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Course Reflection

By Alicia Huynh

Before signing up for this class, I did know about games but did not know about games. I knew what types of games there are but did not know about the whole spectrum specifically the MDA dynamics. At the beginning of this class, I found out what the definition of a game was and what is consisted of a game. In summary, the definition of a game is volunteering ourselves to overcome obstacles. At the same time, people follow many definitions of game. One of the interesting topics that I learned during this class was the history of games. I knew that Pong was considered as one of the first games but I never knew about the games before that like The Brown Box or Tennis for Two. With the material that was assigned to us to read, everything that we read connected to the class. I learned why it is important to test your game multiple times and have people test it multiple times. Having people testing your game multiple times with different people, you can hear the feedback they have and they can see the errors that are in the game that you haven’t noticed before. Creating games and playing games that my classmates have made gave me an interest in creating games in the possible future. Overall, this class has gave me more interest into playing games that I have never played before. 

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A College Tale

By Alicia Huynh

(My team and I aren't finished with our game. This is mostly about the process and the feedback we have gotten from other classmates)

A College Tale is a choose-your-own-adventure visual novel where you go through the viewpoint of a college senior who is about to graduate soon. You will also see them struggling with what they want to do in the future after they graduate. Throughout the game, you will make decisions affecting their chances of graduating that semester.

I was the one in my group that had the idea for the game. I knew that I wanted to create a game about a college student struggling with their college life along with their social life and mental health. Portraying this through a visual novel is one of the easiest ways to get the meaning out. Getting on a call with my teammates, we had the concept but not the elements. We bounced off ideas with each other while making a list of elements we could add to the game. Having the set plot and elements of the game, we know what we wanted in our game. Assigning who was going to do what (i.e. the artwork, coding, and scene writing), we headed straight to work.

As the scene writer of the visual novel, I had the general plot in my head and was allowed creative freedom with it. I know that I shouldn’t go crazy with the amount of scenes that I write since our artist will be drawing the characters and backgrounds. I didn’t want them to be overwhelmed with a lot of scenes that needed new backgrounds and characters. Creating around twenty scenes total which also include the same background with some scenes seems feasible. We already have three in the prototype so we will have to see how many scenes this will actually take.

When we reached the alpha testing, last week, we got some useful feedback. Everyone that played the prototype of the game loved it so far. Everyone couldn’t wait to see what the finished product would look like. With the feedback that we received from them, they would improve the game such as changing the word ‘player’ to let them able to put in their own name. With the feedback they gave us, me and my team are also excited about what the finished product would look like.

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JackBox Games

By Alicia Huynh

JackBox Games is a game with a series of packs that tests your knowledge of trivia, creativity in creating raps and t-shirt designs, comedic timing, and many more skills. It also tests your boundaries on how unhinged and not safe for work you can be while still being allowed in the pearly gates of the heaven you believe in. As someone who has played JackBox’s games many times, I have tested the boundaries and limits between each group that I have played with but mostly I have played with friends that I have known for a while. Playing JackBox in class with a teacher is a different experience.

The last time I played JackBox with a teacher was at the end of the spring semester of my junior year of high school with my English teacher. Playing with my high school teacher was different than playing with a college professor because my teacher did set the rules on what we couldn’t do or else we would get in trouble. Playing with a professor was a different vibe. Playing with my professor was more relaxed and free-flowing since he didn’t state any restrictions.

The three games that we played were Trivia Murder Party, Quiplash, and DoDo ReMi. With Trivia Murder Party and Quiplash, the players either use their fingers or their mouse to click on the choices. In all three games though, there is an element when it comes to using your keyboard to participate in the game. Each game has a set amount of players that can join the game and when all of the spots are filled, everyone else who joined the game is part of the audience where they can also participate.

Playing with an audience was a similar experience like it was playing with your friends. I feel having audience participation for the first two games benefited because it was a points-based system other than DoDo Re Mi. With audience participation in Murder Party and Quiplash, they just got points for getting the answers right in Murder Party and the player gains more points from the audience who pick their reply in Quiplash. In DoDo Re Mi, the audience participates in the instrument playing. Since the players and the audience are synced together, if anyone presses the wrong key or misses a beat, you can easily hear it in the audio as it plays back. Overall, playing with an audience has the same familiarity as playing with my friends. 

