5 Games

In class on 2 Oct 2013, we played a few different games with the purpose of assessing a game objectively while trying to maintain the absorbed experience a player would.

One of the most interesting games was one called QWOP, named after the keys used to play. In it, a player uses the keys Q, W, O, and P to control the legs of an athletic sprinter. Q and W control the knees while O and P control the hip joints. The goal of the game is to see how far you can make the character run using this control scheme. As you can probably imagine, this is rather difficult. The game explores what it is like to make a game out of something which we usually take for granted: how complex the balancing act of running or walking is, which in video games is usually as simple as pressing a directional key.

Another game I played during the session was Canabalt. It was a platformer in which the player moves rapidly from left to right, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, avoiding obstacles in the way. I liked this game because it was simple and fun.

We also played a few games together as a class. One was called There’s Only One Level. This game was rather interesting. You play as an elephant, and your goal is to get to the exit of the level.

Sometimes you have to press a button that’s up on a higher platform to open the door to the exit; other times you must avoid pushing the button. At every completion of the level, the player starts again, but with minor modifications to the game mechanics. Another variation is that the arrow keys stop working, and the player must discover that the only way to get to the exit is by using their mouse to drag the elephant. I thought this game was really interesting because it kept surprising me with which game mechanic they would change to challenge the player to get to the end.

Another game we played in class was called Don’t Burn the Rope. It is a simple platformer in which the player traverses a cave at first, in which there are directions as the player progresses. It informs the player that they must burn the rope to defeat the impending boss. At the end of the tunnel, the player encounters the boss. The way to win is to climb up platforms on the side to the roof and collects a torch, and then jump across platforms to reach a chandelier which is hanging by a rope. If the player jumps across the chandelier so that their torch touches the chandelier, it drops on the boss and kills it. The player then wins and is rewarded with a humorous song about the game during the credits. This song was my favorite part of the game. It essentially clues the player in that the game is somewhat of a joke and encourages them to play again.

Finally, the last game we played in class was called “dis4ia.” This game was rather different from the rest of the games we had seen. It is an autobiographical video game about someone’s experience going through hormone replacement therapy. It was told in the form of a series of mini-games in which the player makes their way through surreal interpretations of the things the narrator had to do during her therapy. For instance, to tell of her experience in the doctor’s office, the player must walk through a lobby and find the chair to sit and wait. Later, to communicate her experience taking hormone pillls, the player controls a side-scrolling up-ended mouth which must collect pills which are being shot down from a bottle above. It made for a pretty entertaining and engaging story of the experiences the narrator had to go through during her hormone replacement therapy.

They all made for rather entertaining games. My personal favorite was There’s Only One Level, because even though there was only one level, the variety of ways in which the player had to get to the end made for a pretty fun experience.