With “Protector,” we set out to create a game that captures the essence of Solution and brings back the nostalgic feel of early 2010s Adobe Flash player games. The visual and gameplay style, reminiscent of those beloved games, will evoke a sense of familiarity and comfort in our gamers. Solution’s common recurring themes of collaboration and morality were our shared inspiration.
As the player, you hold the crucial role of the sniper and defender of the reeducation center. Your mission is to protect the center and its king from waves of enemy liberators determined to release its patients. The troops of armed enemies, including foot soldiers with pistols and heavily armored tanks, pose a significant threat. As you progress throughout the game, the waves of enemies become more overwhelming, putting your defense skills to the test and making you feel the weight of your responsibility.
Once overrun, you learn that the institution you have been ordered to protect is a center of repression and indoctrination, forcing innocent individuals out of their beliefs through inhumane methods.
The screen all players encounter when their base becomes overrun (Photo courtesy of Sketch)
For those unfamiliar with the history of reeducation camps, reeducation camps are facilities where individuals are sent for political, religious, or ideological reasons to undergo forced indoctrination or “reeducation.” These camps are usually associated with authoritarian regimes and are used to control dissent, suppress opposition, and enforce conformity to the government’s beliefs or policies. The conditions within such camps vary, but most usually involve harsh treatment, forced labor, psychological manipulation, and limited freedoms.
The Design Process (Challenges/Solutions/Failures):
Because Alex and I are studying the humanities, we quickly identified that our coding skills wouldn’t be able to match the level of our STEM classmates, forcing us to look for more kid-based coding programs. Another significant drawback Alex and I encountered was the compatibility issues between Windows and Mac OS. In terms of performance, both Mac OS and Windows 11 can handle most tasks quickly, but Macs often require fewer system resources.
Behind-the-scenes photos of our team’s game code. (Photo courtesy of Alex Mayo)
One of the applications we couldn’t cross-collaborate on was MS Paint. Initially released in November 1985, MS Paint is a simple raster graphics editor that allows artists to save image files in Windows, bitmap, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats. While the characters designed could be exported, they couldn’t be made transparent through MS Paint. However, using the capabilities of Mac OS, we successfully made the characters transparent. The characters in the game have different profiles; for tanks, when you shoot them with your sniper twice, they go from this blue moving figure to a blue standstill figure with fire coming out of its cabin. As for ground-based enemies, shooting them in the body does not work, and they will keep progressing toward the center. But shooting them in the head once will result in a moving figure to a figure with blood spewing out of its head. The coding techniques for the tank and shooting physics were pretty easy to create.
Here’s how it looks when you shoot a tank til it explodes. (Photo courtesy of Sketch)Here’s what it looks like when you shoot an enemy liberator in the head. (Photo courtesy of Sketch)
Bringing Back Retro (Game Successes):
The history of protect-and-defend games is a journey that takes us back to the grainy days of arcade video gaming. It’s a story of evolution from simple concepts to intricate and immersive experiences. Games with a protect-and-defend objective usually defend a specific location, base, or character from waves of enemy threats. One of the most prominent and early examples is the classic 1978 arcade game Space Invaders. In Space Invaders, players are tasked with controlling a spaceship whose sole mission is to defend Earth from descending alien invaders. However, as the years of gaming have progressed and diversified, with titles like “Tower Defense” games becoming popular in the late 2000s, these games challenge players’ tactical skills and resource management, providing hours of engaging gameplay and a sense of accomplishment when successfully protecting what’s under their care.
However, as gaming has evolved, many newer games have veered from maintaining a nostalgic theme. Retrobowl, Sonic Mania, Mega Man, and Axiom Verge are modern games designed with retro intent. So, “Protector” resonates with gamers of almost all ages through its mechanics and aesthetics.
Our novice coding experience saved us a lot of time and made our jobs as developers a bit simpler. It allowed us to tap into the charm of older titles while mixing them with modern technology and design principles.
As we discussed in our presentation, the revival of retro-themed games is becoming essential to the gaming industry as older adults move away from games. To increase the likelihood of their company’s survival, many game companies have to start creating games that resonate with not just newer age gamers but also gamers who have stopped playing because of “no connection.”
The Learning Aspect:
After completing our game, Alex and I pondered how “Protector” offers players a thought-provoking narrative on moral complexity and the dangers of blind allegiances. We also learned that when developing games, there has to be an overarching theme that stems from the game’s storyline. In “Protector,” the theme explored how following orders blindly can compromise one’s moral stances and that challenging authority is sometimes plausible.
If you were rebellious enough, you had the option to kill the King, allowing the center to be overrun (Photo courtesy of Sketch)
As a team of aspiring writers, we knew that we wanted our game to envelope the creativity that every player has. The inspiration for our game came from a mix of the “EmilyBlaster ” game described in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the poetic dialogue of Samwise Gamgee throughout The Lord of the Rings books. Early on, the idea of the game was one where words spoken by Sam in the novels would fall down in front of a backdrop of the several scenes, such as Hobbiton, and the player must click the verbiage and connect Sam’s poems correctly. After talking to Dr. Clayton, we realized that this did not encompass what we wanted our game to accomplish. We discussed the idea of assorting the words so that instead of following the exact formation of the poems, hymns, and songs in the books, the player could create their own formation of words to get a new poem at the end of the level.
Without an idea in our minds, the next phase was picking the gaming software best suited to translate our visions. We started off extremely optimistic to say the least. First, we installed Unity without realizing we would also have to be proficient in Blender. After a single unsuccessful trial run, we tried Stencyl. With its user-friendly UI and tutorials, and several videos readily available to help us along our path of creation, we thought it would be the perfect software for us.
Levels
One of the most important aspects of any game is the levels and terrain the game will be set in. We wanted our player to travel to multiple different areas, particularly from The Fellowship of the Ring, as that was a book we had analyzed in class. Moreover, we wanted these levels to reflect the stages of Samwise’s journey throughout the first book to show both progression in the journey as well as the player. So, we used the internet to search for royalty-free backgrounds of different areas of The Lord of the Rings to use as our backdrops. In our search, we found three in particular.
One was for Hobbiton, which would be perfect as the start of our game; Samwise, a hobbit of humble and bright beginnings, before stretching his destiny beyond his borders to the grander world.
Next, we chose the Prancing Pony. This was another place that marked the beginning of Sam’s danger. It is here where the Hobbits begin to feel the importance, the danger, and the possible death that they will face in their quest. We labeled this level as a call-to-action, with some elements of suspense for their future. For our final level, we wanted something that provoked a powerful sense of danger. Looking back into The Fellowship of the Ring, both novel and movie, we believed that the tunnels of Moria had that ambience perfectly. This level expresses the massive perils Sam and the Fellowship will have to face, with darkness, orcs, and the towering and fiery Balrog. As our third and final level, it will allow the player to create a poem that could match the setting, filled with death, destruction, and harrowing escape.