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Mystic Realms

By Alicia Huynh

Game Link- https://mati11a.itch.io/mystic-realms-alpha-2?secret=D8PtAtzkdqRnoid2XHrRQFLfoys

Background Music- We used Spring Village.

Instructions

A- Walk Left

D- Walk Right

Space- Jump (The longer you hold the space bar, the higher the jump you have)

MAKE SURE TO COLLECT THE POTIONS TO ADVANCE

Green Potion- Jump Boost

Purple Potion- Immune to Witch Shots

Green Flag- Checkpoint

Red Flag- Finish

Description

This game is a 2D platformer where you collect potions while trying to dodge the blasts from the witches' wands and jump over the trolls you’ll meet along the way. Jumping through the platforms, you will be faced with tight spaces and small platforms to the end.

Thoughts

When first developing this game, it was challenging to find what type of game my partner and I were going to do. After choosing to do a 2D platformer, it was troubling what type of theme the game should have. Since I was the artist for this game, I had more control when it came to the theme. Coming to the forest/fantasy theme, it was pretty easy on what assets to put in the game. Drawing the background, the assets, and the characters were pretty simple. One of the challenging things that I was faced with was doing the animation for the main character. After looking at videos of people walking, I figured out how to do a simple walking animation.

The first playthrough of our game came and we got some good feedback. Even though I hadn’t created the witch and troll when the time came, it was good my partner white-boxed it and it still had the same effect on what the players can expect in the final playthrough.

From the alpha to the final, it was pretty satisfying to see the final draft. All of the characters that I have drawn are there along with the addition of more platforms made the gameplay last much longer. The speed of the playable character was slower than in the alpha which people who have played the alpha version appreciated. Overall, the feedback on the final version of the game was appreciated.

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Mystic Realms

By Alicia Huynh| 29 March 2024

Mystic Realms is a 2D platformer where you collect items such as potions that increase your health and fight characters to get to the end. It was a little difficult to figure out what my partner and I wanted to create for this platformer but after tossing some ideas back and forth, we decided that it was having a fantasy theme. During this process, my partner was the programmer and the game designer while I was the artist. 

My journey as an artist was somewhat challenging. One of the first challenges was figuring out the size of the background. Even though I created the background as the standard 1080-pixel size, my partner used half of the background for our game. Another challenge I was faced with was creating our character for the game and creating him by the deadline. Drawing a person using pixels is a lot different than drawing a person in a sketchbook. I was also using an app I had not used before so I was figuring out how to use it along with figuring out how to create a background and our character. I have also never animated before so despite it being a simple animation, I still had to teach myself how to animate in a short amount of time. 

After figuring out everything and incorporating everything that we have so far in our game, we started people to play test it. With these gameplays that we had, they were really helpful and useful. Overall after playing our game, our game testers have said that our game was pretty fun and simple to play. They liked the challenges (the white boxes were supposed to be the characters we could fight) and the movement. The things that we are planning to keep are the platforms, the background, and the character. What we are going to change is replacing the white boxes and changing the spacing and sizing of the platforms since it was challenging to jump onto the platforms even with the white boxes. When I start drawing and creating the enemies, I will include animations as they wait for us.

Overall, having the two playtests from other players and getting feedback from them was helpful.

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Video Game Lab

By Alicia Huynh

Six Cats Under

In Six Cats Under, created by Team Bean Loop and Mosu, play as a ghost trying to solve puzzles in order to rescue your cats using the powers you have. I had played and watched someone else playing this game and the two experiences were different. When watching it, I found it a little bit difficult since I was looking at the shared screen which was small. It was also hard to think about any more ideas on where the puzzles were. When playing the game though, I found it a little bit easier than looking at my partner’s screen. Other than the hints my partner had already found, it was still a little bit difficult finding more puzzles. After clicking around to look for puzzles I found two more until I decided to stop playing. Overall, the game has a fun concept of playing as a ghost and little text bubbles describing the details of each object I clicked.

