Crankycorvid

For my final project, I will be doing a presentation and demonstration in speedrunning. I've become interested in the technical and inner workings of the process, and how much people get invested in this sort of hobby. From the outside looking in it looks super difficult to get into, but if you pick games that have short run-times, it can actually get really addicting! I want to show how easy it is to get into doing runs, and how friendly the community is. There's tons of resources out there, free tools, and friendly people who are more than happy to help folks ease into learning how to speedrun any given game. Its so cool to see how whole communities form over not just speedrunning, but speedrunning a specific game. It's such an interesting niche of gaming culture. Not only that, but its interesting to watch how streaming has both helped and hindered the development of speedrunning as a whole. While it has brought people together and helped runners make an audience f...

       Our game comes under the title of Sneaky Sphinx, and is a 2d platformer where you play as Sheera, a sphinx breaking into a ruin and taking the artifact that lies within. She will have to avoid stone guardians, on the prowl and in the sky, who won't think twice about kicking her out! Confront them with your versatile wings or find a safe route around your enemies. Controls are simple: arrow keys or wasd to move and x to attack (attack has not been implemented to the build yet).  That is the vision of the game, however so far it has only progressed art-wise, such as the enemy animations showcased above. We have major issues with setting up the enemy AI and having the camera move vertically, which is really the two big roadbloacks to constructing the levels. We also had some collision issues with the new tiles, but a little bit of tweaking seemed to fix the issue. For now, we really want to get both enemies to prowl scripted areas, but something see...

Our game is called Sneaky Sphinx. I work as both designer keeping track of the assets in-game, as well as designing and drawing the assets for the 2d platformer. Overall, players responded with mixed reception. Everyone wanted a larger level and overall to see the concept pushed, both in art and in gameplay. Cassidy thought the visuals and movement for the main character were great, and thought that the game's design should push for an Egyptian temple or pyramid aesthetic rather than a cave. She did understand intuitively that the statue was to be avoided, and tried to jump over it. She said she would have liked it if the statue tried to shoot a lazer from its eye. She also pointed out that the camera was all over the place, and would move all over the place each time the character turned. Shi Yao also liked the visuals and background music. They found some issues with the character getting stuck when falling, so fixing the colliders on the sphinx would have to be address...

In today's session we played and observed a handful of games from a list. The majority were fairly short and simple, but others really needed extra time to appreciate. I wanted to experience the whole game within the timespan of the allotted time, and went for shorter games. Many of these smaller scale games were either small in scale and more of a demo, or short so that the maker could make that one small game shine. I found that Jurassic Heart and Manbat were both on the simpler demo side of things, though Jurassic Heart does feel somewhat like a contained refined gem. But what I think really makes these games stand on their own despite being short is that their premise is ironic and endearing. What I mean by this is that Jurassic Heart is a dating sim with a stage shy t-rex sweetiepie, and Manbat shows a bat therapist talking to monsters about how to be more scary and help with the other life problems they have. It has a very Nightmare Before Christmas vibe, with that non-seri...

Spider Pit, a dummy name for the project, is a game where two players set their gladiators against one another. Each person controls two gladiators, set on a board shaped like a spider web. The players move their pieces around, trying to attack the other's pieces. But placement has to be strategic. Each player's gladiators can have defense buffs if two of the same team's gladiators are next to each other, and likewise two gladiators of the same side can add an attack buff when attacking. But there's more to placement, there's the actual clash initiated by an attacker on their turn if they choose to. When attacking, both players roll die. If the attacker rolls higher, they can attack one of the other player's gladiator. There are three types of weapons that can be drawn as cards: swords, axes, and shields. Swords leave bleeding damage, axes blunt damage, and shields both nullify the attack and do a small counter. The core mechanic here is player elimination, ...

Machi Koro is a both a luck and strategy based game, placing 2-4 players as mayors of their own city, starting with just a simple bakery and a wheat field. It’s competition based, and the winner is determined by who gets all 4 key establishments, a train station, an amusement park, a radio tower, and a shopping mall first. Players roll the die, or dice later on with the aid of the train station, and gain money depending on what cards are activated by the roll. Typically those that give the player more money require a higher roll. Other cards, or establishments, can be bought once per turn, divided into four categories. Blue typically consists of more nature driven environments, such as a mine, a forest, or the wheat field. These are more consistent sources of income. Green cards act the same as blue cards, but only activate on the roller’s turn, while blue cards are activated by other people’s rolls. It’s a nice subversion, and it can make someone's high roll turn against...