Escape the Room Scratch Tutorial

July 18th, 2010

Scratch logo

Make an Escape the Room Game in Scratch

Want to learn to make an Escape the Room Game in Scratch?

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an Escape the Room game in Scratch. An Escape the Room game is one where the player finds themselves locked in a mysterious room. They must then explore and the room to locate objects that will enable them to escape the room.

Press the Green Flag to start the game.

Learn more about this project

Download the tutorial ( pdf-718kb)

This tutorial and game were created by Colleen Stieler-Hunt and Kristine Kopelke.

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Review of Cents City

September 25th, 2009

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Review of the game Cents City created by Skill-Life

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

About Cents City

Cents City is a first-person adventure game that can be played in a Flash-enabled web browser. It is designed to educate players about managing their money.  I only accessed the free demo of this game for this review which means I only had access to a small amount of game content. I have assumed that the developers would show their best content in the demo. I considered purchasing a premium subscription for the purposes of this review but the website indicates that this service is not available yet so I am assuming that it may still be in beta stages of development.

The player begins by choosing a mentor to guide them through the game. The mentor gives the player quests and guides them through each step of the quest.

My Opinion

I had high hopes for this one. On first impressions, the graphics look great. The quests look really exciting. It gave a much better first impression than Celebrity Calamity.  After playing both games, I think Celebrity Calamity is a far superior game. I have outlined my likes and dislikes below.

Likes

Here is what I liked about the game:

  • 2D graphics are of high quality
  • Interesting and quirky game characters
  • Quest format is a nice idea
  • Voice over artists are high quality and engaging
  • Offes a wide variety of interesting cartoon characters to act as player mentors
  • The game has a number of interesting locations to visit.

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Above: Cents City has high quality 2D graphics

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Above: The game features some quirky characters.

 

Dislikes

  • Gameplay is linear – there are all sorts of cool places to visit but you have to do things in the order mandated
  • Contains some stereotypical characters such as a French chef (although they are entertaining)
  • Game mechanic is mostly stimulus video followed by quiz questions. My belief is that games such as this should have the maths as the mechanic – it should not be an add-on. Celebrity Calamity and Zoombini Island Odyssey are examples of maths games that do this much better.
  • All text displayed in the game should also use be read to the player using character voices to help those with low literacy.
  • The game narrative is not logical. For example, your first task is to get your PIN to access your bank account. For some strange reason, in order to do this the player has to go to the Eiffel tower where a French chef plays you a video on how to manage your money. He then tells you to click on the elevator to get your PIN. When you click on the elevator, a series of quiz questions are asked that check your understanding of the stimulus video that the chef played you. If you answer all of the questions right, then you get your PIN. There is no relationship between clicking on an elevator door and getting a PIN for a bank account. I think the narrative needs to be much more meaningful and should match the mathematical content better.
  • Some of the information that the game asks you to remember is not meaningful and it is not required. For example, after the player goes to the Eiffel Tower and gets their PIN for their bank account, they have to go to the bank to open an account and deposit their pay check. If the player forgets their PIN, there is a button that the player can press to say that they forgot it. Instead of telling the player to go back and find it out again or giving them a hint as to what the numbers are, the game puts the PIN in for you and simply says, “please remember it next time”.  If the game does not treat the information it gives you as important and use it in a meaningful way, I’m not sure why the player should treat it as important. Game interfaces should promote recognition not recall. However, this is a maths game, so it is ok if the player has to recall some meaningful mathematical information that will help them with their mathematics but I wouldnot say that remembering a PIN is in that category.

Image Attributions

All images used in this review are screenshots taken from the game Cents City. These were used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of these images and wish for them to be removed, please leave a comment on this blog entry.

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Review of Mission Lighting

September 25th, 2009

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Review of the game Mission Lighting created by ZMQ

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

About Mission Lighting

Mission Lighting is a casual mobile phone game designed to educate players about eco-friendly lighting. 

The object of the game is to earn as many points as you can before the timer runs out or before you lose your 5 lives. The player takes controls a plane that must collect as many CFL Bulbs and star rating symbols as possible while avoiding the incandescent light bulbs. In this game incandescent light bulbs are the enemy. The items collected must be dropped on houses that request them. The player receives points for collecting CFL bulbs and star rating symbols and for dropping the correct object on a house. The player loses points for dropping the wrong item on the wrong house and loses a life every time they smash into an incandescent light bulb. The game ends either when a timer runs out or when the plane loses all of its 5 lives – whichever comes first.

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Above: Screenshot of gameplay. The house at the bottom of the picture is wanting the player to drop a CFL bulb on it. Most of the game statistics are located at the bottom of the screen.

My Opinion

So, yes, many mobile phone games have a reputation for being a bit flaky and shallow. Even still, I wasn’t really impressed with this game. I really wanted to like it but I’m afraid I didn’t. I was a little bit put off by the in-game advertising. I was a little disappointed that a game that should be solely about the environment was advertising a company that is arguably a big cause of environmental problems. Even overlooking this, I found the gameplay a little bit abrupt until I figured out what I had to do (by reading the instructions). I think there are a few things that the developers could do to improve this one.

Game Balance

Some elements of the game play give game good balance, other aspects do not. In this section, these will be explored.

The player may choose a number of victory conditions. These include:

  • Keeping their plane “alive” until the timer runs out – the game ends when the timer reaches zero. If the player can manage to not collide with the CFL bulbs, more than 5 times, this victory condition can be achieved.
  • Score a certain number of points or beat their previous best score
  • Keeping their plane “alive” until the timer runs out and score the most points.

In a well balanced game, the skill of a player will influence the outcome of a game more than any other factor. If the player is aiming to score the most points rather than just trying to run out the timer, skill does influence the outcome of the game more than any other factor. In order to earn points, the player must firstly collect CFL bulbs and star rating symbols from the sky whilst avoiding the incandescent light bulbs. Each desirable item collected gives the player 10 points. The player loses a life each time they hit an incandescent light bulb. Secondly, the player must drop the items that they collected onto the correct house. The player receives 100 points for dropping the correct item onto the correct house and they lose 50 points for dropping an item in the incorrect place. The action that will give the player the maximum points reward is dropping the correct item onto the correct house.  However, in order to be able to drop an item on a house, the player must have first collected the items from the sky. The loss of 50 points for dropping an item in the wrong place also encourages users to strategically drop the items that they have collected, not just drop them anywhere and hope for the best. The points structure of the game encourages the player to engage in all aspects of the game play: collecting items, avoiding items, dropping items onto the correct houses and avoiding incorrect drops. Thus, the points system encourages the player to develop skill and this skill will influence the outcome of the game more than any other factor. The scoring system provides good game balance.

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Above: The scoring system of the game.

If the player’s aim is simply to finish the game without having lost all of their lives, then player’s skill is not necessarily the main influencer of the outcome of the game.  A dominant strategy exists. If the player simply leaves their plane in its starting position at the bottom of the screen, the player will be able to play out the game’s timer. They may lose some lives but it is unlikely that all of the player’s lives will be lost. I have used this strategy twice. The first time, I lost one life and the second time I lost none – and managed to accumulate 100 points by not even touching a control. Some suggestions for combating this dominant strategy include placing more obstacles in the way of the initial starting path of the plane and having provision for a highscore leader board that players can use to gauge their progress.