The Ratchelor

We all know about the hit reality dating show, the Bachelor and the Bachelorette but have you heard of The Ratchelor? Just like the reality dating show, you play as a rat and choose your potential partners. As you talk to each contestant, you have a set of replies to choose from. After each round of talking, just like the show, you give out a rose to each contestant until you propose to the rat of your choice. Just like Six Cats Under, this game is a simulation of playing as a rat. 

I’ve played this game before but playing it again and choosing different contestants changes the experience each time. Even with the different versions that Algorat has made.

Tetrisseeper

Have you ever thought about combining two classic games together? Well Kertis Jones thought about it when they developed Tetisweeper. As you place and stack the Tetris blocks, the blocks change into the Minesweeper blocks. Playing this game was quite confusing at first since I did not know what to do, but after playing it and looking at the example, I understood what was happening. I have never thought about combining two games together but now I have seen that, it made me question what games can be combined to create a new game.

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Your Chip, My Chip

By Alicia Huynh

Your Chip, My Chip is a simple luck-based and winner takes all game with the core mechanic of dice rolling. You and your opponent have thirty minutes to either get most or all of your pieces on the board or to get rid of your opponent’s pieces. To do that, you both roll dice and whoever gets the highest amount in the rolls, will take a card from the stack of the standard playing card. Depending on the number on the card, the card determines what action you can do during that round. After you do that action, you do the same thing over and over again for many rounds until your pieces fill the board or your opponent’s pieces are gone within thirty minutes.

During the first session of the game, we got the general gist of what our game intended before improving what wasn’t working for us. We originally didn’t have the timer in our first version and when playing it, the game did drag out for a long time. After implementing the timer for fifteen minutes. Playing another round with a timer added more pressure and fun to play but it was not enough time to make some progress. After doubling the time, it gave us more time to play and make more moves.

In the second session, I played with my friend who happens to play board games as a hobby/passion. Immediately when I started saying the rules, he started to make edits to make it more clear. Throughout the game, my friend found it easy to play but wanted it to be more interesting. After playing the game, he put in some of his input which I found helpful. One input that I implemented into the next version of the game is allowing any of the players to reshuffle the cards at any time to avoid getting the same card again.

During the third and final session, me and my partner had a fun time with the improvements. My partner, who hasn’t played any other version of the game other than this one, said that it was easy to play. The rules were simple to understand and showing which card does what action, the concept was easy to understand.

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I Doubt It Session Report

Written by Alicia Huynh | Posted Feb 10, 2024

This Friday, I and three other classmates joined a breakout room where we played a game of I Doubt It but it is also known as Cheat or Bullshit. The people that I played with were Peter, Marcia, and Tuyet. 

If you didn’t know what I Doubt/Cheat/Bullshit is, it is a card game where you would have to bluff the amount of cards you have. Since we were in a four-person game, the deck of cards was divided evenly and each player got thirteen cards from the dealer (Peter). Whoever was to the left of the dealer, is the first person to place their card(s) down. The first card that needs to be placed should be an ace then each player places down the amount of cards they have when going up in ranking order. If you want more clarification, let’s say player four, Tuyet, placed down an ace face down, then player three, Marcia, should place down however many two cards she has, and so on with the other player until you reach the king. When you reach the king, you restart with ace and at the end, you are trying to get rid of all of your cards.

What happens if you don’t have the next card in ranking though? Well…you bluff that you have it while placing the card face down hoping no one says “I doubt it” before the next player’s turn. But, what would happen if someone does say it? You flip over the card you placed down and it if does show the right number on the card, that player gets the cards that have been placed down to their own deck. If it’s not the right number, then you will get that stack of cards. 

Again, the end goal for this game is to get rid of all of the cards in your deck before everyone else.

