APD Week 9 - Play and Rules

Theme:
Rules are an agreement between participants in an activity. Language is a set of rules used to govern verbal, gestural and symbolic communication. HTML is a set of rules which software engineers have agreed upon that allows the passing of information between programs which operate the internet. Rules function best when they are understood but they are also frequently changing and adapting to new contexts.

Key Questions:

• Can the discovery of intentionally obscured game rules be fun?

Context:
I am particularly interested in a form of games often referred to as nomic games. Peter Suber, in his book The Paradox of Self Amendment explores the idea of a game he called Nomic, which is essentially a set of rules which allow themselves to be changed. It is common to amend rules in games, particularly non-digital games such as Dungeons & Dragons, in which I tend to employ a range of “home rules” depending on the group I am playing with.

This idea of adjusting rules led me to consider making a small puzzle game in which the goal is to discover the rules, upon which the puzzle would be quite easy to solve. I wanted to explore the idea that the discovery of rules can be a satisfying experience in itself.
 

Method:
I brainstormed 6 statements I could apply rules to in the game. (Below. Spoilers.) Then I began working with 3 of them to create a rule for each other statement they may be paired with in the space. The aim is to have a simple visual interface with a couple of images and a couple of statements. The player must figure out what they must do to get a correct answer by experimenting.

For example, the player is presented with an image of a baby and a beast. Below these images are 2 statements; “Shake the Baby”, “Feed the Beast”. As the player moves the phone a coloured bar grows from the bottom of the screen according to how hard they shake. Shaking too hard will cause the bar to become red, the “Shake the Baby” statement to turn red and they will lose the level. Shaking until the bar is green and keeping it there for 3 seconds will cause the “Shake the Baby” statement to turn green, indicating it is correct. Touching and holding either image on the screen allows the player to drag the image  around the screen. Dragging the baby into the image of the beast will indicate an incorrect answer, dragging the beast onto the baby however is the correct answer.

• Push the nose
  • Baby - Push
  • Beast - Don’t push (do others first)
• Shake the baby
  • Nose - Shake threshold orange/red
  • Beast - Shake threshold green
• Feed the beast
  • Nose - Drag object onto beast
  • Baby - Feed (drag onto) to another object
• Open the window
• Throw the gremlin
• Pop the puppy

Reflection:
The game isn’t working yet. Half of the code is written and the images are there but the rules aren’t working yet. It’s hard to make a final judgement on the work yet but with a few more hours of work it will be complete.

I chose a very simple, mostly black and white aesthetic to keep the focus on the rules and I think that is paying off. I will be interested to see what others think of this game.

References:
https://nos.twnsnd.co/
https://pixabay.com/
Nomic from Peter Suber, The Paradox of Self Amendment http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm