Week Nine Class Critiques

Food Fight:

Mechanics

The three mechanics of this piece that should be focused on is the movement mechanic, the shooting mechanic, and the fog of war mechanic. All of these have a very unique way of changing the game play. Having items and power ups to support these mechanics are important to create an interesting and dynamic such as faster/slower movement power ups, inaccurate hi damage weapons, accurate low damage weapons, fast and slow weapons, temporary omniscience, and dizzying food.

In the presentation it was mentioned that the ability of the individual characters where not tested. Because they manipulate the various mechanics you have, another prototyping session is required where these abilities can be critically analyzed.

Dynamics

I think that the most powerful dynamic in this game is the suspense created with a fog of war. The only problem is that this mechanic does not match theme, a food fight. Generally when one has a food fight, you can see all your opponents. A more appropriate way to support the theme is not with a fog of war, but with just a limited view of the war, like with Liero. This limited view on the world brings in a new form of play, blind shooting, but does not give the illusion of exterior darkness.

Aesthetics

The four types of fun of this game are Competition, Challenge, Fantasy, and Sensation. Your aesthetics are well supported by your mechanics and dynamics. It has a fun loving and cartoon like look to it giving the sense of fantasy. Also, the theme itself supports this form of the aesthetic, a food fight in a school cafeteria. There is and competition challenge because you are fighting human opponents with special powers. There is sensation because you are dealing with enemies in an unknown location.

Drive Thru Tycoon:

Mechanics

The mechanic in this game is single click optimization strategy game, pointing and clicking in a pattern to achieve a tasty outcome. This is a very enjoyable mechanic because of its simplicity. However, it is important to be able to optimize one’s clicking and combinations with some kind of items, upgrading appliances, super appliances, super managers and employees. There should also be items that can give bonuses for some things but penalties for others. There should also be some items or situations that some how to make the user click additional times, such as double patty burgers.

Dynamics

The best way to support the dynamics of this game is to create suspense and a sense of urgency in the player. This can be done by having uncontrollable events such as having lunch and dinner rushes or even having city wide emergencies that require you to serve a lot of food at a discounted price.

It would be intriguing if the player was able to control the price of the food and make their own dinner and lunch rushes. This combined with random events could assist in changing the feel and pace of the game. Also, perhaps having several modes of play to entice users could help achieve long term playability, such as having a sandbox mode, a greed mode, a survival mode, etc.

Aesthetics

For a game like this, it is most important to have appropriate aesthetics in order to help immerse the user. By know that this game contains components of expression, submission, challenge, fantasy and narrative, the game can maximize its effectiveness on the audience. Because it is an expressive game, it is important to have a variety of appliances and looks to the fast food establishment. Otherwise the user may be uninterested in what they see and do because this is not “their” place. It is also a very submissive game where missions last only a few minutes rather than a lengthy period of time. It is with this that that sense of urgency is important to implement to make minutes seem like hours. It also provides a challenge to the user to have to remember their orders let alone work on a timer. Like most Tycoon games it is a vary fantasy based game where either the equipment that you use is very much make believe or the look of it is, as though it is from a cartoon. Finally, it is important to know that there is a narrative that is taking place. The user is making the story of their fast food place. The great thing about this is that the user will make this almost for you. The only flaw with this though is that it makes missions rather difficult to implement because not all stories will want to follow the same line of quests.

Circular Strife

Mechanics

The two primary mechanics for this game are the ability to move in a 3D environment and the ability to drop bombs. Because of this, the user should have some way of being able to manipulate these. One example could be simple power ups that make the avatar of the main character speed up or have dud bombs that actually slow down the user. Another example is having big and small bomb power ups or power ups that give you longer chains.

One of the biggest problems with the mechanics is with the accuracy of the players. By having chains of a certain size and needing to be a certain distance from the ruins to blow them up, this may frustrate the users.

Dynamics

To solve the problem with the above mechanic, it can be fixed by having several different modes that require different skill levels to complete to allow for tiered complexity. This will help make the game appeal to players.

Also, as was tested, having a time trial or at least multiple modes for the player it use the mechanics would diversify the game allowing players to have the option of repeat playability.

Aesthetics

Based on this game’s four main forms of fun, fantasy, challenge, submission and discovery, an interesting idea is developing. First off, it is in a fictionally based universe full of sky ruins. With some possibly cartoon graphics, fantasy is heavily supported. There is obvious challenge with the bombing placements and the submission of missions taking several minutes to do gives it a pick up and play feel. Also, with new ruin sites and varying bomb locations, there is a definite sense of discovery.