Category: assignments

Author: MacKenzie Bates(Programming), Tyler Porten(Animation, Music), Ziyun Peng (Sound Programming)

Description: Monster Mash is about you entering the monster world and trying to blend in with them by mimicking their singing.  Once you satisfied the monster, it would come over to your side and make the music one layer richer for you.

The game was firstly done with Processing + Max/MSP, communicating via OSC. And then we made a single Processing version.

Instructions:

• Stare at the cute animations and listen to the monster
• Sing along with the monster and try to match the beat and pitch as perfectly as you can
• Enjoy the music!

App : Download (single Processing ver.)

Source: Download (single Processing ver.)

Face fighter is essentially a strategic funny face competition. Faces will map to combat moves between the players faces.  I am aiming for something simplistic in ui and well polished.

Deadlines:
Nov. 4 – Finish making deadlines.
Nov. 10 – Get open frameworks and libraries working, understand limitations of system.
Nov. 17 – Make basic prototype that contains the most basic functionality, perhaps a few moves.
Nov. 24 – Aim to finish by now leaving 24-1 as time to polish.
Dec. 1 – Finish

Current state:

• Model for first few “rooms” complete
• Models for stalactites, stalagmites, rocks, boulders, and crystals
• Sound effects for dripping water, echoing, footsteps, etc.
• First person controller with camera flash
• 3D sketch of the rest of the game
• Water and smoke effects

To do (with current priority):

• Faster gameplay; currently lagging (high)
• More rooms base modeled (high)
• Fill rooms with base level cave models: stalactites, stalagmites, etc. (high)
• Better textures for existing models (med)
• Better crystal formations (high)
• Growing crystals scripts (high)
• Create water level (med)
• Sounds for growing crystals (med)
• More sounds for character (low)
• Monster build (med)
• Monster scripts (med)
• Remake start screen (low)
• Make pause screen (low)

Next few weeks plan:

• Nov 8: Find and implement optimization methods
• Nov 15: Model more rooms, fill with crystals/rocks/stalactites/stalagmites/water
• Nov 21: Have prototype of water level completed
• December 1: Have first rooms completed: Drop Zone, underground lake, stalactite maze (intro to hazardous crystals), crawling area, water dropoff

The game is split up into waves. A wave of input circles of different colors enter the track and head towards the center of the screen in a swirl. If the circles reach the center, the wave restarts. Color exit circles appear at the corners of the screen. The user must drag all at one time the correct colored circles to the exits to make the circles disappear.

You are a sweet old lady’s guardian angel. The old lady doesn’t walk so fast or see too well, so when she wanders into an industrial park you, as her protector, must stop the cranes, wrecking balls, and other assorted death traps in her path by flicking them out of the way with your fingers.

A multiplayer game where you make food with other players. Players use their body to mimic the food ingredient, interact with the other players so as to make a dish!

Sushi Recipe: Player1 as sashimi, Player2 as the sushi rice. The sashimi will have to behave like a real sashimi and cover on top of the sushi rice..

Gyro Recipe: Player1 as pita, Player2 as lamb meat, Player 3 as sauce…

Roadkill is a Kinect-controlled game that mimics Frogger. The player must successfully cross the street by moving forward and side-to-side to avoid cars and make their way to the goal. Players can flail their hands to try and get cars to slow down. Some cars such as taxi cabs will not slow down. Levels will scale by  the number of lanes and the speed of traffic (i.e. 2 lane road vs. 8 lane highway)

An vertical scrolling puzzle game where the user must make different faces to force there blob to change to different states.

Smile = Blob rises

Frown = Blob falls

Angry = Breaks through platforms

Tongue-Out = Blob separates into tiny blobs

Straight-Face = Blob comes back together & Hovers

A dance game for the Kinect where the user must dance as a wacky waving inflatable tube man would to the song.

The game is a layered puzzle game where the user at the start of the game records the frequency/speed of each layer of the game with their voice and then once the layers are set the simulation runs.

Face Yoga

A game that turns your everyday beauty process into a fun and cute journey game. It’s like you looking into a mirror of yourself but seeing an computer vision augmented you. When you breath in the air, you’re collecting curious seeds. Hold the breath, keep the seeds, blow up your mouth to help the seeds sprout (the “flower” will cover your *-like mouth during the exercise ). Every time you change your mouth shape you’re helping the creature move towards the destination. Funny graphic effects can be added, or it could also be directed into a music game.

There are creatures loose in the city. As the city bard, you must serenade them to sleep with a proper lullaby. If the military succeeds in killing the creatures before you can prove that it is peaceful by lulling it into submission with your angelic voice, you lose.

Your character runs forward. If you lean your body left or right, you will strafe to that side. You are watching for the enemy boss at the end of a hallway–if they have their back turned, you can run toward them. If they turn around, you need to hide behind shelter by running to a blind spot and putting your hands on your head. If the boss catches you, you’re dead, so don’t get caught.

Voice is the natural instrument, not only when you’re singing, but also speech – languages have have their rise and fall and rhythm too. The player will be using their own voice to create a city and a city orchestra.