Screenshot
Sprites
After getting Stencyl,, we quickly realized we needed a way to create and edit characters or sprites in the game. We were able to find a Sprite editing tool called Sprite Pencil/Sprite Catalog that allows you to take royalty free premade sprites or edit your own. We obviously knew we wanted to incorporate Samwise, but we didn’t want just one character who stays the same with every level. After all, that is not how Samwise is in the books; he goes through development, gains courage, and even kills. We wanted Samwise sprite to undergo the same journey. We perused the internet, but did not find consistent characters for our 32-bit style game. Instead, we chose to take the more difficult path and created our own sprites.
For Samwise, we started him off in casual clothing and smoking a pipe for Hobbiton, his home. He looks relaxed, smiling, and surrounded by his lovely home filled with green, flowers, and bright skies. Next in the Prancing Pony, he has a more grim look on his face to express his worry. Since this is where the action particularly starts to kick off, the Fellowship’s danger becomes more real, we wanted Samwise to embody the call-to-action of his future journey. He wears a red cape to show that, though he might not feel ready for the action, he has no choice but to brandish the courage to look the part. Lastly, Samwise faces the eerie ambiance of the tunnels of Moria. At the final level of the game, and recognizing the perils of the environment, Samwise now has a sword to face the dangers ahead.
After we created the three different versions of Samwise, we went on to the other designs that we wanted to incorporate into our game. We found a 32-bit Balrog for the last level, but it did not look quite as menacing as it did in the movie. So, we used Sprite Pencil/Sprite Catalog to edit the Balrog into being the fiery demon that he is, and placed him to face Samwise in the dark tunnels of Moria. Lastly, we created the spirit that would be our player. Our player is “The One Ring”, and when planning the game, we decided that the player would shoot the words appearing on the screen with blasts from the ring to create their unique poem.
Words Words Words
An important aspect of our game creations was choosing what words to incorporate for the player to make their poems. At first, we debated if we should have a word bank of words that we chose and made up completely on our own. After some thought, we decided that it would take away from the game’s roots in The Lord of the Rings, especially Samwise’s characters as a wordsmith throughout the journey. Instead, we used resources on the internet, including the Lord of the Rings Reddit page and the trilogy’s Wiki page. From these sources, we found some poems that the grander, loving community of this fantasy world found enjoyable, and took words from those poems to incorporate into our game. Some of these fan favorites include “Riddle of Strider”, “The Stone Troll”, and the “Galadriel’s Song of Eldamar.” This game would allow the player to take words and phrases from these masterful poems and make something completely new for themselves, working their creative minds in the process. The words we chose are in the picture below:
Struggles and Successes
The coding process of making the mechanics for our game was by far the most difficult, which was to be expected. It was harder than we imagined to incorporate the sprites and backdrops into the game, as they were always too small. However, with some time on Stencyl, we were able to overcome this challenge. Another challenge was the mechanics of the words. At First, we wanted the words to fall from the top of the screen. However, this would require making all of our words in our word bank to be a sprite, and we did not have the expertise or coding experience to do that. Instead, we decided to make the words appear in various places on the backdrop, and the player could click the ones they wanted to incorporate in their poem. This was much easier for us and still proved effective for the goal of our game. Another aspect of the coding was the transitions between backdrops. As other groups had discussed in their games, getting the player to move between levels and settings once they had been completed was not automatic. It took us some time incorporating a system for which the player transitioned to the next level. We chose to make a timing system, where the player has a few minutes to create their poem, or if they wanted to just make a shorter poem like a haiku, they could wait until the timer was up to move onto the next level.
Our biggest challenge by far was the process of moving our character, “The One Ring” from left to right on the screen. In our process, the ring would only move on one level, or refuse to move at all, even when incorporating the proper coding. After some time, we realized that Sam the sprite was blocking our coding with his own, and after severing their codes so that the ring would show priority, the player was able to move the ring, and Sam still had his code operate properly. With these struggles out of the way, we found success and enjoyment of our game. We are very happy with our game mechanics, our 3 complete levels that we set out to make, and even a small yet crucial victory: a fully functioning start button!
What We Learned
Truly, if this game-making process has taught us anything, it is just how hard it is to make a game. The level of coding, the talent in design, the patience, and creativity to solve problems as they come, all of it comes into the game you both love to make and hate to struggle with. As gamers, we often take for granted the time it takes to make a good, quality game. We hound the developers, get mad when they push release dates, and some people even threaten them. This journey has made us reflect on the gaming community on both sides. We had absolutely zero experience in coding and game design when we started, and in just a few weeks, we were able to make characters, settings, motion, and fun. We are truly proud of ourselves with what we created, even in the pitfalls and improvements it needs. We put blood, sweat, and literal tears in this game (yes there were times where we cried, but this game is like our baby.) Through all the hardships, all the messed-up coding and the faulty transitions, we continued to work to make something beautiful. We are grateful for this experience, and are glad that we could collaborate creatively to make something beautiful.
Journey on a quest to discover the dark tower, and unravel the mysteries surrounding your expedition to this fabled landmark. What really happened to your dear friend Cuthbert? What strange world are you in? Will you make it to the Dark Tower? Find out in Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came: The Game!
Why Remediate Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came?
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came lends itself to exploration, simply due to its nature as a poem and the qualities that come with it; chief among them is interpretation. There are dozens of ways to see how a story is told and understand its meaning, especially when considering a medium such as poetry. Our main goal was to remediate this poem that resonated so much with us, in a way that would be able to visualize and nail down OUR interpretation of the story presented.
With this goal in mind, we were left with a lot of creative freedom in how to adapt this story. We began thinking, open interpretation lends itself to creative mediums quite often, especially in the sense of world building and exploration. Due to this, our group decided that the best medium to showcase Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came as a playable video game would be Minecraft.
Why Minecraft? Simply put, Minecraft offers unlimited amounts of creative expression to help build our interpretation of Roland’s journey. For being put out over a decade ago, Minecraft has received numerous updates expanding the game’s catalog of blocks to build with and infinitely increasing the creative possibilities both in building AND in storytelling that are available to the player. In addition, the game is by far one of the most easily accessible platforms to create with, as most of us grew up playing Minecraft or watching videos of people playing Minecraft.
Development Process
After deciding on our platform for remediation, the first piece of the puzzle was to figure out how all three of us were to work collectively on one world in the game. Playing with other players isn’t quite so easy in Minecraft, as one can’t locally host a server to play with other players. The easiest solution came in the form of Minecraft Realms, a subscription-based service for hosting multiplayer worlds for you and your friends. We signed up for the free trial and began our work.
