Fall 2006
Team Members: Chelsea Howe, David Lavender, Elliot Pinkus
Advisor: Mohan Rajagopalan
The Experimental Gameplay Project’s goal was to encourage creativity and originality in game design by removing some of the factors that get in the way of innovation. Most games are intensive semester-long projects where the large majority of time is spent on development. The structure of our project was based around spending only two weeks per individual game. This allowed us to focus on the design process rather than long-term development. With a small team of three students and a faculty advisor we were able to work closely together on each design. Each game had a basic prototype developed to aid in the design process. The games were each based around a different theme chosen by one of the group members.
The first game we developed was “Happy Galaxy,” based around the theme of “Aging.” “Happy Galaxy” features a galaxy of stardust and stars imbued with human-like traits. The stars age over time until their eventual nova. The player interacts with the galaxy by creating gravity wells to draw stars together thereby combining their masses to affect a stars “happiness” rating. The goal is to perpetuate the galaxy as long as possible.
The second game was “Valkyrie” based on thinking “Backwards” about gameplay. We designed a mystery adventure where over the course of six hours, a series of murders occurred. After examining a limited amount of rooms, time progresses backwards in hourly increments. The player must use clues in the environment to discover which characters are responsible for which murders, and whether the killer was justified in their actions.
Next was our “Sleep” game, titled “STFU.” This game treats sleep on two different levels. The player takes the role of the “hand of god” ruling over a study lounge environment with the goal of putting all the present students asleep without the “hand” succumbing to sleep. As the player becomes drowsy, sleep effects begin to occur conveying the experience of sleep.
The theme “Strings” gave us the idea of developing a board game. The player must traverse a peg-board with strings of varying lengths before their opponent can do the same. The inherent properties of strings allow the players to block each other from movement through creating strategic tangles.
Our final game was themed “Echoes.” Similar to a “Simon” the player must recreate a series of pitches, but through the echoes of bells. Each bell has a different echo rate the player must discover and use to recreate the sequence they hear.
Screenshots
