Game Studies Journal

Hello, my name is Joyce ( ´ー`)b

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Course Reflection

I think I definitely read about games, wrote about games, played games and designed games. The final project connected all the principles of game design and pipeline together. I found myself having to help with many different aspects in order to compensate for the amount of work we had to finish within the month. 

We all knew going into development that we wanted to build something new that we worried might be considered out of our scope. We spent a lot of time discussing the story and using the plot descriptions to pull out mechanics that would tie in with the themes of the story. I appreciated all my teammates for investing so much of their time and effort into this game. I learned the importance of communication when it comes to group projects. The creation process was definitely so smooth because questions were always asked, progress was always shared and issues were always addressed professionally as a team. 

It was very fun to learn how to use Unity as an artist. Actually laying the night levels taught me a lot of how I should format and prepare any art assets I make in the future. It helped me understand how to make the programmer’s lives easier since I was able to see the assets from their perspectives. I’m also glad I had the opportunity to do the level designs with the helpful puzzle ideas of one of my teammates. As an artist I was glad that all the platforms I drew worked perfectly together and I only had to make a few more variations in the end. Thank you for this semester!

In The Dark I See You by moonatsu

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Final Project

In our game “In the Dark I See You,” the player plays as the main character who is overcoming grief due to the loss of their significant other. During the day, the MC performs simple tasks around their house that trigger memories of a shared domestic life or suppressed tragedy. Only in their sleep can they escape into a false happier reality. Though their partner has also begun appearing in their dreams lately…

Since the first playtesting we have continued working on fixing bugs and replacing placeholders with final assets and dialogue. The game designer helped finalize the game flow and details of each level for the programmers and artists to use. The programmers have been working on adding visual and sound effects on Unity such as feedback for when players interact with memory fragments in the dream world. We are also still creating the art assets for the day world such as the house and room backdrops and interactable objects. 

As one of the artists I have been working on designing the significant other’s appearance and helping the other artist with creating assets for the day environment. I also provided feedback on the look of visual effects that were tested by the programmers.

Through our frequent communication through Discord and meetings after class we were able to brainstorm other mechanics or art we could add. For example we have been planning on adding some puzzle mechanics and camera movement to the night world to make it more interesting. In addition one of our team members has been working on an original soundtrack. Overall I am very excited to see and present the final product!

First prototype: https://moonatsu.itch.io/in-the-dark-i-see-you

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Jackbox Game

During the Jackbox games lab, I only had the opportunity to play as an audience member which meant I mainly participated in voting phases of each game. The first two games we played were “Bracketeering” and “Doominate.” I thought that “Bracketeering” was more interesting because it was set up tournament-style. Players gave answers based on one prompt, then their answers were shared with the class under another prompt to twist the possible underlying meaning of their answers. Like many Jackbox games, there were multiple rounds of tournaments with scores being calculated after each round before adding up to the total leaderboard. “Doominate” reminded me a lot of another Jackbox game, “Quiplash.” But I felt like the instructions and rules of the game were overexplained, making the experience less amusing. One thing I noticed was that many people were not as interested in “untwisting” prompts and answer pairs to make them “good” compared to rounds where they had to “ruin” a prompt. 

Playing Jackbox games in class was also an unfamiliar experience for me because we had to stay within a PG-rating. Although it was possible for comedy to be successful while being classroom friendly I feel that many Jackbox games thrive on the chaotic and crass inside jokes of a friend group. As an audience member, it was uninteresting at times where players were given time to submit their responses because there wasn’t any activity to participate in. That’s why I thought “DodoReMi” was an interesting game because it invited the audience to also choose an instrument and play in the rhythm mode.

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Video Game Prototype

Old McQuanold is a 2D platformer about a duck farmer who collects his harvest to bring back home for dinner. Original art assets were drawn by Joyce and programming by Lyndon.

Use the A and D or left and right arrows to move horizontally and space to jump to navigate through the map and collect the bits of food. As of this blog, all previous issues have been resolved to the best of our ability such as the chaotic rotation of the duck and gaps on the ground causing the duck to fall off the map. Existing issues we weren’t able to solve were the timing of the jumping animation and  getting the ending screen card to be triggered once the duck reaches the barn.

As the artist I am satisfied with how much I was able to experiment with this style. Since the previous post about the first alpha testing I was able to check everything off my to-do list. As the prototype was built and improved on I learned a lot about the pipeline from art to programming. The most valuable information I got was about how to format and prep assets so that it could be imported into Unity. I also learned to adapt and set dimensions for the assets so that every piece of visual information was cohesive. In the future I would know to have starting dimensions before I begin drawing so I had a more consistent workflow. Overall it was really satisfying to see the animations in motion and the character interacting with the props.