Next, we had to decide where would be the best place to build both the path that Roland journey’s on to the Dark Tower, as well as the Dark Tower itself. After some debate, we decided it would be best to build the path to the Dark Tower inside of the Nether, which is the game’s version of Hell. We hoped that this decision would help to properly showcase Roland’s unstable psyche through his journey and account for many of the hallucinations he has along his journey. Hence, the overgrown and warped forest biome we decided to build in, showing a warped view of a forest landscape that you would see in the real world, as well as adding lava waterfalls and rivers to additionally showcase a warped view of reality from inside of Roland’s mind.
Along the path to the Dark Tower, we decided to add obstacles to cause frustration and challenge to the player, encapsulating the wavering sanity of Roland. These obstacles included mobs such as Spiders and Zombie Pigmen, as well as physical obstacles such as lava, cobwebs, and gargantuan towers to climb. This helps to foreshadow the Dark Tower Roland has his eye on as the ends to the means of journeying along this horrid path.
Further, we had to make a decision on the structure of the Dark Tower and how we decided to interpret it. Spencer is a fan of the Stephen King series that is based off of the poem. Armed with this knowledge, Spencer set off to conquer the task of the creation of the Dark Tower, taking inspiration from Stephen King’s interpretation: roses, golden road, and all. The end, like the end of the poem, we decided, would be ambiguous on its true nature. The end of the game allows you to find the portal to travel back to the beginning of the journey, but it does not allow you in the Dark Tower, symbolizing a perpetual journey of life and life of journey, also hinting at our interpretation of Roland’s fate (to forever live in this poem in perpetua, rather than reach his final destination successfully).
The actual building of the structures happened rather quickly, our Dark Tower was completed in about two days worth of work, and all the structures in the Nether were completed in just over three days worth of work. We successfully created a walking journey (or really, a “walking simulator”) of Roland’s journey to the Dark Tower.
Challenges(Failures and Successes)
In the realm of challenges, the biggest one was being able to adapt to Minecraft’s unique world layouts and ESPECIALLY its blocky terrain. With everything being made out of blocks, it was somewhat difficult to build certain shapes and structures (ex: curves in staircases or proper pathways) while building. The terrain of every world in the game is randomly generated, so instead of us being able to start from scratch and build from the ground up, we were forced to instead take extra time to landscape the existing terrain, and really roll with the punches based on what we were given.
Another challenge of adapting this archaic, Old English poem into the modern, user-friendly medium of Minecraft is balancing the scale between high-brow and low-brow storytelling. The low-brow storytelling was simply using the medium of Minecraft to tell a psychologically harrowing, complex, and (incredibly) ambiguous story. With the culture of “Minecraft parodies” of popular songs and “Minecraft Youtubers” being marketed towards children ages 13 and younger, the medium of Minecraft is inherently low-brow. To adapt a Browning poem, especially staying true to the source material, was a certainly ambitious task. What we were able to do was to use the signs in Minecraft to mark landmarks in the journey, labeled by stanzas/lines from the poem. Quotes from the poem were mainly chosen on the basis of what the Minecraft landscape could actualize and remediate. For example, the “hoary cripple” at the beginning of poem (line 2) can easily be represented as a Villager, the base NPC for Minecraft’s world. However, there was no object in Minecraft that could actualize the internal monologue and tortured psyche of our protagonist Roland, so quotes like “Thus, I had so long suff’rd in this quest” (line 37) were simply scattered on the path, letting the view of the “hellscape” the player is surrounded by connotate how Roland feels in this part in the journey. To emphasize the tragedy/stakes of the journey, the graves of Cuthbert, Giles, and Frank are scattered throughout the road to the Dark Tower, illustrating other characters/players who have made this same journey, unsuccessfully, motivating both Roland and the Player to keep moving forward.
In terms of successes, we have a lot to celebrate. We successfully were able to learn quite a bit about world design and biome generation of Minecraft to be able to pick suitable locations to build our journey to the Dark Tower. In the general vibe of the build, there is a sense of uneasiness that exists inside (especially in the Nether section) that permeates, which is exactly what we were trying to go for to showcase Roland’s unstable psyche at the time. In addition, in the construction of the Dark Tower, we were able to utilize some building techniques to make building the massive structure much easier. Namely, we were able to construct the massive tower by using lava and water to create massive cobblestone pillars, rather than building them by hand. This takes off possibly hours of work building the structure from the ground up, as well as factoring in the landscaping we already had to do to put the tower in a good location.
Conclusions (What we learned)
To conclude, we learned a lot in the creation of this project. Especially in the realm of world generation and learning how Minecraft works internally to be able to manipulate the game’s world generation to better our own situation while building and constructing our project. In addition, our appreciation for professional builders in the game has grown tremendously, as we created a project of a relatively small size in comparison to some who have recreated all of Rivendell or built gigantic castles within the game. Overall, (and most importantly) we were able to reconnect with our childhoods to create this project, as this is a game many of us grew up on, and for many, began their love of gaming. We were thankful for this opportunity to create and use our imagination to remediate one of our favorite works we got to read during the semester.
Embark on a strategic escapade as Sadie Green in Omission, navigating from the game room to the nurse’s desk. Your mission: log community service hours without being caught by Sam. With each passing second, your logged hours diminish, along with the prospects of earning the community service award. Most too fast, and you may alert Sam, ending the service project.
Why Remediate Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow?
Although there are several games woven into the narrative of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow that we could have remediated, we wanted to create a new game based on the central relationship in the novel. The book follows thirty years of conflicts between gamemakers Sam and Sadie, beginning when they met as children in a hospital game room. It was during these formative years, through shared gameplay and blossoming friendship, that Sadie covertly logged her time with hospitalized Sam as community service hours–a fact she kept from him.
The months of lying by omission lead to their first major conflict, shaping the beginning chapters of the novel and hinting toward the future of their relationship. We chose to use the community service conflict as the foundation for our game, believing that it reflects the pivotal moments that will define and drive their relationship forward, both personally and professionally.
Game Design Process
Revisiting Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Our initial step in the game design process involved re-reading the beginning chapters of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It was essential to re-familiarize ourselves with the characters Sam and Sadie during their time in the hospital. The game adopts young Sam’s perspective on the community service conflict yet paradoxically casts the player as Sadie. Essentially, we wanted to make the game as if Sam was the creator trying to understand Sadie’s actions in her lying by omission ‘game.’