Some ways that I think game balance could be improved are listed below.

Recommendation 1. Have several levels that gradually get more difficult

 At the moment, the game has one level of difficulty although at times, it will suddenly speed up and then slow down later with no obvious reason for the speed up or slow down. I think it would be better if the game gradually gets faster rather than a sudden spurt of speed and then an equally as sudden slow down.

Recommendation 2. Make losing a life less disruptive to the play

When the plane hits an incandescent bulb a plane crash animation is played and the player loses a life. The plane crashing animation unnecessarily disrupts play. The crash animation that is played does not align with the information being shown on the screen before the crash and is potentially confusing, especially to new players. One way to make losing a life less disruptive to play would be to simply have the plane flash for a few seconds and, whilst the plane is flashing, it cannot collide with anything.

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Above: The crash animation that plays is disconnected from the rest of the gameplay. I’m guessing its main aim is to display an eco message?

Recommendation 3. Basic instructions on key presses should be given at the start of the game

At the game startup screen, the player can choose to either read the rules or play the game. If a beginner player chooses to start the game rather than read the rules, no indications are given as to what keys to press to do different things within the game. The keys used are not intuitive, so I think the game should have a screen that a seasoned player can skip quickly through that explains the controls used in the game.

Image Attributions

All images used in this review are screenshots taken from the game Mission Lighting. These were used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of these images and wish for them to be removed, please leave a comment on this blog entry.

References

Drennan, P. 2009. INB280/INN280 Fundamentals of Game Design – Lecture 6. QUT.

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Review of Real Lives 2010

September 25th, 2009

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Review of the game Real Lives 2010 created by Educational Simulations

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

About Real Lives 2010

Real Lives 2010 is an educational sandbox simulation PC game. There is a trial version of the game that is free to download and a premium edition that must be purchased. This review was written using the trial version. Real Lives 2010 is designed to help people understand what it is like to live in other countries. There is a focus on people from developing countries but game play is not limited to just developing countries.

The player takes on the role of someone from another country. The game follows the character from birth onwards. The player makes decisions about the character’s life. The trajectory of the person’s life is affected by the decisions that the player makes and the reality of life in the country where the character lives.

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Above: In Real Lives 2010 the player takes on the role of someone from another country.

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Above: Information about the family the character’s family and how they compare with people across the world.

My Opinion

The Good

Real Lives 2010 does some things really well. It uses world statistical demographic data to generate game play in a way that I have never seen before. For example, your character or one of the character’s loved ones may develop a disease. If the player asks for more information about the disease, it will explain a bit about the disease and then give some statistical information about how many people in that person’s age group, gender, socio-economic class and living in that geographical location get that disease. It also provides a link to the source of the information so that the player can verify it. This game provides a really interesting way to learn what life might be like in a different country and in different circumstances. It could be especially useful for teachers and could easily inspire further research on particular countries or diseases.

The Not So Good

However, without a secondary motive to play the game such as using it as a classroom stimulus activity, I do not think the gameplay will be compelling. The game is only in beta at the moment and has a few bugs – I sincerely hope that I am proved wrong and that many find it compelling. It is certainly a game I would classify as worthy.

Real Lives 2010 as a system of conflict

Conflict in a game arises from a player actively pursuing a goal but obstacles impede them from achieving it (Crawford in Drennan 2009). Conflict in this game is of the form single player versus the system. The game attempts to make the challenge personal by assigning the player with a character that has just been born. The player’s task is to guide the character’s decisions throughout their life.

Although Real Lives 2010 provides the player’s character with plenty of impediments that would get in the way of the character’s progress in life (such as a family member getting sick), it is difficult for a player to develop their own meaningful quantifiable goals. Although sand box games generally do not tell players what their goal should be, they do provide a number of different measures or achievements that a player can use to measure their own accomplishments. The game provides many statistics but some of these statistics are difficult to understand. It is also unclear as to which of the statistics the player can affect. Many of the statistics appear to be based on life in that particular country but it is unclear whether there is anything the player can do to improve or worsen them. I understand why this may have been done. In reality (outside of the magic circle), there are no silver bullet solutions to poverty and poor living conditions. The game is trying to show the plight of people living in a variety of different situations and they do not want to sugar-coat it and make it look like it is a really easy problem to solve. However, I am not sure that this works in a game situation.

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Above: Many of the statistics displayed in the game are difficult to interpret and it is unclear which aspects can be affected by decisions made by the player.

There are only a small number of decisions that the player can make and when they make the decisions it is unclear how these decisions affected the outcome of what happened.

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Above: The decisions that the player can make are shown on the above screen. Many are greyed out.

There are some options in the game that are unable to be accessed by the player because the buttons are greyed out. The game does not explain why some are inaccessible. For example, I wanted to educate my character but there were times when all of the schooling options were greyed out. That may be because where he lives schooling is unavailable or too expensive but the game did not give me enough information to know whether that was the case.

As a player, because of the lack of competition and conflict, you feel that you are really just watching to see what happens. The game does provide a new way to explore life in other countries but I think the game has a ways to go before it will truly engage the player on its merits as a fun game.

This game is more a cool way to display, use and humanise real data than it is a fun game.

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Above: This game pulls in real-life data froma variety of sources.

One way that this game could be improved is by providing a smallish set of indicators that the player knows will be influenced by their gameplay decisions. The rest of the rich data should not be discarded (although its signficance could be made clearer) as those using the game may want to access this data; especially if they are using the game as part of classwork. It should be made clearly obvious which statistics the player can affect.

Image Attributions

All images used in this review are screenshots taken from the game Real Lives 2010. These were used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of these images and wish for them to be removed, please leave a comment on this blog entry.

References

Drennan, P. 2009. INB280/INN280 Fundamentals of Game Design – Lecture 5. QUT.

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Review of Celebrity Calamity

September 22nd, 2009

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Review of the game Celebrity Calamity created by Doorways to Dreams

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

About Celebrity Calamity

Celebrity Calamity is a free-to-play, single-player, simulation game created in Flash. It is designed to help young people explore money management concepts such as spending money, credit cards, debit cards and interest rates.

The player takes on the role of a celebrity’s assistant. The player has to assist the celebrity to earn money, help the celebrity spend his/her money wisely and use banking products such as credit and debit cards wisely.

Play takes place across a series of rounds. Each round the player helps the celebrity earn and spend their money. The player has to catch desirable objects and avoid catching undesirable objects that fall from the sky.  Objects fall from the sky at different rates. The player has to catch those which are useful (such as large sums of money) and avoid those which are not (expensive items that the celebrity did not ask for). The celebrity will ask you to buy particular items at the start of each round. It is up to the player to decide whether to give the celebrity what they ask for. At the end of the round, a total of all of the money the player collected is given and each item that was “bought” appears. The player has to decide whether to pay for it using the debit card or the credit card. The player also has to decide how much to pay off the credit card each round. Just to make things interesting, every few rounds or so, the celebrity makes huge extravagant purchases that they really cannot afford (I suspect, probably not dissimilar from real life!). As the rounds progress, both the player and the celebrity progress up their occupational leader. If the celebrity is dissatisfied with the performance of the player, he/she may fire the player (although the game always gives you another shot).

