My passion for dominoes has been rekindled.

I love all sorts of old school games. But I usually forget how to play them if enough time passes me by. So when we played dominoes in class, I really didn't think I would get far. But oh. hoh hoh hoh! I DID! I owned 3/5 times! YES! Such a great way to start off a morning. It was also interesting because we made it our own! Well... actually Allen made it his own. He invented Allening or "Being Allened". Good times. Let's play again!

You won't be in an allen situation for a whole game long!

Ther is an app on the iPad for Mexican train game, I got it and played for a while, I's fun because you can play it anywhere any times just you and the iPad.
But one thing I found is that acturelly you will not be in an "allen situation" for a long time. As I was playing on the iPad, the rule they set makse other people can start a train for you, but people can choose to do this or not. As we started from 12/12 I think when other people is running out of cards to play they will help you.

Fighting Games: Card Game Style

Fighting games like Street Fighter are full-action, real-time combat games that you wouldn't quite expect to work in a turn-based card style format.

http://www.g4tv.com/videos/54456/yomi-hands-on-preview/

One of the creative minds who worked on the Street Fighter project explains the concept. This looks to put an interesting twist on the fighting game genre.

Dominoes and Tri-ominoes

So, class was amazingly fun on Wednesday, and I think we can all say we had fun playing the Mexican Train game. I loved how inventive the game was, just by adding a few little innovations, they made the rather simple game of dominoes really intriguing and unique. I loved how the game forced you to really have a good strategy so you didn't get stuck with high scored pieces, and yet at the same time, threw in enough difficulties that you could still get worked over. The one thing I felt bad for was everyone who pulled an "Allen", that was unfortunate.

The entire time we were playing, I kept thinking about the game I grew up with, Tri-ominoes. I'm fairly certain that our family's copy is down on my parent's boat in California, but I thought I'd show you guys what the game looks like and link the basic description of it. It's not that much different than dominoes, but having your pieces be three sided can make for some very interesting geometric shapes as you play.

Triminoes Description

SNAKE

We've all heard of the game Snake. I believe this is one of the very first cell phone games I've ever played on those old Nokia cellphones back in the day.

The user type I have in mind is a person like myself- who isn't much of a gamer. Someone with a very short attention span. So any how, I enjoy playing these simple games in situations where I have to kill time (ie bus rides, waiting room, etc.).

I like the idea of creating a game that is simple and short.

Elements:
Goal: Eating the apple (i think? its an apple lol)
1. Score based
2. Levels (mazes)
Challenge: Not running into yourself as the snake get's longer
Skill: How quickly you can maneuver around the board

Zombie Killer the Real Deal

Zombie in costume, fully loaded more amo'd Nerf Gun, and we're ready to go.
This is our destination- unfortunately we never made it there:(

PLAN B: Reajustments- Since our starting point was hidden off to the side in the Quad, we tried different strategies to get people to come toward us.

Constraints:
1. We were locked into attracting a specific type of user. (School of Psychology and Business were our starting points and our demographics were the Gamer types- so it was a lot harder to interest the students/passerby's around us)

2. Mid Term week

Zombie Killer TRIAL RUN

Starting off at RED SQUARE (top of the stairs from by george)



First player- a dad!
Reactions: "I've never shot a girl with a nerf gun before- this is pretty fun."
"How far does this go?"

We figured that we needed more pit stops, since people only want to go so far. So, we reajusted to shorter distances.



Look- even the muffins wanted to play ;P

Challenge 1 Recap

So, Challenge 1 definitely didn't go as I expected it to, but that's life, I guess.

I woke up a bit earlier than normal to get my make up done, which is always fun. We had some of the crew arrive early at my house (hanging plasterboard to give our house actual walls again), and so I had tons of fun going out and seeing all of their reactions to the giant gash down my face. I think my favorite reaction from the guys was, "You know, you should really dump that guy if he's going to be cutting into your face like that."