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Upon discovering that Sadie had been logging their time together as community service hours, Sam’s initial response was to shut her out, feeling reduced to a mere means to an end rather than a true friend. Although he grew out of this mindset, we used his initial perspective to make our game competitive. We integrated a countdown mechanic into the game, where the longer Sadie takes to beat the level, the more community service hours she loses. The countdown begins at 609 hours – the number of hours Sadie records in the novel. This mirrors Sam’s perception of Sadie’s priorities––questioning whether her intentions stemmed from genuine friendship or a mere tally of hours. Understanding the nuances of their relationship and their personalities at our early design stages was crucial for accurately translating their dynamic into our game’s narrative and elements.
To translate our vision into a playable game, we planned every aspect of the gameplay with detailed road maps. These plans outlined the journey from the welcome screen to the various end-game scenarios, with clear instructions for programming Sadie’s and Sam’s interactions and specific conditions for winning or restarting the game.
Game RoadmapGame Mechanics Outline
Program Selection – After evaluating various options, we carefully selected GameMaker Studio 2 to develop our game. This decision was driven by the specific needs of our project, particularly the demand for a program that excels in 2D game development with comprehensive features such as sprite and animation management, and a drag-and-drop interface that simplifies complex game development tasks.
Sprite and Background Design– Our first real step in the game design process was designing the sprites. After discussions on the visual style we wanted to achieve, Henry meticulously crafted detailed sprites for Sam and Sadie, and a nurse. Sam and Sadies’ sprites included profiles for multiple directions (front, back, right, left) to support a more fluid gameplay experience. Henry utilized GameMaker’s sprite editor to layer colors and add depth, ensuring the characters stood out against the background.
Sadie, Sam, & Nurse Sprites
Background design followed, with specific attention to interactive elements like doorways, which are vital to the game’s aesthetics and mechanics. In designing the background, we aimed to mirror the ambiance of a hospital by incorporating elements such as checkered floors and numerous doorways while also integrating a bright wall color to create a more engaging atmosphere for the game.
Background Design
Character Movement – For character movement, we programmed Sadie with basic directional controls (right, left, up, down), while Sam’s NPC movement (right, left) included pathfinding and collision interactions with walls. We also programmed character interactions, such as collisions between Sadie and Sam.
Sadie Basic Movement (Up, Down, Left, Right)Sam NPC Basic Movement (Right, Left)
Challenges
GameMaker Studio 2 & Collaboration – One significant challenge we faced was GameMaker’s limited support for real-time collaboration across separate computers. This limitation posed difficulties in our early development process, as it restricted the ability to simultaneously edit our design game elements as a group. In an attempt to overcome this limitation, we tried to integrate Git to share game files between different computers. We successfully created a repository and separately downloaded the programs; however, integrating Git with GameMaker proved more difficult than anticipated, and we had to look at other options. Instead, we used Henry’s computer to install GameMaker Studio 2 and scheduled in-person meetings to collaborate on programming the game.
Complexity of Wall Collisions– Handling collisions, especially with walls, introduced a new layer of difficulty for our group. Initially, our characters would react unpredictably upon hitting a wall – sometimes getting stuck, other times passing through as if the barrier didn’t exist. We initially suspected it was a boundaries issue, but our many attempts to edit didn’t yield the results we were looking for.
We had to program walls not only to stop character movement but also to influence it depending on the game’s physics. For example, when Sam (the NPC) hit a wall, he needed to turn around and bounce back.
Score/Countdown Timer Error– The most challenging aspect we faced – and one that caused errors even after game creation – was implementing the countdown timer that updated Sadie’s logged hours. The finished game was meant to work as follows: a countdown timer starting at 609 seconds would begin at the start of the game; when Sadie reached the nurse’s desk, the timer would stop, adding the remaining seconds from the timer to the player’s score. The player’s score was meant to be cumulative, meaning that if they did not get the necessary score of 609 from their first playthrough, they would need to play again. For example, if Sadie finished the level with 598 seconds left on the timer (which translated to hours on the score sheet), this would be her starting score for the next level. When the next level starts, the points will be cumulative, but the timer will restart at 609 seconds. Additionally, Sam’s speed would increase, making the game more difficult at each level.
The root of our problems came from updating the score based on the amount left on the countdown timer. Due to GameMaker’s limited drag-and-drop ability, we were unable to update the persistent (cumulative) score variable with the temporary (resets each level) timervariable. Our limited knowledge of how to stop the game’s clock and, therefore, stop the timer prevented us from storing the remaining timer value in the score variable, as GameMaker could not update the score variable with a constantly changing integer. We tried storing the timer’s value at the exact moment Sadie reached the nurse’s desk using an intermediary variable, but this, too, failed to resolve the issue. If we had an expert in GameMaker on our team, we certainly could have fixed this error; however, over several days and many YouTube tutorials watched, the error persisted. Ultimately, we had to accept this unresolved challenge, deferring its solution to the future.
Successes
Sprite Design – One of our major successes was our work on sprite design. Our sprite designer, Henry, decided to craft each sprite from scratch instead of relying on premade options available in GameMaker. This decision allowed for complete creative freedom to personalize Sam and Sadie. The detailed and unique sprites Henry created added a distinct visual appeal to our game, enhancing the overall player experience.
Sprite Design – Sadie
Movement Mechanics – Another satisfying achievement was mastering the basic movement mechanics. This fundamental aspect of our gameplay had to be smooth and responsive to ensure a satisfying gameplay experience. After a series of interactions and adjustments (and with a lot of help from Lizzie), we managed to program movements for Sadie that were not just functional, but simple and fluid.
Collaboration – These successes were not just about getting certain aspects of the game right; they were milestones that reflected our growth as game developers. Each sprite and every movement that worked were testaments to our evolving skills and deepening understanding of game design. We celebrated every small achievement. These successes propelled us forward, encouraging us to tackle more complex interactions within our game.
In addition to technical achievements, another area of success was our ability to work as a cohesive team despite the initial challenges with collaboration tools. We found ways to streamline our communication and workflow, ensuring that everyone was on the same page and could contribute effectively to the project. This collaborative spirit was crucial to overcoming the obstacles we faced.
Final Takeaways
The limitations of the free version of GameMaker Studio 2 initially slowed down our progress. In any future projects, we plan to invest in the paid version of the software, which offers enhanced features for real-time team collaboration.
The varied skills within our team played a pivotal role in our project’s development. For example, Lizzie’s programming expertise and Henry’s talent for design provided a balanced approach to tackling technical challenges. Sterling’s documentation was crucial in articulating our process in the game design document, while Alex’s creativity shone through in creating a compelling game trailer that captured the essence of the game’s story.
One of the key lessons we learned from this project is the importance of persistence and continuous learning. Game development is a field that is constantly evolving, and being adaptable and eager to learn new skills is crucial. Sometimes, it was difficult to find a tutorial to aid our programming difficulties, so it was essential for us not to give up and try different approaches on our own.
