In a previous post I explained what motivated me to make the game I am currently making as my final project in college. In this entry I will actually describe what I have achieved so far, and my plans for what’s to come. If you so wish, you may play the game, incomplete as it is, before reading what follows. If you do, I’d be very interested in hearing about your experience, how you approached the game without knowing exactly what it was about, what could have been clearer or better.
What I sought, as I explained in that other post, was to create a game whose main objective is not to rack up points, but to create a visual composition. This is a game about creativity, indeed; a subset of games that, I have found, is not very largely represented. Kenichi Nishi said something in an interview that I quote here because I consider to be extremely significant:
Recently, games have been ‘passively interactive.’ Users do not really have to think about what to do; they are guided around until they reach the end of the level. These types of games do not rely on the creativity of the users.
This is why I started to consider my idea more important than at first. Although there have been games like Mario Paint, that are like tools that are given a context of fun, I wanted to make something simpler, something abstract and more concentrated. There was also the question about how this would work as a game; I didn’t want it to become a color-matching, chain-making fest, so how to evaluate what was being made for its own sake? It didn’t need to be competitive, but it also needed a purpose, a raison d’être. There was the possibility of it being multiplayer, and people judging each-others compositions, much like the abovementioned Nishi’s own game, Archime-DS (or LOL, as it’s being brought over to this half of the world). I took a bit of that idea, as I will explain later, but I deliberated some more until I came to the conclusion that the best would be not to judge quality, but to evaluate compositive characteristics, or parameters, as I’ve grown used to calling them. The point being that every visual composition can be evaluated in terms of different characteristics, like how symmetric it is, whether it uses warm or cool colors, whether it is rhythmic or not (presence of visual patterns), etc. We can use these parameters to objectively determine if a composition is harmonic and pleasing to the eye, if it is foreboding, if it is unsettling, etc.
Personally, I am more of a supporter of holistic rather than reductionist approaches to analysis, but in this particular case (and in many others) it is much simpler to compartmentalize the data—especially given that I am hardly a mathematician, or even a programmer, so it simply made my work a lot easier. I realize that to this point I’m still talking abstractly, so let me show you the game proper.
That is what it currently looks like. In the center, but leaning toward the top and left, is the canvas: a grid where the player creates his composition. To the right is the carousel; sort of a conveyor belt of colored groups of circles, that the player can grab at any time and drop on the canvas. In a bar at the bottom there are a series of pictograms of differing sizes: they are actually dynamic, and change depending on the current characteristics of the composition, as perceived by the game (right now the algorithms that calculate this are not very finely tuned). Each pictogram changes to either a neutral, high or low graphic depending on the value: For instance, the fire icon indicates that the colors are mostly warm, and it would change to a snowflake if it was the opposite. Its comparatively small size means that it is not leaning that much toward warmth. The pictograms still need some work for them to be easier to understand, since, as I said in that previous post of mine, this game will use no words, so they need to be self-sufficient. Finally, in the bottom right is the time counter, which, when depleted, will prompt the game to show a results screen, which is pictured below. […]
