week 2

Week 2 – Vigilance – Post-Mortem

Glaxor 0 Comments

PLAY HERE

What went well? Is the theme well represented?

I was able to pull off the design I had come up with at the beginning of the week. I do feel that the design represents the theme of vigilance and that this final product does instill that sense in the player, if only a little bit.

What went wrong? Could the game better represent the theme?

It is not at first obvious what is going on. Players generally have to die at least once before they really get what is happening. There is also a technique that can be used to stay alive which undermines the vigilance theme that I’m not sure how I could change the design to guard against.

What did you learn?

I learned some things about ray casting in general and specifically in Phaser. I didn’t really iterate on this design like I did on the previous design. I did have my family play test it, but I didn’t get any actionable feedback from that this time. I had some ideas on how to improve this design but I didn’t get around to implementing them. This week re-enforced for me the need to play test and iterate on the design to make a better game.

Week 2 – Vigilance

Glaxor 0 Comments

A new week, a new theme. This time the theme I pulled out of the lunchbox was “Vigilance.” Let’s get started.

Plutchik-wheel-vigilanceWhat is the first thing you thought of after reading the prompt for this week?

I thought of some of my experiences standing watch when I was in the Navy.

Can you think of a situation that you’ve been in that made you feel vigilant?

I was stationed on a ship that was in port in Bremerton, Wa. which is across the Puget Sound from Seattle. I was working in Ship’s Security at the time and there had been some trouble on one of the ferries that transports civilians between Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula a couple of days before. Someone had tried to hijack it. We got word on this night that there was trouble again on one of the ferries. The night passed without incident, but we were all extra vigilant throughout our watch, on edge, actually. Schmidt, one of the senior Master at Arms did a good job of making sure everyone was aware of the possibility of danger while at the same time making sure no one was so paranoid they would jump the gun and create an incident over nothing.

Can you think of any art, movies, literature or music that illustrate the theme?

Suspense and some horror films and novels do a good job of bringing out vigilance in their audience. Fear and vigilance seem to be tied together, actually. There is no reason for vigilance if there is nothing to fear.

A design sketch for Game a Week - theme is vigilanceHow will you try to illustrate this theme in a video game?

I’ll give the player something to protect and then have the enemies try to take it away. I think that working with imperfect information in their task will help to induce a feeling of vigilance in the player.

You can read the post-mortem and play the game here.