Carefully putting on my helmet so as not to smudge any of the blood, I hoped on the free-way and headed for class. It was great to see that Matt had been able to bring more ammo for the nerf gun, so hopefully we wouldn't have to worry about pantomiming reloading the gun for too many people. Then our assignments were headed out and we surveyed the campus. I was awfully glad we had the extra time before the challenge actually started, because it took us a fair amount of time to find that second check point, hidden in the greenery as it was.

We set up and try to attract attention, but to no avail. I walked out into the Quad a few times, trying to catch passing groups' attention, but most of them were business majors in suits and ties, and much too busy to shoot a zombie. How sad.

Then, no more than fifteen minutes later, we see some of the other team's members coming over and taking pictures. It took us all a few moments to realize that... they had just finished the game. WOW... they were really fast. The rest of my team seemed a little disheartened, but I honestly wanted to see if we couldn't get people to still complete our game as well. Instead, Emily said that she wanted to try it, so I took off running across campus, being fired at along the way. I might have acted up the zombie bit, but that's what makes it all so fun.

All in all, I really enjoyed it. I wish we could have had other students participate, but sadly, no one in our group had social contacts to pull in, and our starting location didn't match our game's strategy with the audience around us. Hopefully for the next challenge, we'll develop an even better strategy! GOOD WORK EVERYONE!

Bejewled!

I love Bejewled! I know almost everybody knows about this game.

But just in case, here's a YouTube link for the game (the narrator is pretty awesome):
http://www.youtube.com/user/Bejeweled?blend=4&ob=5

This game has mass appeal! It evolves to become more difficult as the player(s) become more advanced. An example of this is that when the player levels up, the pace quickens. There are multiple ways to play the game as well. There's the option of beating the clock or racing against it or even racing against a friend (or stranger)! I remember when it was a single player game but it's exciting to see that you can play with strangers, now! ha.ha.

Open sources

Looking up on some games and noticed how some of them are indi-developed or based. A fair amount of these tend to be open-sourced, allowing the able community to edit things of the game or even add their own content. It's an interesting trend that not only allows players to get even more involved with a game they like, but also to add a new experience, further develop the player community, and of course, make a game uniquely your own. This is actually something that could be done back in the traditional game era due to physically tangible components and loose rules, but with the videogame era, rules became more strict and control is limited to... a controller. Getting back into letting players mess around with their games is a great move by game creators. Some companies even encourage and reward it, such as Team Fortress 2: if you make new in-game weapon models and ideas, they might make their way into the actual game.

Gameworks

Hi everyone,

When is everyone available to go to Gameworks?

Every Thursday nights after 10pm is $10 unlimited all night.

I also have a friend working there and I could see if he could help out too. :)

The monday game

First, the weather was great, which made everything prepared working as designed.
I think this game is strongly related with advertising and marketing skills. From the process of your team's development, our idea changed from making attractive things to making people come to us, to go out and move around to guide them to our object.
Also, originally our plan is far more complicated than this one, but finally we realized this is not a show but a game with a win or not at the end. So we came up with this real simple big sign idea.
We win with a little more lucky, looking forward the next project.

scavenger hunt

Glad that the weather turns out to be nice and sunny instead of being cold and rainy. Having the Honey Badger's location at the end of the fountain was hard to get people's attention. Did not see a group of students walking out of the buildings since it was not end of classes yet. We had a few people passing by. Turns out people had midterms and plus it was early in the morning too. One person came to us and was interested. The card was kind of hard for her to hear our message since it was a bit windy outside. Good thing we wrote on the information on the side just in case. The parts I like about this scavenger hunt was having huge bright signs to get people's attention and a prize too. :) Good job Honey Badgers! Also, great job to Nyan Cat group too! nice visuals and signs. It looks fun and entertaining!

We're a fun class!

I had a lot of fun on Monday not only because my team won, but we all got to interact with other people, it was pretty outside, and we learned Steven is a magician! Good times! I just hoped there were more people outside so that there could've potentially been more of a crowd.

