Print and play "final"

So i over scoped.
I was able to get this much together, but I was not aware how much this all actually is.

any who, this is a fun little game about slaying a dragon. Get some friends together, cut out some paper, give the game a whirl, and enjoy.

In the near future I will re upload something a bit prettier, but enjoy this for what it is.

Dragon Deciept

3-d.

This year has introduced me to many things; working digitally 3 dimensional perhaps being the most profound. Before this year I had never touched 3d software, so this is a journey for me. I am happy to say that I've been able to so far create a modular kit, and with a compilation kit made of mine and 12 other students kits, create a level. The world we are creating focuses on a concept of a research facility in space, where the researches happened upon a "relic".  It is a lot  of fun to see how this is fleshing out.

We Have begun the rather arduous process of making props for our modular kits. I was assigned ladders. you really don't realize what goes into an item until you are tasked with recreating it. I've always taken ladders for granted, but now I realize there are so many different ladders, for what appears different reasons. some are light and easy to move- others, study and solid. I think that is what I love about art, it forces you to understand the world around you. I'd like to think of artists as professional students.
seeing concepts become realities is always magical.

Creating a board game: Dragon Slayer

• All for one; and free for all.
  The theme of dragon slayer can simply be understood as the power struggle to be the best. As was understood in the Highlander series, “there can be only one”. Only one player will leave this game victorious, but the best strategy to win is to work together for a common cause, knowing each player is likely to, at any moment turn against you to benefit their own needs. Be the first to turn the tides in your favor, and land the fatal blow to the dragon, to leave a legend. Trust no one to win.
  
              Dragon slayer, being as it’s working title suggests, is a game about slaying dragons. This automatically sets a relative time period for the game, around the dark ages, into the medieval era. Though this could also arguably take place in feudal Asia, the issue would be that in their culture and myth, the dragon is a creature, which can be either good OR bad. It would be a more clear message that as your player you would want to defeat the dragon if it took place in Europe. So the time and setting are roughly medieval Europe.
  
  Some images to help form the idea are as follows:

Finally the color pallet for the game, would be vibrant though muted cooler colors; attempting to match what is perceived as medieval colors.

http://paletton.com/#uid=c3y0J5r3f0khytaua+iemL9jplzkgb2

Brainstorming Game Ideas

Coming up with a good idea is both fun and a bit challenging.
in an attempt to design a new board game, I've been brain storming ideas, and the process is a bit uncomfortable at times, because each idea that begins to form, forms with  whole slew of ideas onto how the game could work, and develop. I assume this is good, since in development having thought of all of the issues and holes ahead of time and realizing where one wants to go can be good, it also made it hard not to become fixated on an idea, and rather move on to the next idea, and keep forming new concepts.
Anyway, I was able to come up with quite a few ideas, and then wittle it down to the few ideas i felt were the most promising:

1.     Rain drop game
           try to get home before the rain hits you. Possible mechanic, if you get to the other side, maybe you can purchase items to sabotage the other players?

2.     Game based on sabotage. (Trap?)
           goal is not so much to win as to make it so the rival player cannot win. Maybe set up traps that other player forced to blindly land on.

3.     A game with rotating cubes, to create a 3 dimensional board. Maybe use magnets to keep the pieces up?.

4.     Mountain climbing game.
           can try to make the board 3 dimensional. First one to the top wins!

5.     Game attempting to capture the experience of anger,
           Writing notes that you never send, fighting, yelling. How can this mechanic make something emotional fun.

6.     Winter is coming
           Possibly a snow ball fight or something a long those lines. Dressing warmly for winter. If one dresses warmly, the lose mobility points, but gain defense.

7.     Slay a creature
           A form of game where both parties build a farm of monsters. One can enter the other player’s farm and kill their live stock, giving them the upper hand.

8.     Cat and mouse
           Play as mice, attempting to get the cheese, but don’t let the cat get you!

9.     Dragon slayer
           all players battle one large boss creature in the center of the map, and the one who lands the death blow on the creature wins. Can spend time traveling the board upgrading stats.

10. Escape the labs.
           A team based game, where you must work together to get out of the CA/GA labs without failing a class. Must battle hallucinations and Ryland and jim bots in order to make it out alive.

11. Game with a catapult
           a game where one of the main goals is to fire objects over your opponents wall.  Game isn’t about destroying rivals wall, rather sending things over their wall that would help or hurt them.

12. Upgrade
           attempt to become the most powerful robot creation by downloading new parts. The more you down load the better suited you’ll be for battle against your rivals. Goal is to destroy your rivals.