For more information on the game, check out this short Youtube Video the creators of the game have made.


Above: Youtube video promoting Celebrity Calamity

My Opinion

At first, I thought this was going to be another piece-of-fluff educational game… but I found myself getting engrossed in the game. I found myself playing the game right through from beginning to end. To play the whole game probably took about an hour. The game itself will not replace teaching students about interest rates but it is a great stimulus for starting/continuing discussions around using credit cards, spending within your means, etc.

Whilst it is not in the same league as something like Zoombinis Island Odyssey, I found it superior in quality to drill-and-practice games. What I believe makes it superior is that the learning is not an add-on. The learning is the mechanism of the game.

Rules, Challenges and Rewards

The rest of this review will examine 10 major uses of rules, challenges and rewards within the game. Throughout the game, the player discovers some of the unwritten rules of the game.  These unwritten rules are the mechanism used to teach the player about managing finances. Some of these unwritten rules are listed in items 1-4 below. The game’s challenges are what keeps the game interesting and give the player the opportunity to make decisions. Items 5 – 8 list some of the key challenges the player faces. If the player faces up well to these challenges, the game contains rewards. Items 9 and 10 list the two main rewards used to keep players motivated.

1.      Unwritten rule – not paying off your credit card is costly

If the player does not pay off the celebrity’s credit either because they choose not to or because they do not have enough cash to cover it, the player gets a hefty bill the next month. If the celebrity pays too many fees, they get upset with you and you risk getting fired.

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Above: This celebrity is angry because she paid too many bank fees.

2.      Unwritten rule – going over your credit card limit or overdrawing your account is costly

If the player goes over the credit card limit or overdraws the debit account, they are charged a huge fee and the celebrity starts to get anxious and upset.

3.      Unwritten rule – things happen that are beyond your control

Sometimes, the celebrity will buy something really expensive on a whim.  This can really throw your finances out! This introduces an element of uncertainty to the game. Also, as the earning capacity of the celebrity increases, so does their credit limit. As it increases, the celebrity’s whimsical buys become more and more expensive and sometimes will more than max out their credit card and the player can find themselves in financial distress.

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Above: This celebrity loves extravagant purchases!

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Above: Why is the money manager always to blame?

4.      Unwritten rule – on the way  to the top of the career ladder, the player will be fired at least once

Each time the game is played, it purposely gets the player to bring the celebrity to financial ruin. This demonstrates to the player how people can get themselves into bad financial situations. In this game, your character gets fired; although the celebrity always gives you an opportunity to redeem yourself. Your character does not run out of lives. This would be counter-productive to the learning.

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Above: Getting fired for the first time in this game. Lucky she decided to give me another chance!

5.      Game challenge –balancing what the celebrity wants with their earnings

At the start of each round, the celebrity tells you what she would like you to buy for her this round. If you get nothing on the list, the celebrity is likely to be displeased with you. However, if you get all of the items on the list, this could affect your earnings and savings negatively. As the celebrity’s assistant, your job is to decide when to do what the celebrity wants and when to hold back. If you give the celebrity everything he/she wants it is likely that they will become bankrupt and you will be fired.

6.      Game challenge –collecting money whilst avoiding unwanted things

During each round of play, the player has to catch items falling from the sky. The aim is to collect as much money as possible and any other items that you wish to purchase for the celebrity. Sometimes in an effort to catch the money or other items, the player may accidentally purchase some unwanted items. This challenge provides a great metaphor for impulse buying.

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Above: You have to be careful to only collect desirable objects. The list of what the celebrity wants you to buy is across the top of the screen.

7.      Game challenge –working out the best way to use debit and credit

The game provides the player with the opportunity to pay for each item purchased using either a debit facility or a credit facility. Items that cost more than the debit limit must be purchased using a credit card. The player can also choose how much to pay off the credit card each round. The player has to balance the credit card payments with the interest the money can earn in the bank.

8.      Game challenge –prioritising

When the player is catching items that are falling from the sky, too many items fall at once (especially in the later rounds) to be able to catch everything that you would like to catch. The player has to choose which items are worth catching. For example, if there is $100 falling from the left hand side of the screen and $1,000 falling on the right hand side of the screen and the player could only get to one, it would be better to choose the $1,000. However, if the $1,000 falling on the right hand side of the screen was falling beside a piano that costs $1,000 and the player would be bound to collect the piano if they collected the $1,000, then the player may choose to catch the $100 instead.

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Above: Competing interests – the player must prioritise them.

9.       Game reward –climbing the career ladder

After each round, if the celebrity is happy with your performance, the player character will proceed one more rung up the career ladder.

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Above: The player’s career ladder

10. Game reward –the celebrity’s progress

As you help the celebrity manage their finances, they receive new job offers. The player decides which job offer the celebrity will take and watches as the celebrity progress up their career ladder.

Image Attributions

All images used in this review are screenshots taken from the game Celebrity Calamity. These were used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of these images and wish for them to be removed, please leave a comment on this blog entry.

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Review of Meteor Multiplication

September 22nd, 2009

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Review of the game Meteor Multiplication created by Arcademic Skill Builders

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

About Meteor Multiplication

Meteor Multiplication is a free-to-play, single-player, drill-and-practice maths game created in Flash. It is designed to help children learn their times tables.

The player controls a space ship that has a number written on it. There are a number of meteors drifting towards the space ship. The meteors have times tables written on them. The space ship has to blast the times table with the correct times table on it. The player has to blast the meteor before it hits the space ship. Once a meteor has been blasted, a new meteor appears and a new number appears on the space ship. This game is designed to be played on a PC or on a Wii using the internet channel.

My Opinion

This game emphasises speed and accuracy in mental calculations. It does not focus on the ability to problem solve. It encourages the automatic recall of information (automaticity). Whilst there is nothing wrong with helping children achieve automaticity, I think that games, especially learning games, have the opportunity to be far more enriching than this. As a game, I do not think it would have a tremendous amount of stick-ability for children.

In this game, as with most drill-and-practice games, the learning is an add-on to the game. The game mechanism is shooting meteors before they hit the space ship. The times tables really just get in the way of the mechanism. I think that learning games are best done when the actual game mechanism is the learning. For example, in Zoombinis Island Odyssey, the mechanism of the game is solving  mathematical problems. To solve these problems, the player has to form hypothesese and test them, they have to identify similarities and differences in objects and group them accordingly and observe and identify patterns.

Rules, Challenges and Rewards

The rest of this review will examine the game as a system of rules, challenges and rewards. It will identify 10 major ways rules, challenges and rewards are used within the game and the relationships between them.

As with many computers games, many of the game’s rules are not explicitly stated but can be observed during game-play.

