Extra Credit: Columbine Game

Screenshot of the game

My Gaming Experience and Thoughts

The Columbine Game has pretty thought-provoking content that goes against any norms of video games being a leisure time activity for fighting boredom and enjoyable entertainment. 

It was pretty hard to play considering that I do not like the idea of a game where the player must be inside the mindset of the school shooter. It was pretty hard to bomb the cafeteria. 

Be it negative or positive attention, this game gives a lot of attention to school shootings and it did a really good job to spread awareness and making the public uncomfortable.

The aesthetic of the game is really pixelated which is perfect because it is not a good idea to make it too real. There are strategical aspects of the game where the player needs to think like the killer to "win". There are also survival techniques where we should not be caught.

The interactivity between player and player character is pretty immersive. Being a gamer, I feel use to games being fake, so this gives it a surreal experience that I have to be in the point of view of the killer's experience both mentally and somewhat physically, and knowing that this is an actual event that took place makes the game uncomfortable for anyone to play.

Blog Post 9: Course Reflection

Preface
Before I being mentioning anything else technically great related to the course, overall the course has led me to meet great people and friends that I can call for life. And I will miss them greatly. Shout out to the whole CS108 group!


I learned a lot about both art and software equally. Also, concepts about game.

Art
I learned there were ways to do art that does not require fancy software and tools such as photoshop and a wacom tablet. There are other ways of doing art. Earlier, I was assigned to do art and I dreaded doing art with a tablet pen but later found out that there are free app softwares that can create transparent art with my finger which is perfect for games.

Software
I learned to use Gamemaker 2 but really despise it with its limitations on users who cannot afford to pay for the full-version. Luckily, older versions are better such as Gamemaker 8 and has no limits to how many objects that we can put. However, working with limitations was fun and really opens a whole new creative outlet on how to get work done.

Concepts
Aside from all the hands-on activities, the most memorable concepts that I learned from readings were types of play such as iterative play and strategical. There are many types of play and how play is important. My favorite lecture was when Koster was live on skype with the family dog.

Final Comment
I love this class and I'm really happy that I chose to enroll in it.

Blog Post 8: Final Project

Inspiration

Our game is called Maple Tale which is a mix between older games back in our childhood such as Maplestory, Runescape, and Terraria. We mix everything together that we find in our childhood games that were most memorable. This was made in Gamemaker 8.

Maplestory had jump quests which takes 4+ hours to finish, so we had Dr. Wiggles (our player's character name) to jump on ledges without falling. 

Runescape had fishing and cooking aspects with fire, so we included fishing and cooking. There is also wood cutting.

Terraria had lots of fighting so we included magic bolts for Dr. Wiggles to shoot from and fight off green and purple slimes to drop currency and useable items.

We combined all these aspects into a playable game and included our originality such as art and collecting flies (currency) to pass through levels. 

Instructions

To make the game understandable to play, there are quests windows on the far right corner of the screen. It helps players know what to do next.

On the launch of the game, there are also list of controls. It can also save game and load where the player left off. When all quests are finished, players can see the credits of the artists from the frog. Not only does the quest window acts as a guide to the game, the frog is also a guide that tells what the player should do next.

To make it feel like the player is advancing in the game, when Dr. Wiggles levels up to 5, his magic bolts speed increases. That means casting is faster.

Link: https://odangily.itch.io/maple-tale

Final Project Draft

This is the link to the final project draft.