APD Week 9 - Play & Rule

Theme: Play & Rule

Context:

As I have introduced in class, I want to explore a game mechanic relate to “Rule changing” likes Baba is you.

Method:

Unity

Response:

I got into a wrong direction at the beginning of this project. I focused on mechanic too much rather than find out what is the RULE I want to change in my game (I will mention this in Reflection part). After I got inspiration by keep playing game, I moved to correct way. I realised   any object has its own meaning and cognition. Those cognitions of objects make up the rule of the game, but people always ignore them because they are so common.

Finally, I made this prototype which is also an experimental of my idea. Player in this game can change the meaning of object. Player can absorb the “meaning” of an object and use it to replace the “meaning” of other objects. Like what I have designed in first level – Water’s meaning is flowing, Wall’s meaning is static. If player put “Flowing” to Wall, then the wall will move away.

Reflection:

I have considered very long time about “What is rule” in a game. Normally we treat the mechanic as the rule. For example, we know the rule of Snake game is “pick up target and avoid touch snake’s body/walls”, we know the rule of Tetris is “clear lines and avoid block stack over the top line”. These rules are the core of the game. Change the core rule also means the game has changed which is not what I am looking for. This question troubled me few days until I got inspiration from game Zup!. I suddenly realised rule is not just “how to play” or the mechanic. It could be how we think about things/objects. For example, if we find a wall in a game which we first time play, we still know this wall is used to prevent player from passing through although no one tells us. This is our cognition and designer used this cognition. In the other hand, those cognitions become “RULE” in game. We follow those rules although no one has mentioned it.