For our project, we decided to remediate the prison break scene from the 1994 film, Shawshank Redemption. Our game is fairly simple overall, but it took some time to obtain our final product. We knew we wanted to stick to the prison break scene, but we were unsure as to how we could portray our vision in a fun way while sticking to the same tone as the movie. Given our wanting to accurately match the seriousness of the scene, we began our quest with the vision of creating an escape room like game that would be playable in virtual reality. Our vision was bold; however, we felt it could be done. After researching how to make a VR game, we realized that our vision may have been too bold to accomplish in such a short duration. We shifted our focus to create a more simplistic remediation as our second goal was to have a completed game that we were passionate about rather than pieces of a much more complicated game that would leave us unfulfilled and struggling to explain its meaning. After watching the trailer for a game based off of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, we decided to shift our focus to a platform game developed in Game Maker Studio. To address our concerns regarding matching the tone of the film, we decided that it was best to develop our new game, and then determine how to remediate the serious nature of the film after we had a better understanding of what our final product would look like.
(The beginning stages of building our level)
Gameplay
For those who have never watched Shawshank, the main character Andy Dufresne escapes Shawshank prison by digging a hole in the side of his cell, climbing through the inside of the prison, and crawling through sewage pipes to a small river a few hundred yards away from the prison. In our remediation, our hand drawn sprite representing Dufresne jumps from platform to platform in order to reach the end of the level; however, unlike the movie, the objective is to avoid the sewage that is spread across the level. If a player were to fall in, they are guided back to the start of the level and given another attempt to successfully escape Shawshank.
Why Remediate Shawshank?
Our choice to remediate Shawshank Redemption stems from a few different factors. Firstly, the film is one of our favorites, thus the opportunity to remediate the film was a project that both of us welcomed and were engaged with from the start. Additionally, we felt that the film offered us a unique challenge: creating a game from a film that offered minimal opportunity for remediation. In other words, the film’s serious tone and ambiance was an obstacle we recognized could be difficult to overcome in an elementary game.
Combatting Issues of Tone in Remediation
To combat issues of remediating the overall serious nature of the film, we decided to go the complete opposite direction of our original goals of matching tones and instead opted to create a game that focused on the humorous aspects of the scene. Inspiration came mostly from Axel’s remembering of a Shawshank remediation from Family Guy which focuses on the humor associated with the scene such as the fact that Dufresne appears in the river on the other side of the prison walls “clean” despite crawling through hundreds of yards of human waste. Upon rewatching the scene from the original movie, we found humor in the fact that this was not entirely untrue as Dufresne’s character does appear from the pipe in a relatively clean state when considering the journey he had just endured. To replicate this mistake in our game, we offer players unlimited chances to complete the level; the sewage is merely an obstacle and players will not die if they accidentally fall in; however, they will experience a much more difficult journey as they will certainly find themselves continuing to encounter the sewage until they reach their destination. This realization in our process led to a much sillier game mechanic; however, our result adequately portrays that the sewage is merely an obstacle rather than a barricade for our player similar to how Dufresne experienced the sewage. In other words, we did not create a game that was meant to be too easy; however, we also felt that if our game was too difficult, players would get frustrated and lose sight of the end message of perseverance.
Visuals
Axel was the main designer for the visual aspects of the game. The only sprite in the game was designed by hand in Game Maker Studio. All other visual aspects of the game were taken from the public domain. The visuals for this project became exceedingly important as we moved further into the development process. Because we decided to create a satirizing game for a serious film, it was very important that our visuals sufficiently matched the seriousness of the film. For our trailer we chose to continue with our satirical view of the scene as we incorporated serious scenes from the movie and matched them alongside our goofy gameplay. To add to the satirical nature of our game, Axel included fake quotes and other allusions to the comedy within our game which helped close out our satirical goals.
Challenges and What Did We Learn
While it would be easy to spend this section talking about the difficulty of learning to code since neither of us are coders, we faced many other challenges throughout our development process. For us, the most difficult part of this project was getting our views aligned with each other as to what we wanted our final result to look like. In the beginning we had trouble settling on an idea as many of our initial ideas did not interest us, were not unique, or were too difficult to complete with such limited time and game development skills. We realized early on that creating a world from scratch was very difficult as is, but the added difficulty of remediating a classic film brought an entirely new set of challenges along with it. This aspect made the brainstorming process the most difficult process of our development as once we settled on a concrete idea and learned the skills to execute, our vision began to come together very quickly.
Conclusion
While this project was a daunting challenge at the beginning, we had a great time creating a game that both of us can be proud of. Given more time, we would have loved to add more levels as well as a scoring system; however, we are happy with the result and are now equipped with new skills regarding game creation. We have also developed an extreme appreciation for game developers and are impressed with the creativity that goes into creating even the most minute details of a game. While our players should not expect our game to be topping the charts as game of the year, we hope to provide our players with an experience that challenges their ideas of the classic film and pushes them past obstacles they perceive as impossible barriers just as Andy Dufresne did when escaping Shawshank.
The Cover of Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Introduction
For our game design project, we were particularly inspired by Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a book about game-making, friendships, and lives lived together & in conflict. We were particularly inspired by the passion, creativity, and care that Sadie and Mazer put into each game they created over the course of the novel, even as they struggled with their relationships with one another. In creating our game, we wanted to remediate the novel by pulling together aspects of two different games that Sam & Sadie made: EmilyBlaster and The Master of Revels, in order to touch on the importance of the name of the book & explore more deeply the scenes within it. This led us to create our game, MarxBlaster.
What Our Game Is
MarxBlaster is a remediation of two games, EmilyBlaster and Master of Revels, from Zevin’s novel. EmilyBlaster is a first-person shooter game, one of Sadie’s early games described in the book, where the player shoots down phrases from Emily Dickinson’s famous poems in order to assemble the finished works. In Master of Revels, the game is set in Shakespearean London, where the gamer has to discover who killed the playwright Christopher Marlowe. Our game remediates, in part, a section of the game Sadie created an actor styled after her deceased partner Marx, who gives the “Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow” speech from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the same speech that the novel is titled after. We combined the two games by borrowing the scene and the speech from the Master of Revels scene while placing additional emphasis on phrases like Sadie did in EmilyBlaster. In our game, the player is tasked with navigating the Globe Theater in order to find her friend Marx, who is preparing to deliver the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech. Over the course of several levels, you must collect speech bubbles containing the lines from Marx’s speech while moving through various rooms of the theater, including the light room, a makeup room, on the side of the stage, and at the end, meeting Marx on the main stage. The speech bubbles constantly change speed to increase difficulty as the game progresses. Upon collecting all the speech bubbles, the player completes the game by reaching Marx, who then performs his speech before the audience (and the player).