Old McQuanold v3 by TheIrishBlackGuy

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

First Playable

I am the artist and producer of the 2D platformer called Old McQuanold. I mainly provided the sprite and animations assets for my partner the programmer while also managing our deadlines.

In our playtesting session in class the highlight of the night was the strange way the duck sprite was moving across the screen. If you jumped too weird or landed on the wrong tile the duck would tip over. Although it was extremely difficult to continue moving across the map after falling down it was not impossible to find a way to get back upright. All the play testers made comments on this issue that ranged from finding a way to fix it or incorporate it into the game. One tester said that they liked being able to "break the game" and another "liked being able to flip [the] duck back to normalcy."

To gather feedback on the art we asked the players to identify what was the first visual that caught their eye when they opened the game. Overall people liked the vibrant colors and pointed out the shed as the first place they looked at. Someone commented that "the duck is too low on the screen and doesn't take as much precedence."

In order to address the feedback we received we decided that he would prioritize finding a solution to the orientation issue and continue to build the game so that there was more of the map to explore. I will create UX/UI assets to lead the player by explaining the controls and adding a menu. I also need to create the starting/end point assets and good/bad ending drawings so the game is more visually cohesive and provides eventual feedback for when a player finished the objective.

https://theirishblackguy.itch.io/old-mcquanold-v1

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Video Game Lab 

For this game lab I got to play games that piqued my interest in different ways. Two of them were “Doodle & Twiddle” and “Off the Clock.”  In “Doodle & Twiddle” you play as the lost Doodle, whose goal is to find his friend Twiddle. “Off the Clock” is about a tired office worker trying to leave the office by identifying strange anomalies to escape. Both of these games are side scrollers with the theme to “escape” to advance to the next level and also revolve around the aesthetic of challenge. The challenge of “Doodle & Twiddle” is to overcome the different physical obstacles in Doodle’s way while “Off the Clock” is about trying to spot all the anomalies. Both games require different approaches. “Doodle & Twiddle” requires you to work on timing of your jumps and “Off the Clock” is about memorization.

https://saridlin.itch.io/doodle-n-twiddle

https://itch.io/queue/c/5739085/spring-2025-games-108?game_id=3411816&password=

Another game I played was called “Act Normal!” an unconventional sandbox dating sim where you do your best to impress your dinner date. I thought it was different from the usual visual novel style dating sims and was very entertaining because I was immediately distracted and amused by the erratic movement of my character caused by the high sensitivity of the controls. Rather than trying to impress my date I enjoyed trying to grab at my food without swiping everything off the table. It was completely understandable that she wanted to stay friends after the date. 

https://bereg.itch.io/act-normal

I also had the chance to observe my partner play “This Is The Only Level.” It was interesting to see how he approached the game compared to how I would have acted. He preferred to experiment a bit and find different ways to “break” the game. He was also not afraid of dying for the sake of finding the solution. On the other hand I felt that I started each level by slowly testing the waters before finding the most direct by-the-book solution. 

Overall I was able to try many new games that were out of my usual preferences and also get an understanding of what my goal should be for a finished game in this class.

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Prototyping

“House of Asterius” is a cat and mouse style game where one player is the last Athenian sacrifice left in the labyrinth and the other is the violent and hungry Minotaur. As the sacrifice you must search the every-changing labyrinth for the exit before the Minotaur gets to you. Both players must navigate the labyrinth as walls and entire paths appear and disappear before their eyes. The board is made up of 24 individual map tiles with several surprise encounters. Actions were dictated by the suits on a deck of cards.

The two mechanics I focused on were action points and map deformation.

My final product has these components: 24 map tiles that are shuffled and randomly placed face down to create a map, a deck of playing cards, two player tokens and 13 walls.

First Session

In our brainstorming and first playtesting session, my partner and I tried to combine our preferred mechanics. They wanted to implement bluffing and I wanted to focus on map addition. After a quick brainstorming session we ended up with a game about escaping a labyrinth/maze. In the first version the goal was to find the exit before the other player. 

After we parted ways I finetuned the theme by researching more on the mythologies surrounding the labyrinth and Daedalus, the inventor. At this point I changed the dynamic of the players from both trying to escape to one of them being the Minotaur.