Graphic: Wave shape -> city landscape; frequency as the building color.

Sound: Voice -> city sounds

The player will be guided to record different kind of sounds correspond to each city objects, still with a lot of creative space. The sounds will be carefully manipulated to create a city soundscape.Then a 24hrs city shifting will be played – from still to dynamic, silence to sounds. The sounds recorded from the player will be re-organized to give the player a musical experience of their own voice.

My 50 game ideas! Let me know which ones are you favorite! 🙂

1. It is pre-Hurricane Katrina. The storm is approaching. You must use politicians to create a human wall to help seal the levy and save New Orleans from reality.
2. A mobile app where you blow into a breathalyzer and you can only send texts if you are drunk. The game part of it is trivia based where you have to correctly remember when and to who you sent the text.
3. A permadeath MMO RPG which is a game of musical chairs. Players must find chairs hidden in-game and sit in them.
4. A game about self restraint and obesity. The input device is a slice of pizza.
5. A puzzle game where color is over-used to the point that a player has an extreme advantage if they are color-blind.
6. A game about dreams and nightmares. It only allows the user to play between 3-6AM.
7. A mobile resource gathering game. Where the amount of resources you gather determines how long you get to use your phone the next day.
8. Phone Olympics. Compete against your friends in high jump (throwing your phone the highest), sprinting (sliding your phone the fastest) & gymnastics (making your phone flip and spin the most)
9. An online multiplayer gambling game where you bet your passwords to social networks, email services & banking accounts.
10. At the start of the game you must give your cell phone number. The game is about being a horrible. The worse you are the more your phone number is posted online.
11. A game set in a war zone after the battle. You must clean up and repair the destroyed city. As you are doing so you see ghosts and see what the dead soldiers and civilians lives use to be.
12. An artsy adventure game which is largely based on light and shadows. The game is connected to a complex light system that adjusts depending on what is happening in game.
13. A game about “the walk of shame”. After you complete the walk, a tweet from your account is sent that says how ashamed you are of what you did last night. Thus making it seem real to others.
14. A GTA V mod where every time the player kills someone in game a small donation is made to community charities in the LA area.
15. It is a music game where the top players’ music is streamed live online.
16. It is a word arrangement game. You get more points for making sentences that sound uneducated and purposely offensive. After the time runs out the sentences you are made are rapped to you by the computer.
17. A game about peeing. Control the speed, aim and either you put up the seat as you attempt to pee as quickly as possible. Misaim or hit the seat and you will lose points for angering your girlfriend.
18. A heartbeat sensor is attached to you. You must keep your heartbeat high enough, but you must also move your character around a dangerous cliff side which requires precision.
19. You are a college student who is working to pay for school. Manage your schedule and bank account to avoid being kicked out of school for late payments.
20. A game where your character is super far from a bathroom and must run to it in time. If you fail, your crotch is squirted with water.
21. A COD mod where every time you die in-game a small donation is made to an American Veterans charity.
22. A bar simulator game where you must make your bar as “hip” as possible to stay open. Do things like remove your sign or serve only gin in mason jars.
23. As a wannabe fratstar you must prove your worthiness in this rush/hazing simulator
24. It is London in WWII. You must run around the city as a courier while avoiding air raids. If you are killed your phone is text bombed.
25. A game about ponzi schemes & deception. The game harvests bit coins on users’ computers as they play the game. I keep the bit coins.
26. You are city’s traffic control system. Correctly time street lights to cause the biggest car crashes possible.
27. You are a US military drone. You must drop bombs to kill terrorists. For each person killed in-game, you are texted a name of an innocent person killed by a drone attack.
28. A Facebook game where you are an assassin. You are given objectives to eliminate friends. After you complete the task in-game you are unfriended in Facebook.
29. A mobile game that monitors what other games you play and questions why you are playing them and if you like them more. It will complain that you don’t spend enough time playing it.
30. You are given an objective and to accomplish it you must hurt and wrong innocent people in game. Once you have completed the objective, everyone you wronged finds, tortures and sets you on fire. The end screen reads “You Lose.”
31. You are a sprinter. You move your character by making a Barbie doll look like it is running. Think QWOP.
32. A game where you are an insomniac sheep herder because one of your sheep refuses to be counted. Go around punching sheep.
33. NPCs in-game insult the user the longer they play the game in a single day. The user can pay a small amount each day for the NPCs to be nicer to them.
34. A mobile pedometer game where your in-game character levels up and earns more rewards when you walk less.
35. Call of Duty mod where every time the player is shot in-game they are shot by an air-soft gun in real life.
36. A fighter game where to attack an enemy you must punch a cute stuffed animal.
37. A simple one button runner game where if you fall the chair you are sitting in falls backwards as do you.
38. As the big bad wolf, you run around building down buildings by blowing them down. Input device is user blowing.
39. A horse racing game where you make your horse run by clapping coconut halves together.
40. You are a starving photographer. You earn more money for taking more artsy and abstract photos.
41. A game about making decisions. For each decision made a pill is dispensed. The pills range from sugar to pain killers to cyanide. You have to take the pill.
42. The user opens the game. The top reads “Loading” and there is the spinning beach ball. This is actually the game. It is a maze/puzzle game.
43. You are a buildings control system. The building is under-attack. You have limited backup resources. Reactivate select systems & lights to help security.
44. It is after a major war battle that your side lost. You can selectively bring your dead soldiers back alive to fight and retake the territory.
45. You are a club bouncer. You must manage the line of people trying to enter the club to keep correct male/female and hot/ugly ratios in the club. At the end of the game you try to get into the club but the manager says you are too ugly.
46. As a college’s sole admission board member you must decided to accept or reject students based over their applications.
47. You are dance beat. You must flow through people in a club and make them move as you want.
48. Invaders are trying to attack your country. You are the plant bamboo. You must grow strategically to attack as a wall to protect your home land.
49. As a computers firewall you must protect the computer from viruses and from hacking attempts from Anonymous.
50. You are a banana. You must avoid hungry monkeys. The input device is a banana.