1.      player can change game rules by choosing which times tables the game will use

One rule that can be changed during the setup stage of the game is which timetables can be used within the game. By default, the time tables that can be used are between 1 and 12. At the start of the game, the player or the player’s teacher or parent can choose the range of tables that they wish to be tested. If the option of using only the tables between 1 and 3 is selected, then only the following times tables will be tested: 1×1, 1×2, 1×3, 2×1, 2×2, 2×3,3×1, 3×2 and 3×3.

Whilst this is a nice game feature, there is a fault with it. Generally, when someone is learning their times tables, they will learn a particular set of times tables such as the 3 x times tables. The learner will then proceed to learn 3×1, 3×2, 3×3, … , 3×10. In this game, there is no way to choose  that you would just like the game to test the 3 times tables.

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Above: At the beginning of the game, the player can set the times tables the game will use and the speed of the game.

2.      player can change game rules by changing the speed of the game

At the start of the game, the player can choose whether the game speed will be slow, normal or fast. The game speed refers to the rate at which the meteors gravitate towards the space ship. This allows the player to adjust the game speed to provide appropriate challenge for them. It should be noted that regardless of the speed chosen, the speed of the meteors will increase as the player progresses through the levels.

3.      unwritten game rule: if a meteor is getting really close to the space ship, its answer  will appear in the space ship next

By observing game play, I observed that when a meteor is getting uncomfortably close to the player’s spaceship, the next number that will appear in the space ship will be a match to the times table on the uncomfortably close meteor. Having this knowledge provides an incentive to quickly find the matching meteor for the current number on the spaceship.

It was also noted that while the rule still holds true as the player proceeds to the higher levels (there are 9 levels in total), the  meteor is allowed to get even closer before its matching answer will appear. This unwritten game rule is used to increase the challenge of the game as the game progresses.

4.      unwritten game rule: as the levels progress, the times  tables use bigger numbers

In order to increase the challenge of the game, as the player progresses through the levels, the times tables being examined use bigger numbers. For example, when I was playing a game that ranged in times tables between 1 and 12, the beginning levels mostly used 1x, 2x and 3x tables. Once I made it through to the final levels, the times tables used tended to be the 9x, 10x, 11x and 12x. This increased the level of challenge of the game not only because the numbers involved are bigger but also because bigger numbers tend to have more factors. For example, 24 could be 2×12, 3×8 or 6×4.

5.      if a player fails a level, the player has the opportunity to repeat  the level

One of the game rules is that if a meteor manages to collide with your space ship and your mission has failed at that level, the game allows you to repeat the level from the start. You do not have to start the whole game again. Your space ship has an unlimited number of lives. This rule helps to challenge the player at the level that they are at and stops them from getting too frustrated at having to start all over again.

6.      level of challenge is increased by displaying the answers in the space ship rather than displaying the question

Within the game, a number appears inside the player’s space ship. There are 8 meteors surrounding and closing in on the player’s ship. Each meteor has a times table written on it. The player has to examine each of the meteors and determine which one (and there may be more than one) matches the number appearing inside the player’s space ship.

Another way to create this game would be to display the times table on the space ship and the answers on the meteors. Doing it this way, the game creates more challenge for the player. It encourages more mental calculation. If a player cannot quickly identify which meteor matches the answer on the space ship, they will have to work out the answer for each of the times tables on the meteors until they find a match.

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Above: Having the answer rather than the question appear inside the spaceship increases the challenge of the game.

7.      the game rewards speed of recall of information

The main challenge for the player is to speedily recall their times tables. The speed required to succeed in the game increases as the player works towards through the 9 levels.

8.      the game rewards correct recall of times tables

If a meteor does not match the answer given on the space ship, a time penalty is awarded. All of the times tables on the meteors except on the meteor(s) that the player could have chosen disappear for a couple of seconds. During this time, the player cannot make a new selection. This game behaviour disadvantages the player by giving them a time penalty but also serves to advantage them by showing them the correct answer.

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Above: If an incorrect meteor is selected, the incorrect times tables disappear and the gameplay is locked for a couple of seconds.

9.      players can set their own goals

If a player does not have fast enough recall of their times tables, they may never make it through all 9 levels of the game. Even if this is the case, the player may still feel a sense of accomplishment in playing the game. A player can set their own goals. For example, if a player has never been able to progress past level 5, then beating level 5 may be an intrinsic reward for that player.

10. the main game reward

When a player completes all 9 levels, a certificate is issued. Personally, I think this is a bit of a let-down. Having a certificate that a child can print is nice but I would have also liked to see something that perhaps extended the narrative of the game – not that there is a lot of game narrative in the first place!

MM-10-certificate
Above: The final game reward is a certificate

Image Attributions

All images used in this review are screenshots taken from the game Meteor Multiplication. These were used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of these images and wish for them to be removed, please leave a comment on this blog entry.

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Review of Fatworld

September 21st, 2009

fw-title
Review of the game Fatworld created by ITV’s electric shadows

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

About Fatworld

Fatworld is a free-to-download, single player, sandbox game designed to help the player explore how popular culture, the fast food industry and government legislation contribute to unhealthy living and obesity.

In this game the player takes on the role of a Fatworld resident who can:

  • buy houses
  • make a living by buying and running a restaurant
  • visit other residents
  • do exercise
  • go grocery shopping
  • prepare their own meals.

Whilst this game had great potential, the initial tutorial takes far too long to play and is tedious to complete. There also some bugs in the game. I was religiously saving my game and had one item left to complete in the tutorial. Next time I loaded the game, my progress was gone – I had to complete the 23 steps again!

The biggest problem with this game is a poorly designed user interface. The problem is not that the user interface looks bad – in fact it looks really cute. It is just that it is not very user-friendly or functional. The rest of this review examines flaws in the user interface design of Fatworld.

Above: Youtube video introducing the game Fatworld. Video created by PBS.

Top 10 Flaws in the User Interface Design of Fatworld

1. floating menus obscure your view of the game world

There are four floating menus that can obscure the player’s view of the game world (as shown below). One of these can be collapsed down and moved around the screen but the other three are fixed. These menus can obscure game play and can get quite annoying.

FW-1-floating-menus-obscures-game
Above: The floating menus can obscure the player’s view of the game

2. user controls that are not obvious

One of the first items on the tutorial is to visit a running course. I walked around the town for a while and eventually found the running course. When I tried to walk through the running course archway, my character couldn’t do it. A little floating ENTER sign appeared over my head so it looked like I should have been able to enter. I tried clicking with my mouse, pressing the enter key and approaching the course entrance from a number of different angles. Nothing worked! It turns out, you have to press the SPACE BAR to activate the floating ENTER sign. Confusing!

FW-2-space-bar-to-enter
Above: To enter the running course, the player has to press the SPACE BAR key

3. confusing and sometimes contradictory language is used

In this section, I have shown some examples of confusing in-game language.

FW-3a-yes-no
Above: The question asked does not align with the possible responses of yes / no.

One source of confusion is the floating enter signs that appear above the player character’s head. this floating enter sign is provided to prompt the player to press the SPACE BAR to perform an action. In many cases the word ENTER simply does not match the action that will be performed as shown in the pictures below.