Anyway, here are some things that I think contributed to my team's success:

We were flexible!!

Our card was easily re-recorded which made it easy to change up plans. Allen also had some pre-recorded messages on his phone which he played if the person had any questions. That's a lot faster than writing it down on the go.

Our signs were huge and can be seen from across the ginormous fountain.

We were cohesive.

We all wore yellow, our signs were yellow, our card stand was yellow and adorable.

And... we bribed those early risers with coffee and a QFC card! Free Caffeine + Food = happy college student.

What we could've done differently..?

We could've tried to convince the player to do this favor for us without a real incentive like what team Nyan Cat had going on. It would've been more along the same lines of the virtual game space where the player doesn't win anything tangible.

Overall, this was a fun experience and really helped wake me up!

I'm excited for the final (That sounds kind of lame... but it's a game final!!) !

things to consider

Monday's game was pretty interesting, i think our team did a good job, we worked hard, we made a long way through our first approach to this game. i would say that our zombie plan was a gambling. Either someone plays it and we win this game in several minutes or no one want to join and we lose. we had bad time and place. first, 9 am in the morning on Monday in midterm week, i guess no body wanna play a chasing game at all. second,we start from quad which among the buildings of arts and literature. Believe me ,it is hard to find a men dressed in formal suit to play chasing zombie.the famous Warcraft map DoTA was invented in cse labs instead of an art student's table

Well played, Nyan Cat

Having our game go through successfully was certainly satisfying, and it was really fun working with the Honey Badger team. We certainly came a long way from our cardboard cut out sign and individual game pieces. Though our participant was eager to run through the trials of our game, I wonder how we could have improved our idea had we neglected to utilize networking in our strategy.
Our use of signage and electronic messaging was different from the usual sort of advertisements Red Square frequently displays for various campus activity. I liked how we made giant yellow signs, however we could have made them larger! That may have grabbed more attention. I am curious how we can avoid the awkward factor of the game: we can't talk or give very much instruction, so I think strangers were a little hesitant to partake in our game for fear that our strategy was fake. Perhaps more explicit instruction on smaller signs or messages?
Our next challenge will provide for a more interesting interaction with UW students and I hope that the motives and strategies we've discovered in this first trial will help in the second!

Honey Badgers are straight up Gs...

We'll see how this all goes down on Monday morning.



I hope it doesn't rain!!

(I hope we win, too)

Tearing apart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plz-bhcHryc

Man, I hope the other team doesn't dislike us or anything. I feel bad having to be all secretive about the game, and wondering if we'll end up trying to sabotage each other during the challenge. I think an important aspect to keep in mind is sportsmanship and general fun-interaction from all players in a game. It's something that's usually out of control for the game controllers and varies from player to player, but it can dramatically affect a game experience.

Scavenger hunt

"I'm a honey badger and I don't give a sh*t!" lol Honey Badger spirit!1!!

That is weird that the video is blocked on Facebook....I wonder why...o_O

Hope for a sunny day for scavenger hunt!

Practice Test of Challenge 1

So on Wednesday we had to go out and practice our ideas for Challenge 1, moving an object across the campus without touching it. We'd spent a good amount of time discussing this back on Monday, and we thought we'd come up with a pretty good idea, but to save the security of our exact idea, we only brought part of our gear for this Challenge, so I wondered if we'd be able to pull it off. We had to go buy a last minute item from the book store, but besides that, everyone had been able to bring what we needed.

Setting up our post, I waited with a sign and tried to attract attention. Thankfully I have experience with sign waving and attracting attention (Thank you Halloween store work experience!) so I certainly didn't lack in the "strange looks from passer-bys" department. Matt hung off to the side, keeping a watch on the scenario and trying to decide if doing a 'demonstration' would help at all, while Athena circled around taking tons of great photos, and Dyo watched over our extra gear.