Tilt, shake and coax the accelerometer into guiding a soul towards the light of salvation as the soul tries to deviate course as do humans’.

Prevent the soul from crossing the bold white lines that define morality and entering in to the red lines of sin.

Download Processing & Arduino Code: HERE

Download MMA-7361 Accelerometer Library (Required to run Arduino code): HERE

Alternative Idea:

Same gameplay mechanics, but instead the art is switched so that you are an altar boy/girl attempting to carry an oversized and hard to manage pitcher of wine down the aisle to the altar without spilling the wine by running into the pews.

The motivation behind this idea was to create a game that was not centered around trying to get as much input out of one button as possible (i.e press, hold, quick tap etc.) but making the button press be something monumental that players do once per game. To achieve this I wanted the button press to be something players would have to deliberate and plan, based on the group dynamics of who they were playing with.

The broad gameplay is to try to wait out as long as possible to sell (hit the button) without waiting too long until everyone sells before you. Since if a group of players sell it will crash the stock.

Text updates notify everyone the stock price…

The stock price moves randomly around a value based on how many players are left, there also exists some upper bound which is exponential to the number of players. So it only needs to be worried about when there are a few players left.

So why would someone want to hold their stock? For any stock price that exists, there exists a point in the future where the stock price is higher (for a reasonably high number of players). It gets increasingly unlikely, but is guaranteed to happen probabisticly. However, this is if no one else sells, since once a majority of players sell the value of the stock and its upper bound will decrease.  So from the point of view of a player they want to wait until a stock price that they are confident in, such that the risk of waiting for a higher one is outweighed by the risk that everyone will sell before then. Essentially everyone needs to try to predict when they think others will sell and sell it right before the rush. Since once some amount of momentum is gained it will force the other players to get to the bank as fast as possible.

So why wouldn’t I sell right away? Well this partial depends with the people you are playing with. Consider this situation, player A sells right away for the starting price. One player out of many will not effect the stock a noticeable amount, the likelihood it will go above this starting price soon is almost guaranteed. So player A has guaranteed themselves an average return, which may be desirable for some.

A harmonic oscillator with random variance damped by the price max may be a better way to stimulate the stock as opposed to the current drunk walk it does. I will have to experiment with it.

code here –https://github.com/Sloth6/bankRun

Joel

Spark is a king-of-the-hill type of game in which players must either remain the last one standing, or be the first to deplete their bar. The game is played with the Makey Makey, where all players stand on a conductive pad which represents a key. Players interact with the game by touching another conductive object on a table. This closes the loop and counts as a button press.

Players can deplete their bar by being the only player pressing the button. If another player is also pressing a button, a circle grows from the middle and will eliminate players as it grows beyond them. Touching another person’s skin while they are touching the button will also count as 2 button presses.

Download source and compiled versions here

We’re making a runner music game where the player hits objects to trigger musical sounds. The cool part of the runner game is that it’s very time based as music is essentially the art of time. The platform is moving according to the tempo of the composed music, objects are placed at musical beats.

It has 3 states:

Still

Jump

Power Jump (you can only hit musical objects in this mode)

Download [here].

You play as a square in flatland. You have to navigate perilous regions in 2D space to get to the glowing end goal. If you hit special powerups, the camera pans down and you are thrown into a 3D view with new world rules. Shine Li and Marlena Abraham.

Premise

You’re a simple character living in the simple x-y plane of Flatland. You can move anywhere on the x-y plane but have no inkling of any other dimensions. One day, some 3D fucker lifts you out of your plane and drops you onto a different one. You must traverse back through the sheaf of 2D planes to return to your home plane. Better hurry, though. There’s something terribly… wrong… with these ones.

Mechanics:

Your character keeps going forward until the button is pressed. As long as you are holding down that button, you will stop moving forward and spin in place. Upon releasing the button, you keep going forward in the direction that you are facing.

You emit a light and can see everything immediately around you–everything else is dark. The camera is centered above you looking down and follows you on your journey.