FW-3b-enter-exit
Above: To use the exit to this building, the game character has to move into a position so that the floating enter sign appears.

FW-3c-enter-cashier
Above: To interact with the cashier, the game character has to move into a position so that the floating enter sign appears.

4. in-world navigation can be difficult

Several times, I couldn’t find my way back to the house or the restaurant that I’d bought. The game marks anything that the character owns with a star but if you are not in the general vicinity of the building, you cannot see the star. There is also an inset map in the bottom right corner of the screen. This inset map marks your house but not your restaurants but once again, you have to be in the general vicinity to see it. I also found that the marker used to indicate where your house is, is quite large and I did several laps of the streets it indicated before I finally found my house again!

 

fw-4a
Above: Buildings owned by the player are marked with a star. In this picture the player character is standing outside a restaurant that it owns. In the inset map on the bottom right corner, you can see that my character’s house is located a block and a half from where my character is currently standing.

When you click the small inset map, a larger map is activated. It can help you locate all sorts of things but  it does not show items that are owned by the player character.

fw-4b
Above: A larger map can help with navigation in Fatworld

5. non-intuitive visual and auditory feedback

The game does not provide appropriate visual and auditory feedback to compliment the action. For example, in the restaurant minigame, the player has to serve as many customers with food as possible. Tables of people magically arrive in the restaurant. These people don’t walk into the restaurant, they just appear in one of the restaurant’s booths. These same people disappear when their timer gets to 0 or the second you serve them food. Once again, they do not walk out, an animation that says the word “plop” plays regardless of whether you manage to serve them their food or whether they leave because the counter gets to 0. In order to serve the food, your character has to go to a corner of the restaurant to pick up their food (by pressing the SPACE BAR). Your character then has to walk to a table and press the SPACE BAR again to serve the customers.

FW-5a-restaurant
FW-5b-restaurant
Above: Screenshots of the restaurant mini-game

Some ways this mini-game could be vastly improved by providing better visual and auditory feedback include:

  • have the customers walk into (and out of) the restaurant rather than just pop in… and “plop” out.
  • have the player character’s avatar show that it is carrying food. At the moment, the only way, the player knows that the character has successfully picked up food to deliver to its customers is by the “Ready to Serve” sign on the top right corner of the screen. If the avatar were able to carry the meal in its hands, that would make this part of the game much easier to understand.
  • have a simple sound effect play when the player successfully picks up a food item to serve and a different one when they successfully serve a customer. At the moment, it is difficult to know whether the character was positioned in exactly the right spot to pick up the meal or to serve the meal to a customer. Simple audio sound effects would be helpful. At the moment, the only audio that is heard during this mini game is the annoying game soundtrack and the sound of your footsteps (also annoying) in the restaurant.
  • use a different animation for when the customers disappear because they got tired of waiting to when they leave because they have finished eating. At the moment, they both display the same “Plop” animation. To be honest, I’m not sure why “plop” is a useful descriptor for either behaviour! At the moment, the only feedback that the player gets that they have served customers, is a counter at the top of the screen.

6. cannot access information when required

Since this game is about healthy living, when the player character is in its house, the game asks the player to plan the player character’s meals. In order to make the meals, your character has to visit the grocery store to buy groceries. The idea is that you plan your menu and then go to the grocery store to buy the items on the menu. There’s only one hitch – once the player character gets to the grocery store, I couldn’t find any way to access the list of meals and recipes that I had created. Either I could not find the appropriate section on the user interface or this functionality does not exist. The menu contains far too much information for the player to remember. It would be better if the player could either access this information whilst at the grocery store or if they could compile a shopping list whilst the player character is at home.

7. difficult directional movement

A fair portion of this game is spent walking around Fatworld. Walking around Fatworld is tedious because the streets are positioned at an angle (rather than vertically or horizontally). This means that in order to navigate down a straight street, the player has to toggle between two arrow keys (eg. UP + RIGHT) just to walk up the street.

8. character moves extremely slowly

The game character moves slowly. This coupled with the difficult controls, makes game movement quite tedious for the player. It should be noted that the player can move the character faster by holding down the SHIFT key. Players can also buy vehicles for their characters but I haven’t managed to do that yet – largely because there is a glitch in the save games and I lost all of my progress. I didn’t have the heart to do it all again!

9. some text in the game is written in a hard to read font

Besides your character, there are other “Fatworld residents”. Your character can enter their house to view health information about the people. This information is provided in the form of an “index card”. The font used to create this index cards is quite difficult to read.

FW-9-difficult-text
Above: The font used to create the index cards is difficult to read.

10. screen scrolling is not smooth

When the player character moves to an edge of the screen, the screen automatically scrolls. Many games require scrolling screens. In this game, I found that the scrolling distracted me from the game. The scrolling was not smooth and I found that I was quite often waiting for the screen to scroll so that I could see what was next. I found that this disrupted the immersive nature of the play experience.

Image Attributions

All images used in this review are screenshots taken from the game Fatworld. These were used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of these images and wish for them to be removed, please leave a comment on this blog entry.

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Review of Viva Pinata

September 20th, 2009

viva-pinata-box

Review of the game Viva Pinata created by Rare

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outline

About Viva Pinata

Viva Pinata is a sandbox simulation game. The game that was reviewed was developed for the Xbox360 although a version exists for the PC.  The game can be played in single player mode or in cooperation mode. Players can cooperate on a single garden by plugging in an extra xbox controller. They can also cooperate using Xbox Live.

At the beginning of the game, the player is greeted by Leafos – an island resident. Leafos appeals to you for help. This landscape, once teeming with wildlife, has become a desolate wasteland. She wants you to help her restore it to its former glory.

viva-pinata-leafos
Above: Leafos

With the help of Leafos and other game characters, your task is to turn this desolate landscape into a vibrant garden that will attract and provide homes and mating grounds for pinatas. You do this by planting, digging ponds, growing trees, hiring garden helpers, decorating the lansdcape and protecting the garden from bad pinatas, weeds, fights between pinatas and ruffians.

Pinatas are animal-like creatures that have names that are derived by mixing animal names with lolly names. For example, the mouse-like creature is called “mousemallow”.  Pinatas exist to eat lollies, attend parties, entertain others and breed.

viva-pinata-mousemallow
Above: A mousemallow pinata

Viva Pinata is an open-ended game. There is no specific purpose identified for the player and a garden can be played for as long as the player likes. It is up to the player to establish their own goals. However, the game does provide ways to measure success. These measures include:

  • skill-based titles awarded to players
  • a value given to your garden. Everything in your garden is assigend a value. Rarer pinatas are more valuable than others. A player can increase their garden’s value by attracting more pinatas (the rarer the pinata the better), breeding new pinatas and decorating the garden.

The main criticism that I have of this game is the design of its box. Whilst the box is indicative of the game, it promotes an image that the game is for young children only. Whilst young children may enjoy elements of this game (and indeed my 6 month old parrot loved staring at the vibrant images from the game), I think older children through to adults will get the most out of this game. I spoke to a 12-year-old boy about the game and he said that at first, he did not want to play the game because it looked like a “baby’s game” but once he found out what it was all about, he really enjoyed it.