After what seemed like a good while we finally started getting a few people who read the sign I had, with mixed results. Some folks saw the sign and walked off in the opposite direction, but most of the people who did take the time to read the sign as they walked past either had an awkward smile or actually started chuckling. Apparently the idea of what we were asking was funny? Athena really seemed to enjoy watching the reactions of the people passing by, so she got some great video clips.

Eventually we got someone who was interested enough to try out our challenge, and even put up with my pantomiming to show him how to do everything. He was an older man with his wife, but she got a phone call so he decided to play along with us while she was on the phone, and play he did! We all LOVED his reactions to the game! We were only testing getting from one side of the square to the other, and yet he took our object the entire way across, and really seemed to enjoy himself while doing it. After that we had another two people who took our object all the way across the square; and later when we relocated to going from the fountain to the library, we got a few more people to take us part of the way each time.


All in all, this was a wonderful experience, with a lot of very exciting and rewarding moments. I was blown away by the enthusiasm of some of the people who played along with us, some even going so far as to say that they wanted to make sure they found us on Monday when we do this for real. I can't wait to get the rest of our gear together and do this for real on Monday.

I hope everyone has a good weekend and is ready to go on Monday!

Here's one of my favorite pictures from our practice session. This guy was a champ!

Hmmm...

Since we're supposed to be secretive about what we want to go down for our next project, I figured I'd just be super vague. These'll just be notes to myself (and my future team <3)

C.O.L

Noms?

Slip n' Slide

4th of July!

Kind voice

Pzazz

Robin Thicke?

Bad people.

Ok!

Wednesday Class

Hello! I've had some questions about what we did on Wednesday so I'll fill anyone interested who wasn't there!
Firstly, we all were required to bring in 3 rules to incorporate into a game of "Life". The rules we had to come up with had to involve how an object of the game maneuvered around the board, how it duplicated/populated itself within the game, and how it killed opponents. When we assembled together for Wednesday, we combined our rules together to make one game; this is where the fun happened! My favorite game was the one created by Matt and Celeste involving cats, mice, and dogs. Each animal had it's own set of rules to abide by throughout game play, and once the players understood the rules, it was fun to see the game turn into a living organism.

I thought this was a really interesting exercise that allowed individuals to explore another intriguing aspect of game play where the smallest selection of restrictions can drastically alter how both people interact with the game and how individual pieces of the game function. Something to consider for Monday??

As for Monday, we'll be splitting into groups and devising a method in which to move an object from one point of campus to another. Monday will only involve us planning, and Wednesday will be the day we implement.

LOOKING FORWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Make everyone happy

When I am creating a new game," How to make everyone who is playing the game all happy" is the thing always in my mind.
But this does not mean making the game to be something you can't have a winner in the end. But how to make the looser also fell fun, and even happy to be a "prey" is really hard, sometimes a next round priority can help but sometimes not.
Any of you have a better idea? Or have some good examples?

Encouraging people to lose

Well not really lose, but "die" in-game. Also not encouraging, but possibly "rewarding" or "providing incentive".

This game I'm keeping up with called "Dragon's Crown" is an online RPG side-scroller beat-em-up. Players can level their characters, gain items, and become more powerful. An interesting mechanic the game uses is that if your character is slain, their corpse will drop and other people online can find that pile of bones in their game. If they take it to a shrine, they can revive that player as a powerful NPC to assist them.

But how do you encourage a poweful player who probably won't die easily to willingly look the other way while an enemy kills them? Fame. In-game, powerful players will get their names known as a result of this system.