There are portals? gateways? friendly 3D’ers? that can help you travel to the next dimension down. They also emit a light.

There are terrors in the darkness–they do not take kindly to strangers in their midst and will destroy you if you let them get too close.

by Mark Strelow, Luo Yi Tan, and Collin Burger

What you need to play:

• up to 5 teams with 2 people on each
• a beanbag (or other small, throwable item) for each team

(It is more convenient with more beanbags, but only 1 beanbag is necessary to play.)

Basic idea:

Each team designates one member to stand on the board (player A), while the other member traverses the orange tiles of the garden’s pathways (player B). Teams take turns, with player A from each team throwing their beanbag onto the board. Whatever number it lands on is the number of spaces player B must move. If a player B from one Team X lands on a space occupied by Team Y’s player B, Team Y is knocked out.

How it works:

1. Each team designates a member to be player A, and the other is player B.
2. Teams throw their beanbags onto the board, and the team that gets the highest number gets to go first.
3. Player B from each team disperses to separate corners of the garden’s orange pathways, and chooses a starting space and a direction to start moving in.
   • The ‘spaces’ that player B moves on are dictated by the small grooves in the orange pathways.
   • For the start of the game, none of these players should be within 10 spaces of another, which should not be a problem if they are well spread out.
4. Player A from the first team throws his or her beanbag onto the board.
   • The players from the other teams can attempt to block the throw, as long as they do not leave their spaces.
   • Player A moves to stand on the board tile that his or her beanbag lands on.
5. Player B moves forward according to the number player A’s beanbag landed on.
   • Any 9 or 6 should be regarded as a 6.
   • A zero causes player B to turn around.
6. If player B lands on a different team’s player B, the player that was landed on is knocked out.
7. Repeat steps 4 through 6 for the next team, and so on. Continue until there is one player remaining.

Description:

This game is meant to make full use of the garden, and create a communication between the player on the board and the player on the pathways. From the board, it is difficult to see exactly where people on the pathways are, or how far away from each other they are. Thus, player A might need player B’s help determining what number to aim for. At the same time, the nature of what player A is doing makes it a game of skill to get the desired number. So the teams need to use skill, planning, and cooperation to try to win.

I played with some waves to create a pulsating swirl of color.

Application link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8b8h7bniqqpyf75/teq-GPOeGv

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6g4g7wwxge211m9/ZKm5AfZaOc 

The rules stay the same except that you can now randomize the bricks’ positions by pressing your mouse, thus making the game a bit more fun for you ( probably ). And also, prettier cubes looks and animation!

Download here.

Ziyun

Requirements:

• 1 Moderator
• 6+ Players
• Open Space to jump around

Description

Angry Mob is a turn-based strategy combat game inspired by Ninja. Players begin as Civilians in a circle standing at arms length, then take turns attempting to to tag other players’ hands in order to build their Mob. Civilians that tag other Civilians become Mob Leaders. Civilians that have been tagged become Rioters and must follow the Mob Leader’s orders. The goal of the game is to be the sole Mob Leader and control everyone

Player Types

The Civilian

• Vulnerable to all other players
• Can attack Mob Leaders and other Civilians
• Cannot attack Rioters

The Rioter

• Crazed Citizens that have been persuaded to follow the orders of a Mob Leader
• Is invulnerable to Citizens and Mob Leaders
• Is vulnerable to enemy Rioters

The Mob Leader

• Converts Civilians into Rioters by tagging them
• Converts Mobs by tagging their Mob Leader
• Controls Rioters by giving verbal commands on his/her turn
• Is afraid of enemy Rioters and cannot attack them directly
• If Mob Leader is tagged, he loses his Rioters to the attacker, becomes a Civilian and is allowed 2 moves to run away (no attacking).
  

Gameplay

1. Players begin in a circle each standing at arm’s length away from each other
2. A random person is chosen by the Moderator to begin, and turns go clockwise around the circle
3. On their turn, each Civilian or Mob Leader is allowed to make one attack. This can involve the whole body.
4. Convert Civilians into your Rioters by slapping their hands. You must hold your position at the end of your movement.
5. Mob Leaders can also designate one person as a target for their Mob to attack on their turn. Civilians and Rioters tagged by Rioters are “jumped in” to the Mob Leader’s gang.
6. If you are attacked by another player, you may dodge (even if you’re a Rioter) but you cant move your feet.
7. As a Civilian (with no followers), if you’re tagged by another person, you become their Rioter. You can still dodge if attacked.
8. As a Mob Leader (with followers), if you’re tagged by another person, you lose all of your Rioters to the Attacking Mob and become a Civilian again. At that moment, you are allowed two consecutive moves to flee, but you cannot attack.
9. The game ends when all players are following one Mob Leader.

Play Testing

After playing Ninja last week, I was really inspired by the simplicity of the game mechanics, but was a little disappointed to see some players get knocked out of the game at the early stages. This idea played with the Power/Politics theme we were given last Wednesday and the game mechanics of Ninja. The overall goal was to add the element of totalitarianism to the game and to have players still be involved after being tagged.