Another major aspect I changed was the effects of the cards that were used to complete certain actions. Originally diamond cards allowed you to move, spade cards let you place down more walls, heart cards let you break walls down and clover cards meant you could either shuffle the map tiles or peek at a face down tile. I changed it around so that movement was not an action controlled by the cards. Instead diamond cards let you switch the placement of two map tiles on the board and clover cards let you peek at a face down tile. Spade and heart cards remained the same except you were also allowed to build and destroy map tiles.

The monster and treasure tiles originally caused the total amount of cards to decrease or increase but I felt like that was difficult to keep track of so instead those tiles decreased or increased the amount of moves you could make on your turn. 

Second Session

In my second playtest I found a major flaw. If the exit tile was shuffled with the rest tiles and randomly placed on the board a player could accidentally find it on the first round if it ends up on the edge of the map formation. After two attempts where my opponent coincidentally began the game by immediately finding the exit I changed the setup rules so that the Minotaur player would secretly choose where the exit tile will be placed at the start of the game.

After successfully playing the game through that way I felt that each player should start with two moves/actions instead of only one to make each turn more interesting. My playtesting partner also suggested that face cards should have a better effect than number cards to make it more interesting. To prepare for the third session I also changed the wording of my rules to make them more readable.

Third Session

In the final playtest the changes that I made definitely improved the overall gameplay. Unfortunately I forgot two of the tiles at home so our starting set up was a 4 x 5 array instead of 4 x 6. My opponent felt that there was definitely a good amount of suspense as the sacrifice to motivate them to find the exit but the element of not knowing what the next tile could be encouraged them to explore as well. This was good to hear because aside from the action point mechanics I wanted the secondary mechanic to be map deformation.

After finishing the game I received some feedback on the monster and treasure encounter tiles. The effects of those encounters should be temporary or one-use instead of a permanent effect because it made the game too unbalanced.

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Game Lab 1

In three teams of two and approximately two brain cells bouncing between me and my partner we played “Wits and Wagers Party,” the trivia game for those who are bad at trivia. The contestants of this game are Team Red, Green and Pink.

How to Play:

To start off “Wit and Wagers Party,” each team gets a white board paddle and two tokens with their assigned color. One of the players is also the singer Elvis who always guesses 1. He is technically an NPC. One token is labeled $200 and the other is $100. One game consists of 7 rounds. In each round there is a guessing phase where the teams guess a number that will answer the question. In the next phase the guesses are revealed and teams can place their bets on which guesses would be the closest to the answer with their colored tokens. A guess wins if it is the closest to the answer but still less than its value. Winning bets get poker chips which are $100 each in value. Pink is in charge of reading the questions out loud. Someone on Green distributes the poker chips after each round.

Round 1: Starting Off

Question: How many days per year does it rain in Seattle on average? Everyone makes comments about our respective lack of knowledge about Seattle. My partner and I communicate through writing on our whiteboard to avoid revealing our guess too early. Guesses: 80 (Red), 100 (Pink), 80 (Green). Bets: Red bets $200 on 100 and $100 on 80. Green bets $300 on 80. Pink bets $200 on 80 and $100 on 100. Results: The correct answer is 150 days. The closest guess is 100 so those who placed bets on 100 receive poker chips. Red gets $200 and Pink gets $100. Green doesn't win anything.

Round 2: Reimbursement

Question: How many karats does a Tiffany yellow diamond weigh? Yet another topic I know nothing about. I ask my partner if their mom has anything diamond jewelry hoping that they would know a little more than I do. They confess that all their mother’s diamonds are probably fake. We take a wild guess: 50 karats. Pink guesses 30 and Green guesses 13. Bets: Red bets $200 on 30 and $100 on 13. Pink bets $200 on 30 and $100 on 13. Green bets $200 on 13 and $100 on 30. Results: The correct answer is a whopping 19k so no one gets a poker chip. Pink remembers that the team who had the closest guess also gets 1 win token. Red gets $100 for the closest guess. Pink is also reimbursed $100 for their winning guess from the first round.

Round 3: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Question: In miles, how deep is the deepest hole drilled into Earth? Following our small wins I forgot about the part of the question about the drilled hole and was instead thinking about the deepest part of the Earth, the Marianna trench. We try to recall back to what we learned in the geology class we took together. We eyeball the amount of 0’s we should put down. Our final guess: 170,000 mi. Pink guesses 24 and Green guesses 3000. It seems 170k is the outlier. Bets: Red bets $200 on 3k and $100 on 170k. Pink bets $200 on 24 and $100 on 3k. Green bets $200 on 3k and $100 on 24. Results: The actual answer is 7.7 miles. Since all guesses are greater than the answer no one wins except Elvis who always guesses 1.

