of the video game industry. Even with my severe lack of engagement in this course, I got to learn a lot about video games from a different non-consumer perspective. Most importantly, I got to play games at their earliest stages, which I find exciting because who knows which one of these games can turn into a million-dollar project that I'll hear about later.

[andreimsjsu]

Blog Post 8: Final Project

My final project will be a paper that compares the development routes of indie/independent games and big triple-A studio games with a serious lean towards independent development, and that's because in the last few years, I noticed that I see indie games on top of Steam charts more and more. I also noticed a gradual degradation of high-budget projects into repetitive quest mechanics, non-evolving game formulas, and never-ending micro-transaction loops with season passes. What happened to creative storytelling and new, uncomfortable gameplay? Why make something new if this works like a new iPhone year after year? This frustration led me to compile a comparative study between these two distinctive routes of game making and see the benefits of going indie through skill building, creative freedom, and rights ownership. I argue that even though when making games solo or in a small team, you may lack the necessary resources and efficiency, you make it up by having an extensive game-making experience through learning each aspect throughout the entire duration of the project. While triple-A development allows one to become a specialist in a specific area of the game, and you are just an employee in a giant corporate entertainment team. I think there is way more benefit in trying to make your own game. It's way harder and riskier, but can be ten times more worth it than just working for a company.

[andreimsjsu]

Blog Post 4:

First game that I played was "This is the Only Level," which consisted of a character moving around the level, which is randomly generated every time you play it in terms of map function or player attribute. It took many tries to figure out the controls until I realized that they change every time you play it.

The game 2 I watched my partner play Puterful Adventure Demo

which was a game about a small TV running and jumping to pick up green batteries. The functionality reminded me a lot of the Mario type games, but the level and animation variety made it very entertaining going through the obstacles.

Game 3 I watched my partner play Streets of Rogue from Fall 2016, which was a very impressive top-down pixel fighting game. It had a large functionality and a lot of engaging visuals. 20 years ago this game would have made a lot of money.

Game 4 was Trick or Treat made by one of the Fall 2024 students, which was very stylistic and had unique functionality involving mouse movement. We didn't have much time to figure out what to do in the game, but it had a lot of cool animation and character design.

Couldn't find the game itself, but my partner played the Cluck Cuck Corn, which was about collecting corn from island to island to prevent starvation of chickens, I guess. It was a simple but interactive game.

Lastly, my partner and I both got to play the dating sim John Doe+, which, as described by my partner, was a "weird game about leading on John Doe". I was never a fan of dating sims so this one was very hard to follow.

One thing that I notice throughout playing these games is that it can be frustrating to watch your partner play, especially when the time is limited and you want to see as much of what game has to offer as possible, though with the time we had I think we got a grasp of what other students were able to make. I was inspired by the functionality of each game, a decent level of content, and well-drawn art, especially in the Streets of Rogue. Overall, it was a new experience to play the games from an analytical standpoint rather than just entertainment.

[andreimsjsu]

Blog Post 3: Paper Prototyping

Due to a lack of imagination, the prototyped game is called "Card Clash"

It consists of a game board with a 5 by 5 grid, two players, a standard deck of cards, and a set of 50 chips, split into two opposite colors, as well as a standard six-sided die.

The point of the game is to fill the board with the color of your chip. Dice decides who goes first, and each player draws a pair of two matching cards, whether it is by color or by suit,t which would add an extra chip of their color to replace the opponent's. Additionally, a player could mix in a face card or an ace to replace an extra chip.

At the end of each turn, players replenish their decks, and the game continues until one player's chips fill out the entire table.

Game 1:

My partner and I began by creating a concept of overtaking the board with the figures of your color until one runs out. I called the game "Snake Eater", and you use your snake to eat the snake of your opponent. For simplicity, I went to a basic card game, which makes it possible to play anywhere as long as you have a deck of cards, a dice, and a piece of paper you can draw a grid on. Originally we had a much bigger rectangular grid that made the game a lot longer, which we got rid of for the 5 by 5.

Then we created a simple turn pattern with each player drawing pairs of cards. We didn't have much time, so we modified the rules to draw as many pairs as we could. A mistake was to make the dice roll each turn, deciding who goes first, basically making it a lot harder for a player who hasn't rolled higher than the other person to win. In the end, my partner won both games since he always had the higher dice roll lol.