13. It’s business time.
           game focusing on the concepts of starting, and succeeding in business.

14.  Lemonade stand
           create the most famous lemonade stand in town. Must sell lemonade to make income, but then use said money to make your lemonade better/ sabotage your opponents lemonade stand, so that you can gain the upper hand next turn around. not sure when this one ends. Maybe time based, so when it reaches 5 and your parental figure arrives home?

15. Shark frenzy
           Must find a way to escape the waters before a shark kills you. Can use boats, swim, what have you.

16. Paper pachinko.
           try to make a physics based game, on a 2 dimensional plane. How would one write easy to understand rules, which could mimic the falling of an object?

17.  Chutes and elevators.
            Create a board game with elevated platforms where one can utilize elevators to go to the upper floors.

18. All the money
           Game about fundraising. Each player represents a club, and the goal is to make your club the most affluent. Would need to attend SGA meetings, make baked goods, turn a profit, sell clothes. Etc.

19. Dating sim game
           attempt to gain the attention of a love interest. Could force a rival either to lose or be held up in game play but making them fall in love with your character avatar.

20. Body building game (I will pump you up/bums of steel)
           first to win a body building competition wins the game. Must statagize the use of stamina to each work out machine, to sculpt body in a most effective way. Can use products like steroids to have both positive and negative effects.

21. Zombie survival game
           have to escape the confines of a building before the zombies get you. If player dies, other player can become a zombie themselves and attempt to kill the other player to cause the game to become a draw.

22. Zombie: the pandemic
           play as zombies entering a crowded town/ city. Goal is to kill the most people, in turn turning them into further units to kill other humans. Goal is to eventually kill all humans.

23. There is a life outside
           Goal is to break ones hold on social media. How does one stay away? Could also be a game where you try to become a bigger internet celebrity by social media use, and making viral videos etc.

24. Help the hostage
           using team based strategy, either destroy all rival players, or move and protect the hostage character, getting them back to your base.

Of the games I brain stormed, I felt that number 24, 22, 21, 20, 14, 15, 12, 11, 9, 7 , 4, and 2 have the most promise. Of course being ideas I created I would love to pursue them all but alas that isn’t very feasible, so I would like to narrow them down to my five top ideas.

1.     I like the concept of the mechanics in 24, so that is one I’ll definitely look at fleshing that one out. Both parties would control the hostage player per turn, forcing you to work against each other, while working against each other. It sounds like it could result in very competitive fun play.

2.     I like zombies, but I only need one of those ideas, so 21 and 22 sort of become one idea, leaning more towards 22 as the primary idea. I feel that 22 would have a more interesting spread dynamic, but maybe I can draw in something where you can still infect rival players.

3.     I feel 14 has a lot of places it can go, based on randomized numbers of daily customers, and interesting way of upgrading ones stand and sabotaging your rival players.

4.     I really like the concept of 9, where you all have the same goal. This would force team play, but also a lot of strategy. Could have it so that when a character dies, they must go back to the start position, so if one feels a rival player is getting to close to winning, they could attempt to kill that player giving them more time to land the death blow to the dragon.

5.     50/50 on 7 and 2 as to which is a better idea.  They both seem like fun, though they both run into road blocks such as when do they end? In 2 if you sabotage a player so they can never reach the end, do you automatically win? Or with the goal of the game being to sabotage the other player, can you get trapped and now neither can reach the end so you are tied? With 7, do you win if you completely destroy the rivals farm? Can you use your famed creatures to attack your rivals? There are a lot of questions with both of these interesting concepts that make me wonder which one would actually be better.

Deconstruction of the game "Shattered Olympus"
Game created by GuidenGames
Deconstructed by Randy Gerson





Table of Contents
1.      Goal of the game 
2.      Core Mechanic

3       3.   Space of the Game 

4    4.     Objects, Attributes, and States 

5    5.     Actions

6    6.      Rules 

      7.      Skills Players Learn

8    8.   Role of chance

Nowadays when gaming is mentioned, most people immediately think about video games. But what of games lacking a digital enforcer? what of board games, and card games? Are they not as valid?
as a hopeful game designer, I would be remiss to say they aren't as important if not even more important than their newer, younger digital cousins.
You see, table top games, are no different from computer based games in their most basic of forms- the only difference is that in the digital form the computer, processor, and various other computer components handle the messier pieces of the mathematical mechanics, and enforce rules and game laws. what does this mean? Basically a digital game simply does what players often find slow, boring, and or overly complicated, and does it for them so that players can instead focus on the experience and having fun.