Round 4: How Did They All Die?

Question: How many lifeboats were aboard the Titanic? Guesses: 16 (Red), 12 (Pink), 500040 (Green). Green initially misheard the question and thought it was life jackets. We comment on the irony of the Titanic having 500 lifeboats. Everyone decides to let Green change their guess to 40. At this point Pink gets too excited and reveals the answer before we could make our bets. We decide on a do-over of Round 4.

Round 4: The Sequel

Question: How many US state abbreviations do not contain a vowel? Cue various versions of each team listing out each state using the song “Fifty Nifty United States.” Guesses: 13 (Red), 18 (Green), 30 (Pink). Bets: Red bets $200 on 18 and $100 on 13. Green bets $200 on 18 and $100 on 13. Pink bets $200 on 30 and $100 on 18. Results: The correct answer is 20 states. Green gets $300, Red gets $200 and Pink gets $100.

Round 5: Race to Space

Question: How many hours after a space shuttle launched before NASA began the countdown? Guesses: 4 (Red), 6 (Green), 48 (Pink). Pink’s guess makes everyone laugh. Why would NASA wait that long to start counting? Bets: Red bets $200 on 4 and $100 on 6. Green bets $300 on 6. Pink bets $200 on 48 and $100 on 4. Results: The answer is 43. Ironic that the outlier was actually the closest but the winning guess is actually 6 since 48 is greater than 43. Green wins $400 for their high risk wager. Red gets $100 and Pink wins nothing.

Round 6: Hitting the Word Count

Question: How many words does the average American speak per day? Guesses: 8400 (Red), 10k (Green), 100k (Pink) Bets: Red bets $200 on 10k and $100 on 8.4k. Green bets $300 on 10k. Pink bets $200 on 100k and $100 on 10k. Results: The answer is 15942 words. Green wins $400 yet again. Red wins $200 and Pink wins $100.

Round 7: Final Round

In the final round we are allowed to also use the tokens that we won in previous rounds to place more bets. Question: In dollars what is the highest selling price for a painting done by an elephant? Guesses: 150k (Red), 15k (Pink), 2m (Green). Apparently we all have wildly different opinions on how much an elephant’s painting should be priced. Bets: Red bets $400 on 150k and $100 on 2m, using up 2 poker chips. Pink bets $200 on each guess, using up 3 poker chips. Green bets $400 on 150k and $100 on 2m, using up 2 poker chips. Results: Correct answer is 39k. Pink wins $300 but loses $400 in the process. Red and Green both win nothing and lose $200.

Final Results

Team Green wins the game with $900 in winnings. Their two high risk bets definitely paid off. Red takes second place with $600 and Pink ends with $400 having lost much of her tokens in the previous round. We completed the game in approximately 35 minutes. Since we did not have any prior knowledge on trivia, it made the game more fun because we were able to make as many wild guesses as we wanted.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123239/wits-and-wagers-party

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Internet Arcade

I ended up trying two different games. At first I naturally went for the game labelled Dungeons and Dragons because I love DnD. But I found it very confusing because there were a lot of controls and skills/weapons that I had access to but didn't fully understand. At this point I also struggled with controls because unfortunately, my down key did not work. I played as the dwarf because I assumed that would be the character closest to a barbarian so I felt that he could survive a little longer on his own and his attacks would be more intuitive.

After spamming the attack button a few times, I decided to try a different game which ended up being Cotton, a side stroller shooting game. It reminded me a lot of Touhou, which is a game that I watched my friend play a few times. I was able to reconfigure the keys to make it easier to play and ended up playing a few times trying to get as far as possible (I did not get far at all). I found that Cotton was much more intuitive without a tutorial because it essentially only had one attack skill I was aware of: to shoot at the enemies in my way. Since I played Cotton longer than the DnD game, I'll talk about the former for the rest of this reflection.

The biggest difference between playing on a emulator and an actual arcade machine would be the absence of the joysticks and buttons. On an arcade machine for Cotton, I would imagine one or two joysticks and a few, maybe just one or two, buttons. But because I was playing through an emulator, I had access to an entire keyboard with many keys I never ended up using. This takes away the intuitive and simple design of arcade games since they usually never have tutorials and instead rely on the player's quick thinking to figure out the controls. I also felt that a joystick stick would definitely make dodging objects and enemies easier. I felt limited to moving up, down, left and right because moving diagonally would require me to use my other hand, which was already spamming space to shoot, to press other keys. If I was playing with a joystick, Cotton would have access to a larger range of motion.

https://archive.org/details/internetarcade