Deep vents is a multilaterally competitive game where the objective is to bankrupt the other players of their archaea. The players periodically launch attacks on each other while also attending to the growth of their own ecosystem economies. This leads to a slow and highly strategic player experience that rewards patience and long-term investment. The underlying structure of the game is the hex tiles and their unique traits and interactions. Hexes have the ability to enhance each other, generate resources (archaea, shell points) and launch attacks upon enemy players. The way that the player chooses which intended effect they want from each hex in each turn is the choice between aggressive hex triggering and more passive hex growing. A downside of the multilateral competition aspect of the game is that the meta-strategy of multiple players teaming up on a single player does not really have a counter and is basically a death sentence for the player on the receiving end. In conclusion, although I personally greatly disliked the game, Deep Vents made use of a relatively unique combination of game mechanics that create a unique player experience.
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Jackbox has remained a staple of me and my friend's time spent goofing off since before quarantine. Each party pack consists of a small assortment of casual party games designed to be easily accessible on first play through. The 5 new games introduced all brought unique elements to the table and here is a mini review for each from my least favorite to most favorite.
First but actually last we have The "Wheel of Enormous Proportions" this game is a multilateral trivia game reminiscent of an earlier Jackbox mini-game "trivia murder party". While this game has a unique visual aesthetic and might be the most complex out of all the mini-games in terms of variety of content. Where this game is found lacking is when compared to its predecessor. The introduction of a highly luck dependent "Wheel" round makes the game not feel as competitive or skillful as more traditional trivia games. In short, the game does not add anything that would differentiate from other trivia games for the better. Similarly, the mini-game I liked second least is "Drawful Animate". This mini-game feels lazy, just taking the already tried and true concept of a "pictionary-esque" gameplay loop while only adding the superfluous catch that instead of images, the players draw 2-frame animated GIFs. This mini-game also doesn't have a strong aesthetic or personality in its visuals or title. Despite these downsides, I still had lots of fun playing this and the game still has strong replay value despite its poor execution. In the middle of "pack" we have the most conceptually simple game, "Poll Mine". This game takes the simple concept of a group working together through voting to choose the best answer to user-polled questions in a style similar to "Family Feud". Despite being a simple concept, the visual execution was done quite well, with a dungeon crawler aesthetic and visually distinct characters assigned to each player. The teamwork aspect created a laid-back and fun feeling to the atmosphere of the game, and the simple rules mad it easy to understand. "Weapons Drawn" comes in at number 2. this game provides both a unique quirk and aesthetic to the pantheon of Jackbox mini-games. The game's premise is a murder mystery where each player is assigned a letter that they leave behind at the scene of the murders they commit, and the goal of the game is to disguise your letter from the other detectives by camouflaging them into pictures. This gameplay loop allows for both problem-solving and an evolving metagame for disguising your letters. This unique gameplay is complemented by a gorgeous art style that gives each player's character a vibrant and compelling design. This mini-game successfully carries on the mantel of other iconic mystery solving games like Clue with grace. My favorite mini-game out of this party pack was "Job Job". this game succeeded because of its replayability and the comedy made possible by it. The premise of the game is that players are given prompts to respond to and other players take individual words from other players and scramble them into their own responses. My friends and I have already played this game multiple times and the stupid stuff we can write never ceases to make us laugh. Additionally, the background characters at the office in "Job Job" are all call backs to previous Jackbox games, which I find pretty cool The flow state is "being in the zone" when you are in the flow state your full focus is completely locked into the game, and time flies by. Reaching this state when playing games not only improves immersion and experience, but also objective performance. the game I choose, Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga, is fun for me mainly through the wide variety of locations level designs and characters that flesh out the game's world, or "discovery". The designers of the game did not optimally design the game for flow, with each episode not guaranteed to be an increased challenge compared to its predecessor. Despite this, the sprinkling in of challenging levels along with a steady stream of fresh mental challenges helps form a fun, if not extremely difficult gameplay loop that is easy to get lost in. On my chart, I included many of the game's most memorable levels in chronological order. For example, to this day, I still distinctly remember playing the Darth Vader level for hours on end trying to beat its difficult lava platforming. The final run where I finally beat it and got well-earned satisfaction was definitely one of my first memories of the flow state. Recently, I completed the last item on this chart, the speed run, which is a way of artificially increasing the challenge of a given game to continue progression and flow. In conclusion, flow is an essential part of gaming, and Lego Star Wars is an essential part of me as a gamer.
A couple of days ago, I succumbed to the year long pleads from my friend to play Valorant and downloaded the game. The game had a decently fun gameplay loop, but nothing special. The thing that got me hooked on the game was the slight annoyance I felt at my own skill level and my perception of a higher skill ceiling to be reached. This tapped into my natural competitive drive, because what I enjoy most in a game is the feeling of progression and growth. the gameplay although slow has a wide and varied set of abilities that lends the game a more tactical feeling. The graphics were pretty good for its genre, with each map having a nuanced color scheme and architectural theme that lends the game a more sophisticated feel, and differentiates it from the gray beige color schemes of the COD's and CSGO's of the world. The in game audio has me split. On one hand, the quirky in game character dialogue can be charming, informative and eerily specific. On the other hand, the lobby music burns my soul, I hate it. The game had a large amount of customizability, but the menus are a bit confusing. The game is pretty accessible with a relatively simple gameplay loop, and the ability to run well on lower end computers. there were no obvious technical errors. In conclusion, I give Valorant a 4/5 stars, a great game to play with friends.