Game 2:

For this game, I modified the rules, making sure that the dice only establish the order, and would also decide who places the chip in the center. I decided to make the game a little larger and made it a 10 by 10 grid, and instead of each pair taking out one chip, the amount of chips would match the numbers in the pair. For example, a 7 + 7 would take out 14 chips on the board. This made it really annoying to move the chips around because we were both doing it online, it was easy to win a single turn if you get lucky cards, and since the idea of this game is to make it as easy to set up as possible 100 chips on each side and a 10 by 10 grid are a hassle to set up, I went back to the 5 by 5 grid.

Game 3:

This one went a lot smoother than the last one since I went back to the 5 by 5 grid and only 50 chips on each side with the pairs only taking out one chip at a time and added an additional rule with a bonus chip taken down if you combine the pair with a matching face or an Ace. The process may have been a bit repetitive but the game was a lot easier to follow with the newly established rules.

The core mechanics of this game include:

Hand management - you have to decide whether to use the pair for the suit or for the number in relation to other cards.

Set Collection - since you have to make up pair and special card combinations.

Area Control - you are actively capturing each other's chips.

Grid Movement - restricted by the 5 by 5 grid and only 2-3 combinations with a limited 7 car deck.

[andreimsjsu]

Blog Post 2: Gam Lab I

Player 1 - Andrei, Player 2 - Dietrich, Player 3 - Noh, Player 4 - Anthony, Player 5 - Timothy

Player 3 - Ace of Spades

Player 4 - one 2

Player 5 - one 3

Player 1 - one 4

Player 2 - one 5

Player 3 - one 6

Player 4 - one 7

Player 5 - one 8

Player 1 - one 9 

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 1 takes the deck

Player 2 - one 10 

Player 3 - one jack 

Player 4 - one queen

Player 5 -  one king

Player 1 - one Ace 

Player 2 - one 2

Player 3 - one 3

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 2 takes the deck

Player 4 - one 4

Player 3 calls “liar”

Player 3 takes the card

Player 5 - one 5

Player 1 - one 6

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 2 takes the deck

Player 2 - one 7

Player 3 - one 8

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 3 takes the deck

Player 4 - one 9 

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 2 takes the card

Player 5 - one 10

Player 1 - one jack 

Player 2 - one queen 

Player 3 - one king

Player 4 - one ace

Player 5 calls “liar”

Player 4 takes the deck

Player 5 - one 2

Player 1 - one 3

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 1 takes the deck

Player 2 - one 4

Player 3 - one 5

Player 4 - one 6

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 4 takes the deck

Player 5 - two 7

Player 1 - one 8

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 1 takes the deck

Player 2 - four 9

Player 3 - one 10

Player 4 - one jack

Player 5 - one queen

Player 1 - one king

Player 2 - two ace

Player 3 - one 2

Player 4 - one 3

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 4 takes the deck

Player 2 calls “liar” Player 5 doesn’t put down anything

Player 5 keeps the deck

Player 1 - one 6

Player 2 calls “liar”

Player 1 takes the card

Player 2 - one 7 

Player 3 - one 8 

Player 4 - four 9 

Player 5 - one 10 (player 5 won)

Player 1 - one jack 

Player 2 - one queen 

Player 3 - one king

Player 4 - two ace

Player 5 realizes he’s out of cards 

Player 5 won. 

It was my third experience playing Liar’s Game or “I Doubt It” or “BS”. I’ve got to play the Steam and a Roblox version of this game but this is the first time it was done on a table-top emulator. I learned that even though a person who lost the “doubt it” call and took the entire deck is further from winning, they get to have power over the table since they have the majority of cards. At least that was my experience playing this time.

[andreimsjsu]

Blog Post I: Internet Arcade

The emulated game I decided to play was Astro Blaster. Old looking arcade game that turned out to be very entertaining. It reminded me of even older Space Invaders but with an upgrade. You get to shoot various enemies, each enemy getting harder on the next level and a changing movement pattern. It was nice to get a raw game feeling without many distractions of modern games. The controls were less intuitive compared to the real arcade machine and the only actions I figured out how to do was moving side to side and shooting the enemy. Eventually, on level 3, I ran out of fuel and had to face an end screen and put my name into the leaderboard which was kind of exciting considering I was never able to do that on a real arcade machine. What was surprising to find out was that the game had many more features than just moving left and right, and shooting, the screen afterward showed the options to dock to the ship to refuel, recharge ammo from fire shots, and even slow the enemies down, which would have been useful the first time I was playing if I knew the controls for it. Overall I had a great time playing this game. It brought me back a little, though playing the real arcade would have been much more satisfying.