Entry Yellow: Week 4

Experience:

This week I played for the first time, Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment on the PS Vita; this game is considered an RPG. Right as the game starts you get to customize your character, which is preset as Kirito the main protagonist. There really wasn't much that could be changed about him that wouldn't still make it him. Yes, the name, hair, hair color, and eyes can be customized but a lot of the hairstyles are one's that he's had before; and, you're stuck as a white guy. The voices also aren't too far off, even if slightly different--which overall really felt more like the game was allowing you to just customize your own version of Kirito? I found this to be a little pointless and went with just his default look. My thought at this moment was, *sarcastically*,

"Well if you just wanted me to be Kirito--why didn't you say so?"

I truly dont have an issue with a game forcing you to be a specific character nor if they allow you full customization; but, the problem was that it felt like they tried to find some middle ground of still forcing you to be Kirito without directly doing so? I think I would've enjoyed it more had I been able to chose a different character that already exists in SAO, like Asuna. I want to keep this in mind for my own games, that its better to be a bit more decisive in what I want for the players--because simply adding customizability without a purpose defeats the reason to have it. Having it where a player can choose who they want to be in your world--means doing just that. But by this point I truly have no idea where they plan to take the story, in typical SAO fashion so I want to see if they do have a bigger reason behind this.

The cutscene takes place where you're aquainted with Phillia and you two have to fight off the Skull Reaper. Admittedly, the tutorial had a lot to digest as there are a lot of functions you're working with--but I wouldn't be surprised if that eventually irons itself out once I adjust to the gameplay. After the battle you get to run around freely and there are enemies casually walking about. I really enjoyed this aspect because they chase you around in the same way Pokémon do in Sword/Shield, although this game came out beforehand. It definitely forces you to stay present in the game as if you catch the attention of enemies you can get thrown into a battle. For my games, there are several aspects in here that I want to learn from and continue to see how they do it. For instance, the team fighting--I want to implement this into one of my own games so I want to see how it progresses as I gain more teammates; and being able to set commands on the fly was a really nice perk too.

Exercise:

*Pick one of these activities: snowball fight; staring in a school play; working at a theme park; 
*Now, brainstorm a game that could create this experience. List the parts of your experience are essential. 
*List the aspects of your experience can be dropped from the game. Describe a game or list the key features of a game that would create this experience

I've chosen the snowball fight as my activity. When I think of the experience, I imagine snow falling, winter clothes, hot beverages, and snow covered ground. My game ideas for this are:

Single player, with possible multiplayer features. The setting is outside in the snow while your character is in the foreground and the enemy player in the background, both with small snow forts that you can use to duck behind if needed but doesn't give too much covering. The weather starts out calm, as your main objective is to win the snowball fight. Likely with a health bar. Winning will mean depleting their health bar entirely while losing means they've depleted yours. This will require dodging snowballs getting thrown at you and throwing your own. But other items will randomly spawn in such as a water gun that shoots hot cocoa and temporarily can prevent the enemy from having any snow nearby to throw around. Probably a few more special items that can be used, maybe one would be to stun the enemy temporarily. Another that can give a small health boost.

As the game progresses the weather will turn into a storm, creating more snow; which means, the enemy will have more snowballs to throw, quicker, and regenerate snow quicker. And maybe if you or the enemy stays crouched for too long, during this weather condition, you will turn into frozen ice temporarily and get a slight health deduction.

I really enjoyed having to brainstorm for this activity as it, to me seems to be a bit realistic. I think most game designers, if not all, really enjoy the idea of designing your own game concepts but there may also be times where compromising and having to work with someone else's ideas, becomes a must. I enjoyed the challenge and it makes me wonder what other directions I could've taken the idea or what I could add to it to make it a bigger game and not a cute computer game or app. Or how I could expand on the multiplayer aspects.