At the end of the game, a voice (voiced by our group member, Sarah Beth) reads the speech aloud. The screen switches to the lines of the speech displayed and read together for the first time in front of an image of Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known as The Great Wave, by Katsushika Hokusai – the same image referenced on the cover of the book alluding to the iconography in Ichigo – Sadie & Sam’s first game.
The end scene from MarxBlaster where the speech is read aloud and shown as a whole work
Game Design & Our Process
In designing this game, we tried to balance what scenes we thought would be interesting to remediate with our group’s game-making inexperience. Originally, we were deciding between our final project idea, inspired by our love of Marx, or trying to recreate one of Sam’s mazes in LA, with several dead-ends referencing core plot points of the novel. In learning more about game-making, we decided a platformer game would be within our skill level while still having the capacity to remediate the work how we wanted to. In placing Marx’s character directly in our game, we remediated the novel by both featuring games & scenes in the work, but we also remediated Sadie’s love letter to Marx by placing him in our game, just as she placed him in hers.
Once we decided on MarxBlaster, we tackled the design of the obstacles to reaching Marx. This is where we took inspiration from the mechanics of Sadie’s game EmilyBlaster. We used the concept of shooting phrases to create the obstacles to getting individual lines of the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech but implemented it within the platformer rather than as a shooter game. We decided to use the platform Scratch, as none of us had any coding experience. Because our concept was more complex, we tried to balance it with the simpler system in order to add in all the details we wanted to, such as moving from scene to scene through the Globe Theater and with our moving text boxes.
One of the scenes from the game, which is also an interior shot of the Globe Theater
Visually, we decided to use photos from the inside of the Globe Theater in order to give the player the feeling of walking through the game. We made text boxes that simulated text we associate with classic video games and tried to reference the font used on the cover of the novel in the process, especially considering the phrases the game’s main character collects to reference the speech.
Our character design was based in part on convenience and in part on the type of remediation & game we wanted to create. There are only two characters in the game: Marx & the main character. Marx’s character was chosen mainly because the sprite was dressed appropriately for an actor in Macbeth. The main character was chosen for some of the same reasons: she was an existing sprite that had good costumes available, especially to animate her while she walked. However, part of our motivation was also because, as we’ve talked about in class, there is a lack of diverse representation in video games, and we wanted to challenge some of those notions in our protagonist selections, especially because race & representation are hugely important themes in Zevin’s novel.
A screenshot of our game where the character jumps to hit a moving textbox
Our entire group collaborated on the design of the game. Mariah did the majority of the coding, especially around creating the stages, coding each sprite’s movement, creating the beginning & end sequences, and figuring out how the text boxes would move. Brynn did most of the graphic design work, especially in the end scene & with the text boxes, and coded the movement between scenes, the point value system, & switched the text between levels. Sarah Beth helped with finding the scene pictures and created our trailer.
Successes & Challenges
In terms of concept, our game was very successful. Our finished product does what we set out to do: we have multiple levels the protagonist goes through, the text bubbles move with varying speeds and difficulty, the introduction & end of the game align in terms of our messaging of the game, and we were able to create text bubbles that disappear when touched and add points at the top left of the screen. Our game was also successful in that we learned a lot about game-making and just how much goes into it – although Scratch is certainly a simpler tool, we were able to use it to learn more about game mechanics and foundational lessons around game-making. Marxblaster is certainly not without bugs, and because of time and experience constraints, it is not as difficult or complex as we may have wanted it to be, it is cohesive in terms of the story we wanted to tell through game-making and the way in which we wanted to remediate core aspects of the novel.
Along the way we did have a lot of difficulties. Learning to code with zero experience between the three of us led to a huge learning curve. We had a lot of difficulty even getting our game to save our progress in Scratch because too many of us were signed in, leading Mariah to have to recreate more complex sequences of code multiple times. Although the simplicity of Scratch was why we chose the program, at times, it also was too simple for us, and we had to come up with workarounds to the software in order to get our game to do what we wanted it to do. Additionally, we had a lot of issues with our text boxes and changes between our six total scenes. We had to come up with a bit of a convoluted workaround that led to some of the boxes running across the screen upside down, and difficulty in keeping them on screen in order for players to be able to collect points. For a while, we struggled to get the player to progress through the game and had to switch around our mechanics; first, when the player touched every text box they would switch screens, and then we moved to a model where when Avery touches an x-value on the right end of the screen, the backdrop switches and a new level begins.
What We Learned
We learned a lot about how difficult game making is, but also how unique a tool it is for remediation & storytelling. As we discussed in class, game type has a lot of impact on the feeling someone has playing a game; in LOTRO, the ability of players to never have to beat Sauron while enjoying the world of Middle Earth creates a far different atmosphere from that of the book & movie, which draw on the imagery of fated heroes on impossible journeys. In our game, we tried to use the platform game type and the remediation of text as a backdrop to MarxBlaster, creating a game that anyone could play but that a reader of Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow would get a lot more out of. Games allow for multiple levels of remediation: we were able to combine aspects of two different games described in the novel, several major plot points in it, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth into one project. Although it’s far from polished or complex, we hope the nuance within our concept and the variety of scenes you experience offers an interesting game to play!
From the 6th-12th grade, I had the opportunity to be on my school’s wrestling team. My time as a wrestler was interesting, and I can probably even say that it was life-changing. Beginning my athletic career with a rusty start, I wrestled within the 175-weight class. My high school coach, Daniel Jinks, who, in fact, is a WRESTLING beast, left us at the last minute for a school in Sacramento, CA. He probably got fed up with having a sucky team on his hands and wanted to boost his credibility as another school’s coach. Coach Jinks was a man with patience and empathy, sometimes too much patience and empathy. He would sometimes let us take unnecessary breaks during practice when we got tired, rarely pushed us to our limits, and refrained from screaming at his athletes. In that moment, I was happy that our coach wasn’t being harsh. However, I would finally come to realize that having this experience with Coach Jinks made adjusting to high school wrestling extremely difficult.
A team photo of me during a match against Red Bank High School in East Ridge, TN (Photo Courtesy of TSAAA Wrestling)
Fast forward a couple of years, and I arrived in high school. Before starting a new educational milestone, I was warned by my parents about the competitiveness of high school wrestling and how wrestling in middle school would never amount to the same level of difficulty as high school wrestling. I walked into the after-school wrestling room, which at the time, was a non-ventilated, hot, mat-covered room with blood on the walls. As I laced up my Adidas wrestling shoes and people started to flood into the practice room, a very stern, hostile, raspy voice was heard in the distance.
