Scotland Yard
Yesterday I played a very interesting board game called Scotland Yard, which is all about team-coordination and working together. Scotland Yard is a game about cops chasing down a spy through London. What makes the game so interesting is that it pits one player against the rest.
One player assumes the role of Mister X, the master spy, who has to avoid getting caught by the police for a set number of turns. The other players take the roles of cops who have to chase him down. Both Mister X and the cops travel by public transportation (taxi, bus and underground) between different stations on the map. The cops are represented by different coloured pawns, only the location of Mister X is unknown to them. He writes his location and where he goes on a sheet of paper and only reveals his location every 5 turns. The only thing the cops know is his last revealed position and what kind of transportation he uses, with this information they have to puzzle together where Mister X might be hiding to catch him.
Scotland Yard is a so called asymmetrical cooperation game, the way Mister X and the cops play is very different from each other. It’s very important that the cops work together and coordinate their movements, however Mister X plays alone and can use this information to plan his own movements. This makes for a very interesting game of cat and mouse, where both teams try to anticipate the movements of each other. The game also facilitates to different kinds of players, if you like cooperation games you can become a cop, if not, you choose the role of Mister X. Also the difficulty is much lower when you are a cop because you can rely on the advice of your teammates. The game allows two different kinds of players to play together, catering to the needs of both of them. This might make Scotland Yard a very interesting source of inspiration for our project.
Jill and I went out for a fun karaoke night on Thursday evening. We were excited for this “happening” the entire week, so we decided to find out why we liked embarrassing ourselves in public while singing old 80’s and 90’s hits and wearing wigs so much.
The first thing we noticed is that everyone that’s present in a karaoke-bar is there to make a little bit fun of themselves. People want to have an enjoyable time with nothing to worry about but the lyrics of the songs. No-one takes themselves too seriously.
What’s also fun about karaoke is when you recognize a song which you know the lyrics of. “I know this one!!!” is something you hear all night long. It’s as if people remember songs they forgot about years ago.
So Jill and I decided to make Thursday evening an official karaoke night.
Game Insight: The Thing
By: Nick Bijl
Date: 27-02-‘15
This week I played the game ‘The Thing’ on my PC.
The game itself is pretty horrific because there is something out there, but you don’t know what it is. All you know is that you arrived in Antarctica because you have to investigate the disappearing of a research team. Especially the beginning of this game is very thrilling because you find all kinds of clues of what is going on but you can’t figure out exactly what.
You play in third person the personage of mr. Blake. He is a researcher and tries to solve the mystery.
In this game, you have to cooperate with your team members because everybody has their own specialties. You have three classes of people which are the soldiers, the engineers and the medics. The main character possesses all kinds of skills obviously.
‘The Thing’, what you will find out, is an alien-like entity who can simulate to be human. It can absorb people and steal their identity and duplicates itself it that way in order to take over the world.
Also aliens can act natural and blend in amongst the survivors. At any given time your team-members can turn into an alien (or monster).
That’s why all the survivors are suspicious towards each other. Trusting an alien can cost you your life, so that explains the behaviour of all people. You can earn the other peoples trust by handing out weapons, ammunition and medication. In return they provide cover and they will take your orders.
Back to Blake. You determine his actions, you manage your team and you are looking for clues. The further you
What makes the game fun:
+ Great storyline.
+ Managing your team, earn/keep their trust.
+ You have to be very alert on the behaviour of your team members.
+ Looking for the clues is fun.
+ The characters in the game are very convincing and come across as real people with real feelings/doubts.
+ Very thrilling.
+ You have to play tactical at most times.
+ You have a sense of freedom in this game; You can go where-ever you want.
What isn’t that good in this game:
– When you can’t find certain objects (like keys) you can really get lost in the level. You don’t get clues in this game in the form of waypoints.
– When you die, you don’t return to the last checkpoint, but you start all over again at the beginning of the level. If this happens, you have to return to the main menu to start again at you last checkpoint which is annoying.
– If you don’t like shooting/horror games, then this is no game for you.
Portal 2
This week I decided to play Portal 2, one of my favorite video games of all time. In Portal 2 you play a human guinea pig who is forced to participate in a serie of tests for the Aperture science centre a corporation run by an evil robot called Glados. All these tests revolve around a new invention called the portal-gun, a device that shoots portals that connect one space to another. The basic premise of these portals is that if you go in one, you come out of the other. This may seem simple, but it makes for some mind bending puzzle’s.
The game starts with simple puzzles, where you have to get on top of something by shooting a portal above it or you have to knock something over by placing a portal behind it. But very quickly new elements get introduced, like jump pads, laser beams and companion cubes. Before you know it, you’re flying through the air while shooting portals and avoiding laserbeams.
The gamedesign in Portal 2 is near perfect. Throughout the game you learn new things and new elements get added until the very end. This makes the game very engaging and rewarding. The puzzles all have that satisfying “eureka” moment, where you get stuck for a few minutes and then suddenly realise what the solution is. This combined with a fun and smartly told story makes for a great puzzle game that almost everyone can enjoy.
