APD Week#5 - Play and Force

Youtube: https://youtu.be/h3EkD3ZNoyQ

• Theme

In response to the theme of Play and Force, I created a simple game in which the player controls a dispirited capsule, gets over obstacles and arrives at the checkpoint. Players can control the capsule to go left, right and down but it is not allowed to go up. The capsule is difficult to control because its axis allows rotation. Players’ input on the capsule’s movements, floatage and gravity are considered forces in this play.

• Method

1. I built bricks in Unity to create obstacles.
2. Thought of something unique in controlling to increase the difficulty. (Do not freeze the rotation, let the capsule’s gravity obstruct players. & Going up is not allowed)
3. Executed several times of playtests to see if the intervals between blocks are suitable.

• Context

Era (2015) says force play is one of the most essential concepts in sports games. For example, in ball sports, the input of force amounts will decide how far the ball will go. While in my game, a continuous force on the capsule controls not only its direction but also the distance of movements. The capsule can also draw supports from gravity, floatage and corners between bricks to change the direction.

Human: Fall Flat designs its character’s movement to be pudgy, and toddler-like, this deliberately makes players’ control tricky to create a sense of humour (Dan, 2016). Characters in that game will fall down on the ground because of gravity if the player does not push forces on it. This gave me the inspiration of giving a special moving rule for the capsule and making use of its gravity and floatage.

• Reflection

The process of generating ideas for this week’s theme was hard, but once I decided to make a game about applying forces to get over obstacles, images turned up in my mind. I consider the game concept is promising to extend. To improve it, maybe eliminate the rule of going down because gravity already provides the ability to go down. Make more use of angles and corners of bricks to go forward, use floatage to help skip some obstacles and use gravity to get down.