We tested this game with 6 players on the grass on campus. Some early concepts had players mirror or shadow their leader’s movements from where they were standing, but with everyone in different positions it quickly became frustrating to execute the same movements in a timely manner. It was also frustrating to people that they didn’t have any choice points as a follower. After loosening up the constraints and simply having the leader designate a target, we allowed the followers to attack the target however they wished. This increased engagement and made the game much more fun for everyone.

The Premise:

This is a creativity battle game. You must defend your territory against the other players by drawing the items from the cards in your hand on the board. Last territory standing wins!

Materials:

• Pack of object and modifier cards
• A whiteboard
• Whiteboard markers; preferably one color per player

The Rules:

Setup:

Draw a series of circles in a circle, one for each player. Each player chooses a circle to defend as their “territory”. Each player should write their name or otherwise mark their territory using their marker.

When all players have chosen a territory, shuffle the deck and deal a hand of five cards to each player. The players may look at their own hands.

The object of the game is to take turns to try and erase other peoples’ drawings to ensure that you are the last person on the board with any drawings remaining.

Types of Cards

There are currently two types of cards: object cards and modifier cards.

Object cards are composed of four elements:

• an object to draw
• the object’s attack power
• the object’s size ruler
• the object’s range ruler

Modifier Cards allow the player to enhance the abilities of their previously drawn objects. Most modifiers add attack power or range; when played, the player should update their drawing as indicated by the card and update the range or attack power of that object.

One Turn

This game is played in turns. On a player’s turn, they draw once, DRAW once, and attack once.

Draw once: Draw a card from the deck

DRAW once: Pick an object card from your hand and draw it on the board OR pick a modifier and add it to an object that you already drew on the board.

Attack once: Choose one enemy object to attack. You may attack it with of your objects that have a range greater than or equal to the distance to that enemy object. If the combined force of your attacking objects’ attack power is greater than the enemy’s attack power, then that object is erased.

The game continues with players taking turns until only one person has anything on the board. If you no longer have anything on the board, you’re out.

Playtester Feedback:

The playtesters had some good suggestions for improvements to the game:

Instant attacks/defenses  or other quickplay cards: The playtesters noted that it was disappointing to see their objects erased when there was nothing that they could do about it. They suggested having instant-play cards that they could play if they were attacked to increase defense.

Grid system: It was sometimes difficult to measure the distance between objects; one way to solve this might be to implement a grid system to determine distance. The downside to this is an extra constraint on creativity and added setup at the beginning of the game.

Smaller drawing range: The larger items have a huge advantage–they can span enormous areas much faster than a large ranged object can. The playtesters suggested having a smaller variance on the drawing ranges to combat this.

Specify how far apart territories are: If the territories are too close it can have a big impact on the game’s pacing; in this instance items were destroyed very quickly after being drawn. It would probably be advantageous to test several ranges to find a good balance.

Multiple modifiers: The players wanted to be able to use modifiers on the same turn as placing a objects–they found that they were often stuck drawing objects every turn to defend themselves and had no time to add any modifiers before their new drawings were erased.

What happens if hand is empty?: A question that follows the preceding suggestion is what to do if the player plays all the cards in their hand. How do they replenish it?

Trading system for points a la MTG so that the loser can have reprisal: If one player has an overly powerful object, it can become impossible to destroy. One suggestion is that the object has hit points that are diminished by the loser’s attack points if the object wins.

Object movement: The players expressed interest in being able to move their objects once drawn. Some investigation into this mechanic might be interesting.

Future Improvements

There are certainly a lot of balance issues in this first round of playtesting: the overpowered larger objects and the inability to defend out of turn especially need to be addressed. Overall, though, the playtesters showed interest in the game and agreed that it was a fun idea.

I wanted to experiment with a 3D version of Breakout. The most interesting problem in a 3D version of a 2D game is how to handle the camera as well as the movement controls. I chose to try a version in which the player can control both the camera and the movement of the platform–the arrow keys move the platform on a 2D plane, the “A” and “D” keys move the camera in a circular path around the play area, and the “W” and “S” keys maneuver the camera up and down while focusing on the middle of the play space. If the ball gets stuck in one spot or you wish to reset, press the “c” key.

The platform has an arrow on the top to show the player which way the platform will move when the up arrow key is pressed. It became evident during testing that it is nearly impossible to remember which direction the platform moves in when the camera is rotated so this visual cue helps to serve as a reminder. The physics and controls are not smooth; more tweaking is necessary before the game is enjoyable to play. It might also be interesting to be able to move the platform up and down; it might be difficult to fit that into the existing controls, however.

To play the game, click on the download link below:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/913804/Marlena-Icebreaker.zip

The source code is available here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/913804/Marlena-Icebreaker-source.zip

The rules are similar to Breakout, in which you must get rid of bricks (in blue), but it is more of a visual experience than a game.

Make sure to press COMMAND-SHIFT-R to make the game full screen.

