The game testing was short but went as expected. There were countless minor flaws, both with my GMing and the game. I wish I had more time to explain the game and also I wish the testing was in front of people who knew each other better. The players did not immediately seek out to hunt the witch, instead they chatted about the questions on the prompts. This may mean that the prompts need to be more revealing. I think the witch was not clear, however, we only got through two nights. I think the voting system worked better than expected because it allowed for late game chaos, which is part of the fun of Burn the Witch, the chaos it will cause. I think this also works as a great metaphor for actual witch hunts. I do think a lot can be fixed easily. The Sheriff is currently too powerful and showing the role card of a player to another player is game breaking. Further, I think there needs to be more ways of finding out who the witch is. I wish we could change the system of testing altogether, as right now it is overcomplicated. Frankly, I wish this could be a Jack Box game rather than a holistic card game. It could also be a combination phone and card game. Which would allow for no GM and no confusion. 

The game I am making will be called Burn the Witch. It is a secret role game where players try to find a witch and burn the witch based on a variety of trials. 

This game will function a lot like mafia with extra tests. It will have a night mode where the witch can curse one to two players, along with other roles acting in way to change the gameplay. In the daytime there will be one test per day where non witch players will receive a prompt and the witch will receive a different prompt.  These tests should create doubt among players who the witch truly is. 

The purpose of this game is to be a fun party game for larger groups. 

The key rules are that no player will reveal their identity, players can burn a witch through a four stick voting system, after five nights the witch will win, by burning the witch the villagers win. I hope this game appeals to all ages but specifically younger audiences, probably college age nerds who want a game to play at large get togethers. There will be a game board, role cards, test cards, and notebooks. The obstacles are minor mechanics like how many days there will be which will need lots of playtesting to determine if the mechanics also work. The more major obstacle is how the games’ testing will work to be effective. 

Schedule 

Rules made/Outline–by meeting with Peter

Rough Game Draft–by testing in class

Final Game–March 10

The game genre I wish to make is a secret role game. My favorites in this genre are Secret Hitler, One Night Secret Werewolf, and Push the Button. These games are characterized by players all with a secret role. For each of these roles I will assign a descriptive title, “the good guys who can’t do anything fun,” “the good guys who have a sort of role,” “the bad guy,” “the bad guy’s compatriots,” and “roles which somewhat break the conventions to make the game more fun.” These games often have a night system, sometimes a sort of trial, and often a way to kill the bad guy. These games derive their pleasure not from the mechanics, usually, but rather from the discourse which surrounds the mechanics. For example, voting in Secret Hitler is not inherently fun. However, it is the anger, the chaos, and the confusion which result from the voting which makes the game fun. A problem I have with these games is that the mechanics are often poor and isolated to a few characters. I intend to make a game which gives more roles to more players. I absolutely hate being assigned a role which has no abilities. My game will give a majority of players something to do. There will probably be the useless good guys as that role is essential to these games, the goal will to be have more roles and mechanics which give the useless players more to do than to just sit around. A good example of this is push the button, which often will sabotage the good guys. This forces the good characters to defend themselves, lest they risk death itself. Another game which I think is interesting is One Night Secret Werewolf. In Werewolf, two players switch roles and may be acting without regard for their actual role. 

I am not much of a board game player, however, there are some which I return to again and again. My favorite of these games is Secret Hitler. I enjoy Secret Hitler because I like games where you are forced to lie, even though I am an absolutely atrocious liar. However, the camaraderie you form with those you trust, only to have that same friendship ripped away in an instant when a player reveals themselves to be Hitler is…chef’s kiss. The second board game I play a lot is Monopoly. Monopoly is a controversial subject at my home, mainly because it takes so long and the late game is less fun than the rest of the game, however I love it for the early game moments. When a player is negotiating properties in order to form a monopoly it’s just fun. A card game I enjoy is Uno. It is a classic. I love playing it on roadtrips because it is fun, random, and everyone knows how to play it. The penultimate game I will write about is Dungeons and Dragons, not because I play it a lot or because I love it but because I just don’t play many board/card games. When I have played DND I have had a great time when it is chaotic and messy and a miserable time when it is narrative driven. Finally, I really enjoy the jackbox games. These games, I will readily acknowledge are video games, however at their core they are just card games which are played through phones. I enjoy these because they are easy to understand, rich in variety, and great for parties. 