Session Report

Members: Alicia Huynh (1), Peter Truong (2),  Marcia Sotil (3), Tuyet Nguyen Vo (4)

Session Report

Player 4- Drops down one ace

Player 3- Drops down one 2

Player 2- Drops down one 3

Player 1- Drops down one 4

Player 4- Drops down one 5

Player 3 doubts player 4 and is right, card gets revealed and it’s one 4

Player 4 picks up all cards in the center

Player 3 - Drops down one 6

Player 2- Drops down two 7’s

Player 4 Doubts player 2 and is right, card gets revealed and it's one 7 and one 10

Player 2 picks up all cards in the center

Player 1 drops down one 8

Player 4 drops down one 9

Player 3 drops down one 10

Player 2 drops down one jack

Player 1 drops down one queen

Player 4 drops down two king’s

Player 3 drops down two ace’s

Player 2 doubts player 3 and is wrong, card revealed and its 2 aces

Player 2 picks up all cards in the center

Player 1 drops down two 2’s

Player 3 doubts player 1 and is wrong, card revealed and its two 2

Player 3 picks up all cards in the center

Player 4 drops down one 3

Player 3 drops down two 4’s

Player 2 drop down two 5’s

Player 1 drops down two 6’s

Player 4 drops down two 7’s

Player 3 drops down one 8’s

Player 2 drops down three 9’s

Player 3 doubts player 2 and is wrong, card revealed three 9

Player 3 picks up all cards in the center

Player 1 drops down one 10

Player 4 drops down one jack

Player 3 drops down two queen’s

Player 4 doubts player 3 and is right, card reveals one 10 and 2

Player 3 picks up all cards in the center

Player 2 drops down 4 king’s

Player 1 drops down 1 ace

Player 2 doubts player 1 and is right, card reveals one 7

Player 1 picks up all cards in the center

Player 4 drops down one 2

Player 3 drops down four 3’s

Player 2 drops down one 4

Player 1 drops down one 5

Player 4 drops down one 6

Player 3 drops down two 7’s

Player 2 drops down three 8’s

Player 1 drops down one 9

Player 4 drops down one 10

Player 3 drops down three Jack’s

Player 2 drops down one queen

Player 1 drops down four king’s

Player 4 drops down one ace

Player 2 doubts player 4 and is right, card reveals one 3

Player 4 picks up all cards in the center

Player 3 drops down three 2’s 

Player 2 drops down one 3

Player 1 drops down one 4

Player 1 wins the game

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ChuckECheese's Match Game by Coastal Amusements

Review by Alicia Huynh | Posted Jan 26, 2024 at 11:04 PM

Chuck E. Cheese, what is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear that name? Children screaming and running around the arcade with tickets in their hands? Getting your hand with invisible ink with a matching set of numbers as your parents? The cacophony of the classic and new arcade game sounds all over the building. Along with the classic arcade games such as skeeball and air hockey, Chuck E. Cheese also had its arcade games such as the Chuck E. Cheese Memory Match! created by Coastal Amusements in 1993.

To give a summary of what this game is, it is clearly stated in the name. In this game, you are first shown Chuck E. and his friends in their placements on the three-by-three grid. After you’ve been shown where the characters are, you will have forty-five seconds to find the character that matches the character that is shown along the left-hand side. You would have to get a total max of five matches to get the highest number of tickets which is ten tickets.

When playing the game, I got the concept that I had to match the characters on the grid. What I didn’t know was that the character that was in the window on the left was the character I needed to find the match since there were multiples of the same character. The one element that was complicated for me when I was playing the game was using the number pad since the numbers were switched. What I meant was that 7, 8, and 9 on the number pad on the keyboard meant 1, 2, and 3 in the game. It was the same for 1, 2, and 3 on the number pad but 4, 5, and 6 remained the same. When I got a grasp of the game, it was easy for me to match all of the characters. The maximum amount of matches that I got when playing multiple rounds was three matches. If I paid attention more to where the characters were, I would have gotten more tickets.

Playing this game on an emulator does feel different than playing it in an arcade. The whole thing that is different about it is the environment that I played it in. I played it on my laptop in my living room which doesn’t have the same vibe and environment as playing it in an arcade. After the time runs out, I do not get rewarded with tickets when playing on my laptop than playing it in an arcade. When playing it in the arcade, it was pretty simple to press the numbers since the number pad correlated with the grid that was on the screen. I wouldn’t have reminded myself that the numbers are flipped like they were when playing with my number pad. If I were going to a Chuck E. Cheese sometime in the future and that location had that game, I would play that game to see if I would feel different if I played the arcade location.

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