Optional game: press any key to “reset” the trails left behind. If there aren’t any blue bricks left, you win. The faster you achieve this, the better, but you only get one try.

Code package: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m8qig1geusvsb8a/tyler_porten_depth_of_field.zip (fixed–it has both the source code and the mac app)

Tyler Porten

The city of play festival was an interesting experiment in group organized games amongst strangers. I  only played about 4 games while I was there, yet two of them seemed to fall under a very similar category. One was roaming gnomes, a game where about two dozen uniquely painted gnomes are placed are the ground, evenly distributed across a large area. Every player is handed a card which has a direction, in gnomish of course, and some translations for another direction. Players must seek the person who has the translation for his/her direction, find the translation then do it. For instance, move the candy cane colored gnome to the green tile. Another similar one was a group game where every player had a card with a type and a few goals. Players must create groups that had no two of the same type and all had a common goal and then do this as many times as possible. The obvious result from trying these types of games with a group of players is mostly every standing in a clump yelling out at one another. Eventually, through sheer dedication you will eventually find someone you are looking for through brute force. I did not find this a very compelling type of game for group play. So why was this? firstly, I just outright did not find it very fun. In addition to the annoying yelling in my ears from every direction, it felt more like a task than an actual game. None of the ‘objectives’ really took much skill to do or were very rewarding to complete. I think it was more the experience of being in a crowd of people yelling silly things that made it an arguably fun experience for others.

The breakout mod I created starts with a single white ball bouncing around the screen. As it hits a brick, it spawns another ball and inherits the brick color. The brick then dies and becomes a mini ghost brick that follows the paddle around and haunts it. If the ball hits the paddle, it loses its color and turns white as it bounces back. The bricks eventually regenerate with a random color and after a few seconds, there are so many balls on screen that it turns into a piece of generative art.

Source Code and OSX App

I attended the City of Play event on Saturday from 4 – 8pm, during the social games session. It was interesting to see all the different types of games being played, but the game that interested me the most was Witness Protection Program.

The game is sort of a Werewolf/Hide and Seek hybrid meant for 5-25 people, where each person have different goals depending on what character they are. Before the game starts,  we are dealt cards that determine our role. You cannot reveal your role to another person unless you have a specific ability that lets you do so. It is best played in huge space with lots of good hiding spots, like a park, because being able to hide well is a pretty major part of the game. There are three main groups in the game: Townspeople, murderers and law enforcers. The main character is the witness, which must be kept hidden in order for the townspeople and law enforcers to win. When game begins, the law enforcers will get together in a group and decide where to hide the witness, while the townspeople were led away to wait until the witness is hidden.

Goals:

If you’re a townsperson: Find the witness and hide with him

If you’re the murderer: Murder the witness.

If you’re a law enforcer: Protect the witness

There are a few conditions for the game to end:

If 1/3rds of the townspeople manage to find and hide with the witness, or if the time limit(10 minutes or so depending on how many people are playing) runs out, then the townspeople and law enforcers win.

If the witness get killed by a murderer, the murderer wins.

There were about 30 people playing in my game, and we played it in a park somewhere in town. I wasn’t in a very exciting role even though I was part of the law enforcers, I was a dependent, which meant that my so called special ability was if I ever ended up alone I die. I wasn’t really sure what “alone” specifically meant, did it mean I should keep like least 5 feet from somebody else? I just ended up sticking to anybody that walked past me, which probably looked a little silly to them.

So as the law enforcers, we split our group into half, one half would hide the witness, and the other half would pretend to be hiding the witness somewhere else.

Some interesting things that happened during the game were:

One character, called the Kamikaze, had the ability to kill somebody else and himself by hugging them. He used this to kill the Traitor, and the Doctor(who had the ability to heal people) revived both of them. The Traitor had the ability to kill people who revealed their identity to him, and so used this to kill the doctor. The witness himself hid pretty well, one person one townperson managed to find and hide with him, he still got found by a murderer in the end.

It was pretty funny watching everyone trying to roleplay, staring at each other suspiciously and trying to look innocent, although we fumbled through it a bit because the rules weren’t made very clear in the beginning. It could be a pretty fun game for older kids if the rules were refined more.

I was in a workshop organizing for Power Shift all day on Saturday so I was unable to enjoy the large majority of activities held at city of play. However, I was able to make it to the free after party where I got to drink my fill of beer and play this fun ninja game.

NINJA GAME:

I can’t remember what it was called, but it had an interesting and simple mix between computer and body.

Description

On the screen there is a randomly generated board set to parameters based on height and width as well as number of teams.

The teams are composed of ninja and sensei. The ninja is blindfolded while the sensei gives orders based off of the computer generated map.

The computer generated map is meant to mirror a grid of carpet samples laid out on the floor. The samples are spaced with a 6″ margin approximately. The ninja must peek out of the bottom of it’s blind fold in an attempt to avoid stepping on the carpet samples.

The PA system screams “MOVE” every few seconds at which point all the ninjas can take one step of whatever distance they want.