So why play table top games?
Well from a designer standpoint, they are great, as they give you more direct connection with the mechanics of the game, and allow for rapid modding. You can see exactly what goes into making the game work, and if you want to change the game, rather than writing complex programs and algorithms to tell the computer what to do, you simply write a new paragraph defining what a player can or cannot do- AKA, if you want to play chess with two queens instead of one,  in the computer you would have to completely rewrite major aspects of the game- but on the board game- just put another queen on the board and tell your opponent "hey, we are playing with two queens now." if that isn't an easier way to modify a game, I don't know what is.

So all of this is to say, I recently played a few of print and play games (which are exactly what they sound like- games you print... cut out... and play).

First, I played punch.
This game is simple, but in its simplicity there was a lot of fun. Perhaps not the most striking aesthetically, punch is a simple turn based card game. It plays a lot like a rock paper scissors with a few additional changes. Basically it is a game where you attempt to guess what your opponent is going to do, and in response play a card to counter their offense or take advantage of their moments of weakness.
But better than its simple mechanics, was its very simple set up. Basically it meant printing 8 pages of cards, and cutting them out. That was it. after that I was ready to play, and without complex rules, and hurdles in understanding how to play, quickly i could get right to having fun.

Second I played zombie-my-pocket .
This felt to me like a really cool concept, gone a bit awry. The rules were a bit complex, but worded in a somewhat confusing fashion. This left me and my fellow game mates, assuming how to play a lot of the game, just to keep things going. Basically it was a dungeon explorer, played with a limited number of cards, with a goal of reaching two main areas of the dungeon.  The problem for us arrived in a very limited amount of cards to choose from, and every time the deck was spent we understood it as an hour had to pass. If that were the case, since the game could only span the time frame of a theoretical 3 hour window, the game was much to quick, and we wound up extending play time to make it a more enjoyable experience.
This game was easy enough to assemble, being several squares for map locations, and a few rectangles for cards, and a larger square for the manual. Annoyingly, the game seemed not to come with character/ avatar pieces, and therefore we actually used pieces from another game. The game also required us to have scrap paper to take notes, which was unexpected, and required one of us to sacrifice a sheet of sketch book paper (the horror).

Third up was a game by the name witch-hunt .
This was another simple card game, this time guessing what another player was, while attempting to keep your own identity a secrete. Basically you attempt to call out other players as witches, or hunt down the "witch" if you find a witch you gain points, and if you are a witch and you are never found out, you also again points. he games major draw back was a very limited deck. this caused us to rapidly use up all of our "action" cards, and be unable to do anything but reveal ourselves. this made winning much less about strategy, and much  more about not using any more cards than yo had to, and simply making sure you accused everyone else of being witches to force them to use their cards.
The set up for this game was again, simple, as card games tend to be. Again, the main issue i found through play, wasn't bad game mechanics overall, but a lack of versatility. If modding the game, personally I would add more cards, and more option of actions per turn, rather than simply getting rid of cards, or making other players simply discard cards. more strategy would make for more fun in my opinion of this game.

Last, but far from least, I played the rather popular card game cards-against-humanity .
For anyone unfamiliar, this is a game famed for it's vulgarity, and dark humor. A prompt is provided on one side of a black card, often with a missing word or a question; which is answered by the players of the game, using outrageous responses and concepts written on white cards (each player has ten in their hand at all times). The winner is decided by the player who flipped the black card, often based on which connection they found the most humorous.  A very simple game, but fun nonetheless.
Perhaps more important than the set up of another card game (cut out squares), with this game the concept of fun should be examined. by far this game was the most enjoyable. This game had us playing laughing hysterically, and frantically putting down cards, exciting for the game to continue. But why? Perhaps humor was deriving the main amount of fun, laughing at our own sick psyches, but there was also another element at play; winning. AS we were laughing with each other, yo could still win, and most of this strategy relayed on knowing what you person who flipped the black card would find the most outrageous. Additionally, their was also the reward of puzzle solving- some of the connections, were far fetched, but in being outlandish, they were funnier. your brain had to paint an image of what was being said in order to judge what the combination of words meant, and this forced players to envision concepts they never thought they would want to see, but were utterly histerical in nature

.

Real Life observation of mechanics

It is interesting to test concepts scientifically. You never know what you might learn. For instance, I realized My assumptions are often wrong, in a recently project I just submitted. I assumed people hung out at my school's on campus cafe, because of its comfy chairs. Turns out- not quite the case at all.

I'll let my presentation speak for itself.


why Outtakes?