Interestingly, the sandbox nature of this game makes it appealing to both males and females.

Above: Youtube video showing how to build a garden in Viva Pinata

Designed for affect

This game is immersive and can affect players emotionally. Affect has been employed much better in this game than in Endless Ocean (as reviewed previoulsy). The rest of this entry explores how the game designers exploited affect.

immersion

Like Endless Ocean, Viva Pinata also has an introductory tutorial. Viva Pinata does this much better than Endless Ocean. The tutorial is not as difficult to complete and ties in much better with the game’s narrative.

Ernest Adams (in Drennan 2009) states that there are three main types of immersion: tactical immersion, strategic immersion and narrative immersion. This game provides a high levels of strategic immersion and narrative immersion and a small amount of tactical immersion.

strategic immersion

Strategic immersion is associated with mental challenge. This game achieves a high level of strategic immersion because, although the game gives the player a macro goal of creating a vibrant garden, it does not tell the player the best way to achieve it. Player buy-in is created by allowing the player to develop goals that they care about themselves. The game does provide a framework of measures but the player can choose whether these measures are meaningful to them.  

narrative immersion

Viva Pinata achieves high levels of narrative immersion. In the beginning, the story-line does not appear to be overly complicated but as the game progresses, the story begins to unfold. The non-player-characters are engaging and implore you to help them. The relationships between pinatas and the landscape are complex and take time to fully understand. The combination of these factors helps the player feel invested in the story.

tactical immersion

Whilst there are some moments of the game where the player is immersed in a tactical way, strategic and narrative are the predominant ways the game achieves immersion. Probably the most tactically immersive part of the game is the mating mini-game  (strictly G-rated!). Once the player sets up the appropriate conditions for two pinatas to “romance” each other, they are ready to mate. In order for this to occur, the player must complete a short mini-game where one of the pinatas is in a maze and the player must help it find its mate. These mini-games get more difficult as the game progresses. If the player successfully completes the mini-game, an egg is produced and the pair of pinatas will soon have some offspring.

flow 

Players achieve a state of flow after they feel confident with how the game works and once they have identified the goals that they wish to work to achieve. One of the advantages of sandbox games such as Viva Pinata is that each player can choose a goal that is appropriate for their level of skill and understanding. Perhaps this title of an adult player’s blog entry “I don’t care it’s 4am – I just bred a horstachio” demonstrates the state of flow that this game offers its players. Also in the comments of the blog, a female game player says: “I never thought I’d say this about a game, but i am addicted!! I have reached level 33 and am still going. Desperately trying to get a doenut in my garden! …Any idea how to get a sandwich in the garden? I need them to get my swanana to stay!”

tools used to evoke emotion

The game uses the narrative and characters, music and sound and gameplay well to evoke emotion.

narrative and characters

The game’s narrative evokes emotional responses right from the beginning. I remember on one occasion, I had set up a games lab and I had several non-gamer adults attempting to play Viva Pinata. It was the first time they had played an Xbox game and they could not figure out how to use the xbox controller. They were getting increasingly distressed because Leafos, the non-play-character who had been addressing them, would not stop crying and they could not figure out how to help her.

All of the non-player-characters are used to evoke emotion. All of the characters are vibrant and bright in this fantasy world. Most of the pinatas are extremely cute and the species have adorable and memorable names such as Cluckles and Fudgehog. A 12-year old girl told me that her favourite pinata was Mousemallow and a 12-year old boy told me that his favourite pinata was Chippopotamus. These non-stereotypical, fantasy characters help players create an emotional connection to the game. Players find themselves feeling affection for the pinatas.

The narrative emerges as the game progresses. As the narrative emerges, the emotional stakes are raised. Players find out about the original creator of the garden, Leafos’ father. They also find out about the evil Professor Pester who started out as Leafos’s father’s assistant. The evil Professor controls a band of Ruffians who do his evil bidding.

Leafos’s father was lured away from his garden one day by the evil Professor and that is when this ecological paradise started to become an ecological nightmare. The narrative serves to further connect the player to the game emotionally.

Players are also introduced to Leafos’s siblings who also help you rebuild the garden. Through the emerging narrative, the player learns to care for the game’s characters and completing their goal.

Whilst the game takes place in a fantasy world, there are also ecological parallels that can be drawn to the real world. 

music and sound

The music and sound effects suit the game well and help the player establish a deeper emotional connection to the game. Pinatas have their own special calls that quite often sound like animals from the real world. The mood of the music transitions from being quite pleasant and upbeat during the day to being more gloomy at night.

gameplay

The gameplay also evokes player emotions. As with many sandbox-style games, they evoke emotion by fulfilling a player’s desire for control and they provide them with outlets for ambition and making accomplishments. Accomplishments can be measured on an individual basis against the player’s own standards or they can be measured against in-game standards. These in-game standards include player rankings and the in-game value awarded to a garden.

The player can make mistakes and recover from them. Sometimes, this may cause the player to feel frustration… frustration that can be overcome. It may be overcome by experimentation, earning money so that the player can buy useful things from the store, and taking advice from in-game characters. This is perhaps epitomised by the blog title mentioned earlier: “I don’t care it’s 4am – I just bred a horstachio”.

 

References

Achtel 2007. I don’t care it’s 4am – I just bred a horstachio. Ciao. Accessed from
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Viva_Pinata_Xbox_360__Review_5620648  on 20/9/2009

Drennan, P. 2009. INB280/INN280 Fundamentals of Game Design – Lecture 7. QUT.

Wikipedia 2009. Immersion.Wikipedia. Accessed from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_(virtual_reality) on 16/9/2009

Image Attributions

http://flickr.com/photos/mattbrett/297675539/ used under Creative Commons Licensing

http://pinataisland.info/viva/Characters used for review purposes

http://pinataisland.info/viva/Mousemallow used for review purposes

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Review of Trackmania Nations Forever

September 18th, 2009

Review of the game Trackmania Nations Forever created by NADEO

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outline

Let me start by saying Trackmania isn’t really my sort of game. I am not the sort who is good at reflex-reliant games. The high rating I have given it is because I love the way the game encourages user-generated content.

An overview of Trackmania Nations Forever

Trackmania Nations Forever is a free PC game that is downloadable from the internet. It belongs to the Trackmania series of games created by the French comapny, NADEO. Its predecessors include Trackmania (original) and Trackmania Sunrise. Some titles in the series are free to download and others can be purchased. There was also a version of the game released for the Nintendo DS.

Trackmania Nations Forever is a car racing stunt-driver game. The races are quite short in duration – a race that takes 5 minutes to play would be a long race. The races normally take place on tracks that would be impossible to create in real life. Typically, the tracks are stunt tracks that may feature corkscrews, ramps, loops, gaps, etc. 

Above: This user-generated youtube video depicts a track that would be impossible to create in real life.