The goal of this game is for the sensei to give effective vocal orders to it’s corresponding ninja to guid the ninja to coordinates of their team color as represented on the computer generated map. Each appropriate color coordinate reached gains the team one point. However, the more common path to victory is to be the last man standing. Each ninja has a foam sword with which it can slash the legs of the other ninjas with the help of it’s sinsei’s guiding voice. It is either by having ones legs slashed or stepping on a carpet sample that one may be removed from the game.

The game was somewhat enjoyable but could be too fast paced. Perhaps a larger scale board would have made things more interesting.

I attended the discussion and several social games like ninja training, zombie ward, which are really fun.
The discussion is a group activity in which people has been divided into different teams and talk about ideas to make Pittsburgh a better place and more fun. We had a conclusion that waiting for the buses can be less boring through playing games, so we head to this direction and developed the idea further more. I came up with the idea that it should be group activity like the digital game Curiosity.  It should be cooperative and bring people more chances to communicate. Then we keep digging on this idea, and came up with the bus waiting game as showed in the following picture.

The rules would be:

1. People waiting for the bus make the heat bar go higher by touching the heat-sensitive bus signpost. The more people get involved, the bar should go higher to trigger an event.

2. The heat bar has three phases, after reaches the second one, there gives “bee bee bee” sound and the camera will take a 360 degree picture. So people touches the signpost will all be included into the picture.

3. There will be a bigger digital screen aside on the wall records pictures has been taken. After reaching certain amount, the previous ones may be ripped to give space for new ones. People can check if their photos still there at the bus stop or not. If not, they would more likely to take pictures again.

4. After the bar line reaches the third phase, the slot machine works, and will rain coupons or bucks ($1) randomly, and the companies which the coupons belongs to, should be the main sponsors for the construction of the bus waiting game system.

Social games:

Ninja training should be my favorite, since I played before in the global game jam when it had 7 controllers ran in a wider space. But this time, due to some technical issues and the space limitation, they just provided 4 controllers and ran in a pretty small area. These limitations did affect the user experience in certain degree.  Other than this, it is still an interesting game which attracted lots of people participated.

People getting crazy in Ninja training…

Zombie ward is a tag game with special items. We played in a group of more than 20 people. It is not that special, since we have played lots of tag games when we were young, but it was really fun to play with a bunch of grown-up strangers. Also with the items, and the randomness of the places and the orders we have to command, the fun increases.

Trying to find a place to play zombie ward.

Other games i played:

This game is about figuring out the unknown words on your cards by using the hints shows on other people’s cards. Then follow the command showed on cards. This game really need people to communicate, which brings lots of fun.

This game is about getting bricks of your own color without getting caught by the light. It is a cooperative game, and two people should work together to make the time as short as possible. I like this game, but i wish this could be played on table instead of the ground. That way might be more comfortable to play, so we can more concentrate on the game.

Things I got:

1) Two friends, each of whom has a broken leg and comes from totally different background

2) Great ideas about making the city a better place, and i am happy that i can participate in such activities to contribute something

3) Communication with strangers is not that hard, and playing games like a child is pretty enjoyable

4) A free T-shirt which is pretty ugly…

I attended the City of Play on Saturday,  from 4pm – 5pm which happened to be the social games session. It was quite funny for people were so quiet and “non-socializing” before the game started, but then it got really heated up once the staff set off the games.

Weenis Wars

If it dangles, grab it! Weenis Wars is a fast-paced game where opponents have 15 seconds to grab as many “Dangles” off their opponents’ weenises as they can.

I like this game for its simplicity yet lots of fun. By trying to grab your opponents’  “Dangles” while keeping your foot unmoved, you’re automatically doing funny choreography, and somewhat have to interact with your opponents physically, serving the job for social purpose. Everyone, the participants and people like me watching, was laughing so hard during and after the game. You just can’t stop watching!

Bottleneck

A chaotic game about traffic jams, car wrecks, and dinner parties. The game of Bottleneck is fast-paced and high-stakes, as players rush around, yell out silly phrases, and link arms…but some of them might wreck if they don’t pay attention!

The game’s rules are simple:

• form a group of four
• find common things you can do
• card colors should be different
• the vehicles should not crash
• collect 4 winner cards to win!

You’re given an occupation card where lists three things you should do to accomplish one round and get a winner card. Here comes the social part, you cannot win by playing alone, for each thing you’ll need to find 3 other players to claim the winner card with you.

I joined the first round and was so lucky to be the winner for the first round! I was a patient who got cured by the doctor, an artist who threw a dinner party, open an Etsy shop, went to gallery opening.  The fun part of playing this game is that you’re learning by playing and in order to do win, you have to shout out your needs, as opposed to being a quiet person sitting in the corner – no one would find you if you don’t speak out. All those involve social activities.

Over this last weekend, I attended the City of Play Festival in downtown Pittsburgh. The festival included games of all types, ranging from physical games played on the streets to social games played with PS3 Move controllers.

My favorite of the games that I played was Zombie Ward.