For the first task of the game design 2021 school year, we were asked to create a trading card that would serve as an "all about me" assignment. I decided from the onset to make my card as ridiculous as possible. I stretched the photo I used and used a cheesy fire background. as the topping on top, I added emojis next to my trading card's "attacks". This was actually the first time that I found the emoji font in illustrator, a feature I will undoubtedly utilize in the future. building on my fire template, I adopted a warmer color scheme, focusing on yellows and reds. I wrote my fun facts/attacks which complimented my emojis with low effort humor. to top it off, I gave them a stupidly wide variety of damage output that wouldn't make sense at all with the character's health of 6hp. Inspired by Pokémon, I added a bunch of random Max lvl/limited edition stickers to clutter up the design. Finally, I went into photoshop and using 3 separate overlays I found online added texture and grunge to the card. This really gave it the authentic feel of "accidentally went through the laundry machine". In conclusion, I was able to put a lot of new skills to the test for this assignment and I found it very enjoyable.
Building onto the skills that I had honed from both the turntable animation project and the personal show reel projects, I embarked upon my epic quest to complete my master work ; Sporgborg 360. To make the camera motion more dynamic than the standard circular motion. I instead created a crazy spline to simulate some wonkers camera movement. I intentionally put the steepest turn at the front of the sponge to accentuate the face. This also matched nicely with the rhythmic baseline of the music I later added. One issue that I ran into in the making of the turntable animation was not knowing how to properly use Premiere Pro. This time however, I was more ready, and I flawlessly executed my editing to perfection. the final product is a hypnotic cycle of sponge and jazz ever continuing into the night.
During quarantine me and my friends have been cycling through a different lunchtime party game. The game that we have been playing this past week is called Gartic phone and I have been enjoying it quite a lot. The game has pretty decent replay value for the simplicity of the premise.
The gameplay varied across modes but mostly relied on the idea of visual telephone where rather words being garbled it would be images. This had several variations like one where you couldn't see what you were drawing, and one where it was only drawings, but all of these followed a similar premise and were easy to pick up. The visual and audio were mainly based off of you and the players you were playing with. The interface was very accessible with the game just being available on the website. this made the game more inviting to it's very casual player base. overall I would give this game a 3/5 stars, a very fun game if you want to relax and have some fun with friends. One of my proudest 3D models of all time was my prized mech. The cute little uwu face that I added was the icing on the cake. When asked to improve upon what was already perfect I truly was faced with a difficult task indeed. Nevertheless, I tried my best, although pressed I was never stressed. My idea for the texturing was to go into a completely different direction from before. While my initial mech was the epitome of sleek consumerist design; it was aesthetically the AirPods of annihilation. I instead traveled forward into the future to when the scars of time have cracked, rusted, and worn it down into oblivion. While on the feet I tried to personalize the pattern of the rusty bolts to the contours of the shoe. I quickly realized that this would be a very difficult policy to maintain. Instead, I resolved to find more general textures that meshed well together with minimal editing. When I got to texturing the head I ran into a bit of trouble. I had to do alot of photoshop tweaking to get the edge of the cracked glass and the exposed machinery perfectly follow the edge of the concave window valley on the mech. In conclusion, I learned that, although tedious UV mapping is an integral part of making your 3D models appear finished.
This is somewhat of a nostalgia review with this game being one of the first that introduced me into the world of gaming all the way back in elementary school. I and my friends would wait all day for the 30-minute break where we could race each other in completing some of our favorite coolmath games. This game in particular sticks out to me due to it's absurd premise and unsettling animation. With these flaws already in mind today I am conducting a game review to see how it has held up over time. The game was relatively enjoyable, although the level grinding could at times get repetitive. The narrative is lovably incoherent with the ending being a climactic race between 2 heavily roided-out super ducks, in space. The training relies on a repetitive formula of replaying the same training mini-games until you are a high enough level to win a race and progress. Despite this as a whole I found a majority of these mini-games were fun and had an arcade style that lent them high replayability. The visuals followed the simple stylized look of its predecessors with one major twist; horrific semi duck semi human transformed mutant creatures. The premise of the game is your duck "evolving" into a horrifying buff human duck for the purpose of racing. this leads to some disturbing imagery reminiscent of "Animorphs covers. I muted the game audio due to the sheer ear-bleedingly terrible quality of the OST. The interface was more friendly than most flash games of its era to supporting both wasd and arrow keys instead of just the latter as most do. There were no technical errors except for the one obvious one. The removal of flash earlier this year marked the death of most games like this, and I was only able to play a recreation of the game on Unity. In conclusion Duck Life 3: Evolution is a solid game if you aren't trying to challenge yourself, and you are just looking for a bit of fun. 3/5 Stars
As our first step into the world of UV mapping our cool teacher (Mr. B) assigned us a project to 3d model A book, and make a poster advertising it. Right from the get go I knew what theme and book I would choose. Back in the third grade I attended my first book fair at school. Most of the books were either bad or MInecraft fanfiction, but one book stood out to me "The adventures of Ook and Gluk Cavemen From the Future, from the creators of Captain Underpants". Even as ridiculous as that title was, the connection drew me to buying it, and all throughout my childhood this book would remain high on my most read list. Now to the actual modeling. At first I struggled to get completely flush views of the different sides. I was forced to enlist the help of my little sister in order to get the perfect angles. After that initial trouble the rest of the modeling was easy. I measured the sides of the book with measuring tape, and after some fiddling around with the parameters for the textures, and I was done. In conclusion I found this project as a whole a very enjoyable work experience.
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AuthorI am an eleventh grader who goes to DSA. My main interests are design and music. Archives
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