However I didn’t even mention my favorite thing about Portal 2, multiplayer! You can play Portal 2 with two players at once, where you each control a testing robot of the Aperture science centre. Both players are equipped with a portal-gun which means, double the fun! If you thought 2 portals could be mayhem, wait until you have 4 of them. I played all the levels together with my brother and after a while we worked together like a finely tuned machine. The multiplayer requires really close cooperation and coordination. For example, in one level one player has to fall down an endless loop of portals to build up speed, after which he gets launched in the air by the second player who shoots another portal. It is immensely satisfying when you solve a really hard puzzle together and when you perform all the necessary steps perfectly. Even if you’re not really into video games give this game a try, it is in my opinion the absolute best the medium has to offer.
Date: 27-02-15
Game: Alien Swarm
Alien Swarm is an online topdown shooter for the computer. Your goal is to make it to the end of each level without dying. Every person in the team has its own skills and weapons to clear obstacles in the level.
Killing Aliens
A fun part of the game is the killing of the aliens. It’s fun to kill bad guys in games. When you kill the aliens they also explode, which makes it even more fun.
Skills
There are 4 types of classes in the game. To need to combine the different types of classes have the greatest succes in a level. For example: The medic can heal other players and the technician can hack into computers. You can clear the levels without a technician, but you need to find a more difficult way to finish the level. It’s fun to work together in a team. You feel like you really did something for all of the players that other people can’t do, if you help with your special skills.
The different classes in the game
Interaction with other people
You need to talk to the other people in the game to clear the level in a good way. This interaction is really fun and a lot of times when 2 players are dead, they will just talk to each other to kill the time. The interaction makes it feel like you are realy playing a game with other people, even though you are not even in the same room or even the same country. You can also meet a lot of people that you wouldn’t normally meet.
Yes, I can definitely say that the Cootie Catcher is something I missed but didn’t know until this week. Me and Anne spent the noon creating Cooties and enjoyed it. Creating Cooties is almost just as fun as play with it. In the preparations you can come up with crazy ideas and start creating them. We could also test them easily and fast, so we strolled trough the MediaLab to find co-workers who dared to play..
Today we got the Swinxs. The swinxs is a dutch game console for kids. It has feedback in form of sounds and color, but no further interface. We are going to test the Swinxs with the kids at the school and see how much they like it.
For more information about the Swinxs:
http://www.swinxs.com/
Game Insights – Week 2 – Game ‘Red Alert 2’
By: Nick
Date: 20 – 02 – 2015
This week, I played the game ‘Red Alert 2’. This is a computer game where you control your army and you have to command your troops in order to conquer the world.
Before you begin the game you have to choose a country. Every country has his own specific army with their own strengths and weaknesses. This makes it a game where you have to really play strategically.
You have to make choices to get your army as strong as possible. To create an army you need to buy buildings and factories who facilitate this. In order to do that you need tractor-like vehicles (The so-called harvesters) who will earn you money. With this money you can expand your ‘war park’.
What makes the game fun is:
– You are the manager of your own base, your army depends on you.
– You have to outsmart the other opponents, what gives you a mighty feeling if something works out
in the way you foresaw and overpower your opponent.
– You have to discover terrain to locate your enemies, what is exciting in a way.
– You have to plan your offensive and defensive tactics. This gives you the feeling that you are an
essential factor in this game.
– You have to react and anticipate to the actions of your enemy.
– It’s possible to raise or lower the difficulty level, this keeps the game challenging. Also it is possible
to play numerous maps, that makes it fun too. Generally it is possible to adjust the game to your
likings.
While I was thinking about games this week I thought of FlappyBird. This game was an instant hit and I did play it for a while. The first thing to ask yourself is why you keep playing a game over and over again. I have a simple answer, it’s because of the simplicity. The only thing you have to do is tap the screen. So I gathered some games where you only have to.. Tap the screen! Because well, tapping is fun.
Aa (ff, th, uu, rr, sp, au, ao, rl)
Bam-fu
Piano Tiles
Run Bird
Poke the Pig
Date: 20-02-15
Game: Red Alert 2
Red Alert 2 is a multiplayer real time strategy game for the Computer.
Why is Red Alert 2 fun?
Competitive
Red Alert is a very competitive game. It’s fun to play with friends. You can see who is the best when you play a game with your circle of friends.
Tactical
The game is also very tactical. You can be really creative in the ways that you attack or defend a base. There are multiple ways to win the battle. When you combine the units in a good way, you can make a really good attack or defense plan.
Creative
You can’t just simply build 100 of the same unit, because the enemy can use defensive tactics to stop your attack. You can attack from land; air and from water. If you combine these, you can make it really hard for the enemy to stop your attack. You can do lots of different types of attacks by combining groups of units. You can make a really armored army that will only destroy the base or you can attack from a distance and defend the long range units with stronger units.