The game can be played in a variety of modes: single player, playing against others over the internet, playing against others on a LAN or party game mode (turn-based play using one computer). There is an in-game currency system. Each track has bronze medal, silver medal and gold medal times. The more medals you earn, the more tracks you unlock. Your in-game achievements also earn you “coppers”. The coppers can be spent to “buy” more functionality for the game.

Initially, what drew me to Trackmania was the way it encourages user-generated content. Players can create their own art work to appear on cars, create and race on tracks that they have created themselves and they can create their own Machinima videos based on the gameplay. There are web communities that share the user-generated content. There are also other spaces for user-generated content including blogs and forums.

The Trackmania series differentiates itself from other car racing games in a number of ways:

  • It does not focus on photo-realistic graphics, it chooses instead to focus on low-overhead graphics.
  • It is about doing the fastest time on one-lap of each race track
  • At any time in the game, the player can press the <Enter> key to quickly “re-spawn”. This causes the car to be placed at the last save point. This process takes less than 1 second.
  • Cars cannot collide with each other.
  • Vehicles do not sustain damage.
  • Lengths of races tend to be shorter than other car racing games.
  • There is a focus on user-generated content.
  • The game comes with many race tracks and players can create their own race tracks.
  • New race tracks are unlocked once the player based on in-game achievements.

Trackmania and User-generated Content

Whilst there are hundreds of hours of gameplay within the standard installation of Trackmania Nations Forever, it also encourages users to create their own in-game and out-of-game content. Several ways that users can generate content using this game are discussed below.

Machinima

TrackMania Nations Forever provides in-game tools for players to be able to record game-play. It also has an in-built video editing program that can combine footage from races that take place on the same track. Arguably, the most well known video project that this capability has inspired, is the 1K project. 

Above: This youtube video was created using an earlier version of Trackmania called Trackmania Sunrise. This was created by splicing together 1000 game replays. It inspired a number of othercopy-cat projects such as the 2K project, the 3K project, etc.

Painting / Skinning Cars

Users can customise their cars by creating their own car skin in an image editing program. There are several websites such as trackmania carpark that allow users to upload their skins so that other players can download them.
trackmaniaskin
Above: A user-created car skin. Image downloaded from http://www.trackmania-carpark.com/ (used for review purposes)

Create your own track

Trackmania Nations Forever also has an in-built track editor so that players can make their own tracks. These tracks can also be shared with others. The game comes with a certain number of “building blocks” that can be used to build the track. The player can earn new blocks by earning coppers (the in-game currency).

Blogs / fan sites / forums

There are a number of blogs, fan sites and forums designed to help players use trackmania. Some features of blogs include interviews with players of all ages, highlighting favourite car skins and favourite trackmania machinima videos. In some cases, fan sites are also repositories for user-created content and provide tutorials on how to use the more advanced features of trackmania. A number of sites have active forums where users come together to help each other with the game.

Why user-generated content?

Game makers that provide mechanisms for users to generate their own content, purposefully create a game with an open culture (Salen & Zimmerman 2004, p 538). Some reasons for creating games with an open culture are outlined below:

  • it can increase the permeability of games and the power of the game experience (Salen & Zimmerman 2004, p. 539)
  • it can increase the meaning of the game to the player through its association with other activities (Salen & Zimmerman 2004, p. 539)
  • this emergent behaviour can extend the borders of the game (Salen & Zimmerman 2004, p. 539). For example, more than just players of Trackmania would be exposed to the game through user-created content such as the 1K Project
  • user-generated content can extend the life of a game or even revive a game. Probably the most well-known example of this is Counterstrike which is a multiplayer modification of Half-Life (Sotamaa 2003).
  • it builds a participatory culture (Sotamaa 2003)
  • it keeps those that love the game committed and engaged. People like to be able to progess their interests and take them to a new level. Consider this analogy of a school teacher. When the teacher first starts teaching, he/she is content to be the best possible teacher they can be. After they have being doing this for a while, if they continue to grow professionally, they may not be happy to just be a teacher of students, they may feel the need to become a mentor. Just as becoming a mentor of other teachers can help teachers feel more fulfilled within their occupation, user-generated content can allow the user to grow and feel more fulfilled as a gamer and member of the game’s community.
  • it allows players to create a legacy that is meaningful to them (Digital Trends 2008)
  • it has become more generally expected that users can generate their own content. Just as music has been reinvented by Myspace and journalism has been reinvented through blogs, twitter and other online media, game players are expecting to be able to get into game design (Digital Trends 2008)
  • it provides an opportunity for the company to listen to fans and see what they want (Nutt & Kumar 2008)
  • a commnity can produce much more content than a company would or could afford to do (Digital Trends 2008).

Attributions & References

Digital Trends. 2008. The Next Level: User-Generated Content in Players Only. Digital Trends. Accessed from
http://media.digitaltrends.com/digital-trends/the-next-level-user-generated-content/ on 20/9/2009

Focus Home Interactive. 2009. Trackmania.  Focus Home Interactive. Accessed from
http://www.trackmania.com on 20/9/2009

MiniGod00 2006. YouTube – the 1K Project. Youtube. Accessed from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acwvh-9jzvk on 20/9/2009

Nadeo 2007. Nadeo. Accessed from
http://www.nadeo.com/ on 20/9/2009

Nutt, C. & Kumar, M. 2008. Panel: Why User-Generated Content Matters For Games. Gamasutra. Accessed from
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19029 on 20/9/2009

Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. 2004. Rules of Play – Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press.

Sotamaa, O. 2003. Computer Game Modding, Intermediality and Participatory Culture. University of Tampere, Finland. Accessed from
http://old.imv.au.dk/eng/academic/pdf_files/Sotamaa.pdf on 20/9/2009

Taltigolt 2009. Playing a Very Hard Track by SGCRaider, Youtube. Accessed from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh7kw0v8M7g on 20/9/2009

Track Mania Carpark 2009. Track Mania Car Park. Accessed from
http://www.trackmania-carpark.com/ on 20/9/2009

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Review of Endless Ocean

September 15th, 2009

Review of the game Endless Ocean created by Arika

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

Endless Ocean is a one-player adventure game for the Nintendo Wii.

My Opinion

To be honest, personally, I actually quite enjoyed this game – much more than the star rating that I gave it indicates.  In fact, I managed to play it right through to the end of the narrative, right  through to the discovery of a new species of whale!

The reason for the low star rating is that I do not think many game players would persevere with the game. The biggest problem with the game is the opening tutorials. They take far too long and are too difficult to work through. If it wasn’t for my crazy desire to always be “achieving” something, I don’t think I would have persevered!

I am glad that I did though.  

The Narrative

In the game, you are a scuba diver. You get to go on dives in the ocean and you have your own boat and a diving assistant. The area that you dive in is called Manurai – a ficticious place. Although the place is ficticious, the fish and other ocean-life that you encounter are based on real life ocean-life. As you discover new ocean creatures, they appear in your record book. Your record book is like a sticker book that you can view at any time you are on your boat. The more time you spend with and interact with the sea life, the more you learn about them.

wii-endless-ocean-2290091333_3c7bb9b97f
Above: Getting up-close-and-personal with a whale in the game Endless Ocean.

There is also a story that unfolds around the legends of the Manurai Sea and about the past of your diving assistant.

