by Joe Jung -

SnowGlobe-Trotter

Explore the world you find yourself trapped in. You don’t know how you got here, but you are stuck alone to find out how and why you are there.

What I want from this game is the feeling of exploration combined with being put in ‘random scenarios outside of your control’. I am interested in how people adapt and adjust to spontaneity.  The method of control will be based on gyroscopic input from an Arduino-powered snowglobe-prop to control yourself in a fixed environment mimicking the scenery of typical cliche/kitsch snowglobe.

The game will be 2D and I am anticipating an art style that is flat and maybe sort of similar to sprite-based games like LoZ and Chronotrigger. But with happier color palettes/various. Another game that was an inspiration is Proteus, a place where you’re stuck in your own happy/carnival-y prison to explore a sparse landscape.

Snowglobes, Tread-mills, ant-farms.

by Joe Jung -

Walking Simulator Reading Responses

The reading I found most interesting was the article from electrondance.com arguing about degrading aspect of the term “walking simulator” and relabeling them as digital parallels of Japanese secret boxes. Most notably, how it automatically accuses the actual experiences of these programs focusing on content without necessarily requiring a barrier of challenge.

In my time with Gone Home, Proteus, and now The Path, I believe that the term can still apply for mainstream gaming as people from that of this debate will come into playing these works with expectations comparing them to traditional titles.

An interesting place for this for me specifically is the identification of when you think you are in walking simulator. For example, take the hit game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It’s a game that millions of gamers and probably half of the class might list as one of the greatest games of all time. However, when I played it as a kid (and I guess now still without a guide), I can’t see it as more than a walking simulator/not-game to me, because while I know that it has its own designed story and mechanics available as you progress further into the game, my own skills were a barrier from me accessing more actions other than collecting rupees, swinging swords, and jumping around in a town while hearing the same annoying-as-fuck soundtrack on repeat. It remains one of my most hated “games” today.

So what I think I really mean is that these labels aren’t absolute for everyone, because everyone can experience a million emotions and responses to these virtual platforms. It is not just reaction to stories but also how you respond to available mechanics that increase or decrease the scope of how you deeply you can dive into the role/persona of the avatar and environments on screen.

by Joe Jung -

Almost Monopoly – Archit, Aram, Joe

almost monopoly.

In an economy where 3 players try to accumulate resources:
3 Corporations start with 5 kabillion doubloons + 3 kabillion units of unsold product in the pool (center of the table). One pebble is 1 kabillion doubloons.
Each turn players take a decision in Rock Paper Scissors style. Players can choose Action A (fist) to represent a selling an expensive designer product or Action B (open hand) to represent a cheap usable product .
There are 4 possible outcomes:
Outcome 1 – One corp. chooses Action A: this corp. takes 1 kabillion doubloons from each other player.
Outcome 2 – Two corps. choose Action A: these corps. both give 1 kabillion doubloons to the third player.
Outcome 3 – Three corps. choose Action A: all corps. put 1 kabillion doubloons in the pool. These represent all the unsold product because of saturation.
Outcome 4 – Three players choose Action B: the corp. with most resources proposes once, without discussion nor barter, how to divide the pool. If at least one corp. agrees the decision becomes effective. Otherwise, nobody takes anything.
The game ends when the first corp. is out of doubloons. The corp. with the most doubloons wins.

Alternate story: 3 hunter-gatherers cooperate and compete to get food to survive. Action A (fist) corresponds to collecting firewood, Action B (hand) to corresponds to hunting for meat. The resources held by players is their energy, resources in the pool are firewood.

Outcomes 1 and 2: If both meat and firewood is collected, the players can eat cooked meat, but the odd player out has the most leverage and gets to eat plenty, while the other players spent more energy than they can recoup.

Outcome 3: If everyone collects firewood, everyone loses energy. You can’t keep heavy firewood on you for the next day, so you just collect it in a common pool for later use.

Outcome 4: Everyone collects raw meat. There is an excess of meat, and the amount that can be cooked depends on the available firewood. The leading player proposes a split of the produced food, but without majority agreement the meat will go to waste.

The game ends when one player runs out of energy and dies. Of the remaining players, the one with more energy is stronger and rules the tribe.