More info can be found here: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/06/15/your-characters-reanimated-corpse-can-appear-in-another-players-dragons-crown-game/

Catan and wednesday's game rule

I have been sick for the entire weekend, its really unusually to catch cold in summer.The Catan game last Wednesday was really fun. i kept thinking about why Catan-kind game becomes the main stream of the board game market? My opinion is that these games really did an awesome job to make players interact with each other instead of just using strategy to beat others. I remember there was an old game called D&D(I think everybody whats this is ), that game was so complicated that you need 25 dices and a calculator to actually play it,but still there were massive people play this game. One player plays Dungeon master, and other players need to pass through it. when people play it , there were no fixed rules from the game itself but from the dungeon master, and this gives the players the chance to talk, to interact, to negotiate with others. And I think this is a great element and we can use this in our game,

P.S you should go check out D&D, that game really improve your communication and calculation~

http://catan.wikia.com/wiki/Advanced_fan_scenarios

Really excited to know there are so many different cantans
Some of them are really having different rules and ideas from the others'.

Maybe we should creat our onw ART 360 catan, put it on market and make some money! Comment me if any of you whants to do this.

Catan!

Mcdonald's Catan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcvGw5Cv1Fk

Movie Preview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaKluKGRucw&feature=related

Quelf

Has anyone played it before? It is an awesome party game for 5-8 players. You get to do random and funny things such as stunts, singing, quizzes, etc. It is kind of like Mario Party, but in real life ;]

One of the characters in this Quelf game is a Pickle...... ^__^ yeah it is that random.

Catan, the videogame?

I was looking up info on the Settlers of Catan game and found that one of its publishers is in Japan. The Japanese publisher is Capcom, a big name in video game companies. I found it interesting that they also make videogames, yet also distribute other types of games. It makes me want to look more into the other products that many of my favorite videogame companies produce and distribute, as it would be fun to find new games that I would never have heard of otherwise.

Also, there IS a Settlers of Catan videogame, simply called "Catan". It's not produced by Capcom, but it's on the XBox Live Arcade. And it's been available since 2007.

Supply and Demand...

Playing Settlers of Catan on wednesday was a highly enlightening experience for me. It had easily been two years since the last time I'd had a chance to play the game, so I was looking forward to it. What I didn't count on was how insanely competitive our class is. Some games of Settlers that I've played have been so laid back that you almost couldn't tell that anyone was trying to win, but that certainly wasn't the case here; because between my partner's wheelings and dealings, and everyone else's infectious enthusiasm, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

After having spent yesterday down at the Red, White, and Dead Parade in Fremont, I'm now pulling out my Go board and pieces to figure out my three rules for wednesday's class. Hope everyone is having a good time figuring out their own three rules! I am stoked to see how it goes when we all combine these for our own modified "Game of Life".

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Wednesday Fun!

When I heard that we were going to play "The Settlers of Catan" last Wednesday, the first thing that popped into my head was of Chris Kattan (tumblr_lj0hw7qjyd1qetts3o1_400.jpg) formerly of SNL! I've never actually played the game before so I was kind of just going off the image in my head, which turned out to be very inaccurate.
But anyway... when Wednesday rolled around and we all started to hear about the wonders of Catan, I was really confused. I mean I was just lost in the rules so much that I just decided to just go along with whatever comes along. But after a few rounds of sheep collecting and road building, I got pretty into it. I think the most fun was haggling with the other teams and acting like having a brick, stone, and wood would just complete our lives as settlers.
Overall, Settlers of Catan is a fun game and I hope we play again!

Table of Catan?

Perhaps we should really look into this? http://www.tableofcatan.com/

I thoroughly enjoyed playing "The Settlers of Catan" with everyone. That's an interesting strategy game, and I'm hoping we try and play a little longer next time. This game reminded me of what could have been an expansion pack to the Oregon Trail back in grade school. Oregon Trail always built up the excitement of getting to Oregon and players needed to be strategic in their preparation and organization of resources. The perils and obstacles that came with the journey from the scurvy, broken axle's, and to the rattlesnake bites only strengthened the desire of my 4th grade friends to reach the promise land of Oregon Territory. Once we got to Oregon, the game ended and the revelation that the thrill of journey was the entire point washed over our impressionable and youthful minds. Needless to say, it was anticlimactic. I'm glad we have a game like Settlers of Catan that fills the void and furthers the strategy and entertainment of constructing our own communities.