You receive missions to complete such as taking people on tour dives, taking underwater photos and visiting previously undiscovered areas of the Manurai Sea. You also get to train your own dolphin and can go diving with it.

If you know someone else with the same game and your Wiis are connected via the internet, it is possible to go diving together, although I haven’t used this feature yet.

Designed for affect

The rest of this review explores how the game attempts to emotionally affect players and discusses how it could do this better.

Immersion

One way to affect a player’s emotions is to design an immersive experience. According to Wikipedia (2009), immersion is the “state of consciousnesswhere an immersant’s awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment”. I believe that the tutorials at the beginning of the game will prevent many players from feeling immersed in the game environment. The tutorials are too hard, offer too little reward and take too long. A different approach is needed to be taken here. I believe many players will give up before getting past this section.

Ernest Adams states that there are three main types of immersion: tactical immersion, strategic immersion and narrative immersion.

Tactical Immersion

In Endless Ocean, tactical immersion occurs when the player is searching for a particular sea creature or item in the sea. At that point in time, if it doesn’t take too long to find what you are looking for, that challenge is all-enconompassing. If the search takes too long and the player is not sure how to go about finding the sea creature or item, the tactical immersion will disappear and turn into frustration.

One way the game could have attempted to maintain this sense of tactical immersion would have been to have a “help mode”  whereby if the player is taking too long to find something they could ask for help and some sort of guiding system could be put in place. This could take the form of your assistant trying to guide you using your communication system, your dolphin buddy showing you where it is or even having guiding arrows pop up to help you if you need it. Your assistant does actually offer you guidance sometimes when you dive but I think that system could have been utilised more. I found her hints did not come often enough and I could not always understand how to act on what she was saying.

Strategic Immersion

There is only a small amount of strategic immersion in Endless Ocean. This is one area that the game could definitely improve. It definitely has the potential to be more strategically immersive. Some aspects of the game are around finding new species of fish and other sea creatures and other aspects are around looking for lost relics and treasures on the ocean bed. I’m sure that with just a little bit of tweaking of the game, game elements could be employed to provide more strategic immersion.

Narrative Immersion

As a player of the game, I felt a moderate level of narrative immersion – investment in the story, however, I think this element could also be improved. The story around your mysterious assistant and the past of her father has a lot of potential but I think the story is too slow to evolve.

The character that you inhabit has very little story at all. Maybe this is done so that you can feel that you are the character but given that there is a very limited choice of avatar features and the avatar can only be one gender (female), identification with the character is difficult.

 Tools for Evoking Emotion

 Three tools that games can use for evoking emotion are music and sound, narrative & characters and game play.

Music and sound

The music and sound, especially the music, used in this game are quite effective at evoking emotion. When you dive into the water, peaceful, calming music by Hayley Westenra plays.  The game music is matched very well to diving in the ocean. It makes you feel like the ocean is a very relaxed and soothing place to be.

Narrative

As mentioned earlier, the narrative and characters in the game are a little weak although they have the potential to be much stronger.

Game play

The game play itself has a few facets that can evoke feelings of surprise, wonder, excitement and awe at the beauty of our natural environment. You also feel in some ways, honoured that you have the privilege to see and interact with these beautiful creatures (even though they’re not real!). The game offers a variety of ways to engage in game play but not all options are available at any one time. Perhaps offering some of these more often would work well. Some of the forms of game play within the game are:

  • once you earn your underwater camera, you can take underwater photographs. Sometimes you receive photography assignments for magazines
  • you take people on dives and usually the person you take on a dive will request to see a particular fish
  • you can go diving during the day or the night and explore the ocean
  • you can interact with sea creatures and find sea creatures you have never met before. All of the creatures you have found are stored in your album
  • you are asked to find fish to put on display in an aquarium at a theme park as a way of educating the public about the ocean and the life in it
  • you can go diving and look for relics or ship wrecks
  • you save the life of a dolphin who becomes your special buddy who you can call with a whistle.
  • you can call your dolphin buddy from the boat any time and he will come to you. You can train your dolphin buddy to do tricks
  • you can go diving with your dolphin buddy
  • when you complete a dive and go back on the boat, there will quite often be little guests waiting to meet you on the deck of the ship. These guests include birdlife and penguins.

Interestingly, the list above looks quite extensive and you can see that the game actually offers a variety of gameplay options. However, because this all takes place in quite a linear fashion over a long period of time, the player does not realise how rich the experience actually is.

 Consequences of Interrupted Play

The only cause of interrupted game play is when a player has to leave their game and come back at a later point as the characters do not die in the game and they cannot run out of oxygen while scuba diving – the character is automatically brought back to the boat if she stays out for too long. The game provides a save feature so that you can pick up where you left off. Admittedly, each time you do come back and play, it does take a little while to remember the game controls again (despite having done the long introductory tutorial) and to fall back under the spell of the Manurai Ocean.

Creating emotional immersion

The game progresses in a reasonably linear fashion. I do not think that this is necessary. I think there should be more choice of which goal the player can choose to meet next. Drennan (2009, slide 16) states that emotional immersion is caused by the player surveying the situation, then making a choice, taking an action, getting feedback from the game and then the player reacts to that feedback. I think that at any one moment in the game, the game does not give the player enough choices to make about which action to take. Without the opportunity to make significant choices, the player will not feel emotionally invested in the game.

Raising the emotional stakes

The game attempts to raise the emotional stakes by revealing towards the end of the game that your mysterious assistant’s father died at sea whilst trying to find evidence of a new species of whale he had first spotted years before. When he told the Scientific community about what he had seen, nobody believed him so he dedicated his life to finding the whale again and gathering the evidence required. He died trying to find the evidence. His daughter (your assistant) was seeking to restore her father’s reputation and was hoping that you would help her locate the White Mother Whale and collect the evidence her father never managed to collect. Whilst this was a nice attempt at raising the emotional stakes of the game, the information came too late… and the characters in the game did not have enough depth so they were difficult to relate to and have empathy for.

Any emotion felt by the player in the game was really related to the exhileration and awe at the amazing sea creatures that you meet. As all of the sea creatures (with the exception of the White Mother Whale) are real, it makes you want to go scuba diving or go to Underwater World or something like that.

Stereotypical characters

I must give the game props for not engaging in stereotypical characters – both the character you play in the game and your assistant are average build, capable young women. Unforutnately, the characters lacked depth. Even though the assistant was mysterious and some of the plot was not that predictable, you never felt a connection to the characters.

Does the player care about reaching the goal?

As a player, I did care about completing the goal, however I think this could be because I am a goal-oriented person. For many players, I think that the player would need to be engaged more with the characters and narrative to really feel like they cared about completing the goal.

References

Drennan, P. 2009. INB280/INN280 Fundamentals of Game Design – Lecture 7. QUT.

Wikipedia 2009. Immersion.Wikipedia. Accessed from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_(virtual_reality) on 16/9/2009

Attribution

Image used under creative commons licensing. Image downloaded from http://flickr.com/photos/leff/2290091333/  on 4/9/2008

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