After a few minutes passed by, an old grey-bearded man walked in with a stopwatch and ordered us to run in a huge circle until he told us to stop. Since I was previously labeled as an in-shape individual, I had no problems undergoing the cardio part of the tryouts. I was exhausted and had to leave the room to catch my breath. I came back and that’s when he then told us to run live matches, which is when you must wrestle another practice mate as if you’re in a real match. Lying on the ground, this raspy-voiced individual finally introduced himself to us. His name is Wayne Turner, the school’s decades-old football coach, and an All-American Baseball, Football, and Wrestling athlete. Legend has it that when Coach Turner was in his prime, he was expected to play in the NFL.
Staff Photo by Robin Rudd / Tyner head coach Wayne Turner works with the Rams before the game. The Howard Hustlin Tigers visited the Tyner Rams in a TSSAA rivalry game on September 11, 2020.
However, due to a freakish accident where he killed his practice teammate, he took a step back from sports and got into sports coaching. At the time, Coach Turner was practically a Chattanooga celebrity. He was Tyner High School’s head coach for so long that many individuals far older than my parents were coached by him.
As the season progressed, I got to know Coach Turner’s coaching style a little bit more, noticing that his coaching style was far more abrasive than that of Coach Jinks. On the sidelines of Tyner’s popular high school football games, Coach Turner would be seen yelling and berating the players. When I then asked him why he prefers to do this to his students, he said that he does this because he cares for their successes.
Passion coaching is something that many experts despise and is when a coach uses an almost totalitarian leadership style to manage their team. As I watched Coach Turner and Coach’s similar, I started to think, can you really be that passionate about a team of players that much? Well, I got to put my proposed theory to the test by playing Retro Bowl. a ‘vintage’ inspired football game.
When I first loaded the game, I was skeptical if I was going to like what I was about to play, mainly because I rarely liked watching football. However, in an instance of boredom, I selected South Carolina, a very uninteresting team from a state that I had never visited. I was matched with an interesting group of guys who had the tendency to throw interceptions, incomplete passes, and ultimately run away from the ball.
A screenshot showing how at one point, my team was so bad that out of 1M fans, only 1% (10,000) supported South Carolina’s athletes. (Photo Courtesy of Jaylan SimsA screenshot showing how with unstrict discipline, our players costed our team money. These are simple foolish mistakes that can be corrected almost instantly. After criticizing the player, we lost fans and I never got a gesture violation for anyone on the team again (Photo courtesy of Jaylan Sims)
As I started to become detached from the game, thinking that I couldn’t possibly write a blog post on this garbage, I gave it another chance, playing multiple teams throughout the season. As we progressed, my team started to get increasingly better, and I began to develop a level of attachment to the players, wanting them to overly succeed and bring the state of South Carolina its first RB Championship.
After devastatingly losing the RB playoffs after the first round to Atlanta, our longstanding rival, South Carolina’s Running Back Oliver Izzo and Tight End, Timmy Atkins took the time during our off-season to train hard, leading our team to the winning streak that I so eagerly dreaded for. We started catching longer passes, running faster, and securing more touchdowns. I was content with my team’s performance and became increasingly happy when I saw that we had a chance at successfully winning an RB Championship.
The momentum that was constantly felt while playing the game ended up turning into little bursts of rage when the team made a mistake. I, as a coach, started to inhabit the thinking of Coach Turner, which is how every mistake deducts from the chances of winning the ultimate prize, a championship trophy.
As I was playing the game throughout the weeks of having it, I would consistently scream swear words at the top of my lungs. Not sure if my neighbors could hear me, but my iPad was able to pick up a lot of the shouting noises, further showing the level of intensity that I had for the players.
If you look at the top of this screenshot, you can see the shouting notification that my Ipad tends to send out everytime I scream.
Despite my screaming, our team kept working harder until we were able to successfully beat Atlanta, winning us an RB Championship. But I wasn’t satisfied with just one. On the leaderboard, some individuals played this game and were able to get over 3 championships.
A screenshot of an end of the season fan poll, highlighting the performance of my team for the season (Photo courtesy of Jaylan Sims)A screenshot showing how once we were able to get our act together as a team, we were able to beat Atlanta and have over 1M fans rooting for us in the championship. (Photo courtesy of Jaylan Sims)
Distraught by this leaderboard ranking, I fired all my coaching staff, and hired new staff from star football programs, ultimately leaving the SC team with their new coaches, and accepting a more promising job with the Texas program. During my tenure, I was content with the outcome, I left my fans with a great stadium, huge salary cap, state of the art training facilities, and state of the art rehad facilitates.
A screenshot showing how the team improved during my tenure, and the coaches that I hired and left the team with (Photo courtesy of Jaylan Sims).A screenshot showing how at the end of my tenure, I admitted Oliver Izzo and Timmy Atkins into the RB Hall of Fame (Photo courtesy of Jaylan Sims).
As you read this blog post, you may be thinking, why in the world were you so uptight about the team’s winnings, is it just a game, and did it really take screaming at the players, rather than your coaches? Well, I did things the way I did because it’s not that I hated the players, it’s because I genuinely cared about them and cited the origins of my quick coaching style because I wanted them to win and succeed in life, reaping all the benefits and royalties that come with success on and off the field.
As I came to this conclusion, I had read many studies that said that passion coaching didn’t work, and after playing Retro Bowl and understanding Coach Turner’s coaching style, I started to see the studies about screaming/showing tough love towards players, as completely inaccurate. From personal experience, Turner’s screaming and tough love only pushed us to try harder in our matches. And as I end my last blog post for the semester, I want to end by asking you another question. If ‘passion coaching’ is so bad, why do coaches who have this style of coaching, secure multiple state sport wins and state tournament appearances? Is it the players who are dramatizing the coaches’ actions, or the psychologists, who have probably never played sports a day in their lives?
When I was 8 years old, my favorite toy in the world was LEGOs, and my favorite franchise was Star Wars. I still have dozens of LEGO sets in my childhood bedroom, and I carry distinct memories of watching the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series at my mom’s office while she worked. Aside from playing with LEGOs, my favorite pastime was playing videogames on the family Nintendo Wii, so imagine my excitement when I found out there was a LEGO Star Wars video game!
A promotional banner for the most recent LEGO Star Wars game
As a child, I loved the LEGO games, and even though they’re definitely aimed towards children, I still love them as an adult. The defining features of these modern LEGO video games are cartoony violence with explosions of LEGO studs, a ballooning character roster, and bastardized versions of scenes from the source material using LEGO humor. During gameplay, each of these elements are at the forefront of the player’s experience, emphasizing the fact that you’re playing a LEGO game. This is a great example of Bolter and Grusin’s hypermediacy, which describes media that is self-aware of its own medium and presents itself as such. The fact that the LEGO games are “LEGO games” is an integral part of the personality of the media, and an integral part of the player’s experience.