Prompted through a campus club to create a "suffer babe" I made this rad, anthropomorphized abomination. I flattened layers as i worked, so the roughs, and the block ins and values, are pretty much lost into the void of clean up- but there is still a bit of progress shown. Similar to speed painting, I only had an hour to create something, which I always find a fun challenge. What I enjoyed mostly was using more short cuts and tools to create something- masking out basic shapes with the lasso tool, and color on semi transparent layers, onto of value studies. Being new processes, it is still a bit clunky, but in time, I should be able to get more of a hang of that kind of process, and I look forward to experiencing that evolution.

Concept Pitch for computer animation for games

Had to create and pitch a level design that as a class, my classmates and I will build assets for, and then build a 3d world for. So today I pitched my idea- a mash up of steampunk/industrial revolution/ tesla technology, and Neo gothic architecture/ horror. As a class we voted on our favorite concepts, what we would most prefer to work on, and I came in 3rd.
Of course I would have liked to have been chosen, but my idea was verging on being outside of scope, so I'm not really complaining.

Here's some concept art I created to help sell my concept:

Cool Game Trailer

I have a personal fondness for what could be called "dark art" meaning, gothic, or macabre, or nightmarish or what have you. I simply find something engrossing and beautiful about dark imagery. Maybe I'm just a weird man- Well honestly, I doubt there is much question there- But what ever the case, this has lead me to have a certain love of the horror genre.

When done right.

Now i'm new to a lot of things, so my opinion is perhaps limited by an experience bias, but as a consumer and audience member that doesn't change I know some things I like, and other things I don't. As a content creator, I understand that this is in many ways all that matters; the opinion of your consumers, so despite my lacking knowledge, I will still stand on my soapbox and shout out my views to those who will listen. 

Why did I just go into all of this?  I was just scanning the endless time suck that is youtube for beautiful trailers from E3 and I watched two trailers, back to back, one I liked, and one… well… thats why I'm writing. 

First the good. A beautiful gothic imagining of a turn of the century city, with some form of outbreak going on.

I give you BloodBorne (hope you are in a dark room).

So now i'll give you a second to recompose yourself and stop your skin from crawling. Beautiful right? Even not knowing what the central plot is, I want to explore the game, and find out what is happening. I was immersed in the video, so I can only picture the game would suck me in even further.

So now for the not so good.

Sigh, Daylight .

A bit of a difference in the experience, right?

Now to be fair, Daylight is from a year prior, but that doesn't make a massive difference in getting someone interested. Yes, advances in graphics capabilities are a real thing that happen as years go on, but that isn't the only thing that matters.

here- something from 2011: AliceMaddnessReturns

See what I mean? Okay fine argue it was made by a larger team- Because lets face it, the moment you see the EA games stamp, it immediately becomes likely that they have more man power than a small indie company (TeamZombie) currently listing a 6 person team as their entirety on their website, including the CEO. having a smaller team can definitely give you a weakness against other larger companies.

So maybe the trailer stands up better to games of past? I mean, what used to take weeks to do as a team in the past is now sort of seen as elementary; so i'm sure trailers from over a decade ago couldn't hold up.

here are two classic trailers of the horror genre from 1998.

Silent hill

Resident Evil 2

So what is wrong with this Daylight trailer? Watching all of the other trailers, I genuinely want to play the games- even the old ones- But when watching that teaser for daylight I couldn't imagine spending my money on that game. I may not even take the time to download the game if it is free to play. But why?

Well I'd argue, because it simply leaves me confused. Don't get me wrong- it's pretty. Those hallways look quite creepy and i'd be afraid to go down them- sure. But I have no idea why I'd be going down them. Why was the doll floating? what are the blue lights? Basically what the hell is going on and why Do I care?

Yes- ambiguity can be a great thing. It can really sell a thriller. That is why the dark is scary- you don't know what might be around the next corner. So absolutely the trailer should leave you with some questions. It should leave you wanting more. But in order to want more, there has to be something to want. 

The trailer is missing basic story telling elements. Without some background- the trailer is simply surreal. There is no concept shown; just a doll, and some dark halls. The trailer's main falling in my opinion is making me care. I don't care that the doll is floating, or that the hallways are dark. A tablet shows the game title. I can assume that might be important- but I don't know.

But worst of all- I've since looked at other trailers of the game, primarily gameplay, not cinematic, and know what? The game actually looks pretty good! 

Here.

I guess that shows the power of a good versus a bad trailer. Daylight Seems like a genuinely good game- But alas, it's e3 trailer, wouldn't have made me buy the game. In fact It may have made me NOT buy the game. This is something I need to remember. A good trailer can sell a terrible game, and a terrible trailer can make people not want to play a great game. 

And truly I mean Team Zombie no slander. I just couldn't help but marvel at the trailer, and how confused it made me despite beautiful graphics. I guess graphics really aren't everything.