Zombie Ward is a turn-based tag game played outside in an open area like a park. Scattered about are bags containing various power-ups.

Power-ups:

• Zombie Gun – An elastic band that is a one-time-use zombie killer. A zombie hit by one of these is permanently dead.
• Antidote – A ball which makes the owner immune to zombie attacks. As a an immune carrier, it is your responsibility to find the “secret lab” to mass produce a cure.

As a human, the goal of the game is to avoid zombies, find the “antidote” and bring it to the “secret lab.” As a zombie, your goal is expand your zombie army by tagging humans.

This game turned out so much more fun than I had initially thought it would be. We played with a group of about 35 people. The games started everyone in a circle with the moderator randomly choosing one person to be the first zombie.

From there the moderator calls out humans and zombies to take turns taking 1-2 steps (at the moderator’s discretion). This is where things get interesting. A degree of strategy is required to navigate the landscape without getting tagged (as a human) or letting any humans get away (as a zombie).

Things get really interesting towards the end of the game when the secret lab is found and everyone is making a mad dash for the lab with a horde of 30 zombies on their tail.

Being a game played in real life, it was much more thrilling to experience than a zombie video game. Best of all, because there isn’t any blood and gore, people of all ages can play. I would definitely play this game again.

I ended up playing quite a few games at City of Play but the one that stuck with me was a field game called Kill Him and You Will Be Famous.

Kill Him and You Will Be Famous

The Rules

The rules are fairly simple: at the start of the game, an Honorable Master is chosen. The Honorable Master, in the style of many kung-fu movies, is surrounded by the other players and must defend him or herself against their attacks. The object of the game is to kill the Honorable Master.

Materials:

• a large open space
• several dozen small, throwable foam balls
• two larger foam balls
• a backpack or container with open top
• note cards numbered from 1 to n where n is the number of players

First things first: Everyone picks a note card. The number on their note card denotes the order in which they get to attack the Honorable Master. Next, everyone picks up two of the small foam balls, or Energy Orbs. The rest of the balls are strewn around the playing area.

Next, an Honorable Master must be chosen. At this point the person explaining the game will traditionally ask the assembled players if they know the origin of the name of the game (it’s a line from Naussica and the Valley of the Wind). The first person to guess gets to be the Honorable Master; if no person can guess, the Honorable Master is chosen by the game master.

The Honorable Master is then equipped with two larger, hand-sized foam balls and an open container strapped to his back. The other players form a circle and the Honorable Master stands in the center. The Honorable Master states his name to which the other players yell “Prepare to die, Master <name>!”, signaling the beginning of the game.

The game master will now begin calling out the numbers assigned to the players starting at the beginning. When a ninja’s number is called, she will step into the ring and have 15 seconds to defeat the Honorable Master. The game master will count down from 15 and announce when her time is up. If she can get one of her foam balls into the container on the Honorable Master’s back without it bouncing out, she has killed the Honorable Master and thus becomes  the new Honorable Master. As long as she has a ball in each hand, she is invulnerable and cannot be killed by the Honorable Master. If she throws one or both of her balls, however, she can be tagged by the Honorable Master. The Honorable Master may only tag with his foam balls; he cannot throw them.

If the ninja is tagged by the Honorable Master and she does not have a ball in each hand, she is dead. Additionally, if the ninja does not have a ball in her hand, she cannot use that hand to defend herself against the Honorable Master; the only thing she can do with that hand is pick up another ball from the ground. The ninja is also dead if she flees outside the circle before her 15 seconds are up; her fellow ninjas will kill her for cowardice. At the end of her 15 seconds, if the ninja has failed to kill the Honorable Master she must drop both of her Energy Orbs and flee to the safety of the circle of ninjas within 3 seconds or she is dead.

The game continues until all ninjas are dead or the Honorable Master has been killed. The game restarts with either of these events.

My Experience

I had a ton of fun with this game; it was fairly simple but a lot of fun. It succeeded in keeping people engaged even when they weren’t actively participating as the current Honorable Master or ninja; watching the bouts was fun. The matches were both long enough to give the ninja a fighting chance and short enough to keep the game going and keep everyone engaged.

I got to be the Honorable Master three times–once when I guessed the origin of the name, once from skill, and once from trickery. Another ninja from across the circle pretended to be getting ready to jump in on my turn and I was able to sneak up behind the Honorable Master without him seeing and drop my Energy Orb in his backpack. I found it to be a lot of fun and also quickly exhausting; each time I had to fight against a fresh ninja I got more out of breath.

Since this game has such a solid base, it presents a great opportunity to expand upon it and add new game modes. For example, a friend who was playing with me noted that the game is more difficult for shorter people. A fun potential augmentation to the game might be that if any ninja is nose-height or shorter than the Honorable Master, she may choose a Ninja Companion. When either ninja’s number is called, they both get to attack the Honorable Master at once. The addition of different kinds of orbs, tag-team Honorable Masters, or differently terrained play environments could all make the game more interesting in later rounds.

Anyway, this game was great. I highly recommend it and would play it again.