Obi-Wan cutting off Darth Maul’s legs in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Obi-Wan cutting off Darth Maul’s legs in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
As an example, let’s look at the moment in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace when a young Obi-Wan angrily halves Darth Maul in retaliation for the death of his master, Qui-Gon Jinn. In the original film, this is an incredibly tense and emotional moment, with all hope seemingly being lost just moments before Obi-Wan’s epic maneuver. However, in the LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga video game, this moment is played comedically, as are most other scenes in the LEGO Star Wars games. An already-chopped-in-half Maul stabs Qui-Gon while Obi-Wan freaks out about Maul’s amputated legs which are running around in a comedic way. Another aspect that adds to the hypermediacy is the fact that the legs have the same stubs that LEGO legs have, which wouldn’t make sense for realism, but make perfect sense for a LEGO game.
The LEGO games rely heavily on the player’s prior knowledge of a story or characters to apply the comedic LEGO remediation on top of this prior experience. The early LEGO games didn’t even have voice acting, probably due to financial limitations. Instead, the characters expressed dialogue through grunts and yells, and the story was largely based on the player’s prior knowledge of the source material. I really like the style of the LEGO video games, and I like seeing how they remediate beloved stories into fun, family-friendly experiences. They are some of the best examples of good remediation and hypermediacy.
Aging in video games always seemed like a weird concept to me. Why would you include something so grounded in real life within your digital world that many use partly as an escapist fantasy. So many of us have experienced or observed the heavy toll that getting older has whether it’s just lower energy or a more serious decline in health. My thoughts after our brief conversation about aging in games has led me to rethink some of my thoughts around aging as well as its potential as an in-game mechanic.
A variety of games feature mechanics that suggest the passage of time. Simulation games such as the sims have been aging characters for a while now and while it isn’t exactly aging in real time the time jumps to different life points such as children becoming teens and teens adults offer a sense of immersion that many crave. Fortunately, for those looking for escapism, the aging mechanic can be turned off.
Other non-simulation games feature mechanics that allude to aging without full committing to the effects of it. Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher 3 both feature in game barber shops where the player can choose new hair and beard styles as well as a quick trim. To provide and extra feeling of immersion, the devs for both games implemented mechanics where the players head and facial hair grow overtime. This level of time passage only effects gameplay on an aesthetic level and just adds more customization features for your characters without effecting players looking for a less realistic time mechanic.
Recently I’ve begun playing Sifu, an indie game released in 2022 by Sloclap studios. The game puts you in the role of a young Kung Fu master seeking revenge for the murder of your father. This requires you to clear rooms full of henchmen with complex chains of attacks. What really makes the game unique is its really interesting use of aging within the game. The enemies in Sifu are challenging so it’s expected that you die a fair amount, fortunately your character has a magical pendent that resurrects them. The catch is that each of these deaths causes you character to grow older with the amount you age growing with each consecutive death. Dying to the same opponent repeatedly sees you character go from 22 to 23 to 25 to 28 etc… The aging Is more than just visual flair. As you grow older your character unlocks new powerful techniques due to the wisdom of aging which allows you to do more damage to your opponents. To balance the benefits of experience, your body becomes frailer, and you have a smaller health pool when fighting your enemies. The real kicker is that when your character ages into his 70s and 80s there is a chance he will die permanently, and the level will restart from the age you first began it at. It’s really cool having a permanent death mechanic that is actually reflective of how real aging works.
I find this a fascinating mechanic as it suggests a life outside of what we see in our gameplay. As our character ages they experience numerous trials and train to become stronger, but these experiences are all implied. I also love the lens through which they portray aging, having it be something positive for the player where they learn and grow but also keeping the harsher realities of getting older. Perhaps this proves that even the mundane and often sad parts of being human can inspire innovative and entertaining gameplay mechanics.
I would love to see someone take the concept even further with maybe a time sensitive aging mechanic that encourages you to beat levels as fast as possible while experiencing a variety of aging consequences in real time. Maybe could explore and do puzzles on other planets and have different rates of aging due to how time passes on other planets.
With an ever technologizing world, new forms of communication have been created. Calling on cell phones, emailing, and now texting or direct messaging have swept through the world as a basis for human interaction. Within such novel communications comes an intriguing way of relaying emotions and information: GamePigeon.
GamePigeon is a game platform within Apple’s iMessage system that allows users who text with Apple products to play quick mini games with each other. These games include a range of activities, from pool to darts, as well as more creative games, like 20 questions and Tanks, where one must shoot a tank shell over great distances accurately to hit their opponent, and friend, on the other side. These mini games are a great way to grow friendships even at a distance. For example, when my friends return home during vacations and have to sit through long car rides, they often send my GamePigeon requests for pool and cup pong to help them pass the time.
Mini Games, Big Competition
Don’t discount these games to be just casual, happy-fun-time distractions from reality. These games queue up, and you are immersed in the competition. When a friend sends you pool, darts, cup pong, knockout, or any other mini game, the engines of competition rev their engines; it is a declaration of war. Lose, and your friends will hold over their victory for hours to come. These games are not friendly, where you line up and shake hands at the end. Words are said, threats are given, and trash talk (even over text) is key to psych your opponent out. These games are taken seriously. Tournaments have been constructed around GamePigeon. During COVID, gaming conventions like E3 would host pool and cup pong tournaments. Even in small settings, get-togethers, and parties, “social-distancing cup pong” became a trend to keep company alive.
One of the most interesting facets are the tricks people use to elevate the gameplay. One strategy is known as the napkin shot. During GamePigeon pool, players will take a napkin, and line it up with the cue ball and its projected direction. The edge of the napkin allows you to play the angles of the game more easily, allowing you to get each ball in more precisely and go on a streak. With cup pong and darts, players have been able to ding the perfect speed and finger placement to send the ball into the middle cup, and the dart into the center of the board. In these games, it is much easier to perfect your movements; no need for strenuous muscle memory and years of practice and training. It is tricks like these which almost make these mini games seem like a sport.
Another trend that occurred in this past decade was the use of GamePigeon games during long, emotional texts. When breakups occur over text, where the dumper would send long paragraphs to the dumpee. The dumpee, in response, would simply send a game instead of a legitimate response. This type of text was supposed to anger the other person, showing them that they did not care enough to read the whole text, which was then translated to the entire relationship. This trend was seen on Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat and grew nationwide laughs. It grew from breakups to arguments, where someone would send a huge, angry spew and would only get a GamePigeon mini game in response.
It is little trends like this that help games like this grow beyond the scope of their intended purpose. What was once a friendly game turned into a bargaining chip in the greater game of relationships. It is always wonderful to see how games change and evolve. Who knows how GamePigeon will be used next. Mini games have always been used to pit your friends against each other, like in Super Mario Party. Sure, there are shapes, colors, and cutesy characters. but underneath, there is a burning competition that rages in the heart.
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 
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