The purpose of my CRIT will be to break down the game mechanics in Celeste and how these mechanics tell a complicated and unique story. I want to examine how the game uses very few cut scenes, and very few lines of dialougue, to tell a story. My audience for this CRIT will be people who are interested in games and their mechanics. Playing Celeste will not be a pre-requisite to watch, but it would help. It will be a video essay in the same form as Youtubers like Every Frame a Painting. Mainly an essay, but with visual evidence rather than textual evidence.

This project will take me considerable effort. As an experienced video editor, and former member of the Highlands Ranch High School TV production team, I care a lot about how a video is edited and how it looks and how it sounds. I hope my project will be around 6 minutes long and include various interesting moments. I will use Final Cut Pro X or maybe Adobe Premiere, if I cannot “””acquire””” a new copy of final cut.

As with all video editing projects I plan multiple obstacles. Finding appropriate footage, as I do not have a capture card, along with just the process of editing, as anyone who has edited video can tell you it can be a long arduous process. While I do not have any big projects in the work for other classes, I do have to travel for speech this weekend. So I will have to finish this project before and after the weekend with very little time during the weekend to work on the project.

Overall, I’m hoping with this project I can further my ability to articulate myself on video games. I want to be able to explain to friends why I like games in those constant GOAT game conversations or just Game of the Year conversations (but we all know the game of the year is Super Mario Bros 2 Baybeeee).

I replayed Celeste for about an hour and a half. I am struck, every time I play the game, by how much story is told through actual gameplay. Playing the game tells the story of the work. The game simultaneously uses core engagements through the same mechanics. The game uses challenge and narrative, just by jumping. Of course, it must venture into other modes of engagement. I think the primary purpose of this game is to tell a story about overcoming anxiety, to do that it is an extremely hard platformer. A hard platformer makes the player anxious and the end is often like climbing a mountain. The visual style also starts dark and dim–then by the end you reach the top there is light. Along with this, as you make peace with yourself you are able to gain an extra jump. Everything in this game is telling one story.

However, I would like to note that the game has an easy mode. The game maker wanted the game to be accessible to all, so they invented a mode which makes the gameplay not important. Instead, the creators have said they wanted everyone to experience the story. So even if it breaks the core gameplay–making the game basically impossible to lose–even the most nascent gamer can finish the game. So is the core aspect of jumping even necessary or is it the narrative. The game acknowledges this breaks the game but still provides it–this is curious to me

I have basically been playing Stardew Valley non-stop for the past few days. It is a game I have played in the past but because my girlfriend started playing it, I got really into it again. It’s a weird game because it’s not my usual speed and I wouldn’t describe it as entirely fun. Most of the time its doing very menial things. But in this way it is relaxing. It is, in its own way, a type of great refusal. Unlike the Marcusian call to the wild, however, you are still in your home, still trapped by capitalism, however it is the dream of the calm life on the farm that is appealling about the game. It is very much like the games describes Robin D. Laws because like a game of dungeons and dragons you are placed into a world and have sets of choices you can make that will fundamentally alter your experience. For this reason, the game is entirely up to the player and their “in-game preferences.” If a player loves action games, they can spend all day in the mines fighting slimes. However, it is also accessible. The inchoate player can spend all day farming or feeding their animals just by clicking. I will say that I do often get bored with the game. I am a player who favors a very high level of difficulty and this game has virtually no difficulty. There is almost no fail state–even going bankrupt is not really a possibility. Once your farm is off the ground sometimes it is too much work to follow a plotline through or keep going back to the mines–I have a machine that will make diamonds over and over for free why would I need to go risk losing items in the mines. So the power balance of Stardew Valley is off after the beginning of the game. I wish there were new threats as you advanced. For example, Joja mart could put a farm right next to yours which lowers the price of your crops and the Joja mart farm is manned entirely by robots. The game may be too easy at times, but it still draws me back and is still a fun game.

The Quest I’m currently on is finishing up my degree. It is my second semester senior year and I have already applied to graduate school. While one day I hope to accomplish research on the academic level, right now my focus is improving my writing skills and taking courses which interest me. In this case, I am taking a course on writing games as I greatly enjoy video games. I think I have a pretty good understanding of what makes the gameplay I like. However, I am currently interested in games as mediums for storytelling. As all of us know, games have traditionally been relegated somewhere behind literature in terms of artistic merit. Dialouge is notoriously clunky–“Snake… Do you think love can bloom, even on a battlefield?”–as a result of translation and one million other reasons. I want to see how games are improving on this and how they can continue to improve.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

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The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

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You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

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