PVP Brawl @themonkeyman12 ‘s Mincemeat Mind

Hello internet people. I’ve decided to do another PVP fight with my buddy Dylan yet again! This time around, it’ll be one of his Mincemeat Mind aka a Portal 2 custom map.

Dylan spent a few hours making this, and I even beta-tested this map before he submitted it to be judged by the Gamedevia lord a few month back. He got perfect, so let’s see what a perfect map is made out of!

My method is analysis the game based on the rubric on blackboard, and then I’ll add my own requirement. What I’d like to see changed in a sequel.

All first paragraphs in each section were written before I played the level. This is so Dylan knows where I’m coming from and to let him fully understand my criticism.

Rubric:

Play Time

So creating these maps myself, I felt this was the hardest thing to get right and yet essentially the only thing you need to do. To achieve perfect in here, you need a first completer to achieve a run of 5-10 min. Though this would be my second time theoretically, I noticed some drastic changes from the beta.

I completed it in 10 minutes 31.6 seconds. However I can easily claim that to “Player skill” or the otherwise lack of it.  Though it is over 10 minutes, I’m going to assume the range is 5:00 – 10:59.

5/5 on time, but only just.

Puzzle Complexity

Now to judge the complexity of the puzzle I feel is up in the air a bit and has a little wiggle room. Some people consider first person mazes to be easy, others, not so much. However to get a perfect score via the rubric you require to use a variety of mechanics in a mentally stimulating and satisfying way.  From what I call the ball mechanic was very cool.

This map would have been a lot more complex if there weren’t any antlines from your buttons. Though I feel none of them could have been removed without just adding frustration-based complexity. I do enjoy how you had a tiny bit of everything, and it was more satisfying than it should have been with the ball rolling after completing a step.

5/5 on complexity. Did what was needed, and did it well.

Puzzle Solvability

This is more reliant on your opinion of complexity, where in reality the solvability and complexity go hand-in-hand. The puzzle doesn’t stimulate if I can’t yield a conclusion. Although unless you consider frustrating stimulation in a “satisfying” way

Although I felt that the step progression to get the ball from one end to the other was fairly easy, for the length you were aiming for (a five minute play time), I slipped up more than once, and I’d classify that as an achieved challenge-to-solve level. The only notable complex part for me was seeing the cube receptacle parallel to the upper-cube dispenser.

5/5. I was tempted to give this a 4.5, as half the level was fairly easy to solve. Then I realized he made his own tiny difficulty curve in this 10 min map, and that’s a feat on its own.

Use of Logic Gates

This is the easiest way to get marks for this, as by what the rubric means by “logic gates” is a use of single/multiple input to be changed to a different output.  To get perfect on this however requires multiple gates to be used and for them to complement the puzzle.

As I predicted; every step along the balls route required some form of logic gate. The final step required a semi-advance one. None were useless, which is good to see.

5/5. I don’t know what else I could have asked for.

My Rubric Additions:

Use of Portals

It’s to my understanding that portal levels require an assortment of, well, portals.  At least that’s my opinion. 0) no portals used, 1) there are two white walls, 2) portals are used once in the completion of the puzzle, 3) portals are used a few times in the completion of the puzzle, 4) portals are used a few times in the completion of the puzzle, player & cubes 5) portals are used frequently in the completion of the puzzle, player & cubes

3/5. There were two instances of portals being used in that entire puzzle

Aesthetic touches

Though this is at no means as important as all the others, it needs to be addressed.  Portal is a very gray game in general, however the way the level is laid out should be appealing to the eye to avoid unnecessary confusion. Out of 2: 0) confusing to look at 1) comprehendible, 2) layout is traversable and easily memorized.

1/2. The map’s layout is good, but needs more lighting to be perfect.

Final Thoughts

What I’d like to see in a Sequel

I feel the mechanic of using the ball through the tube is a very neat idea. A new map that consists of your ball coming back, however maybe allow you to interact with the ball, or have it dance around on Ariel Faith Plates. Definitely add more portals to your portal level. Though I understand a 5 min puzzle that involves all that was required and to actually have interesting portal-play is a bit excessive. It would be the only improvement to this map.

Total score 24/27 = 89%

Until next time,

Jordon

Game Atoms – Trine 2

Hello again internet folks, as I mentioned in my previous blog, I’ll be Dekonsting Trine 2. Basically I’m taking the bits I cut up, removing the fatty opinions, and then packaging the lean mechanics, allowing you to implement them safely in your own projects. Though I’ve only romantically known of this title for two days, I can safely say it’s one of the most fun experiences I’ve had all year.

So to leave this intro-short, let’s get to it.

Players

The player character in this game is essentially a single player character, changing between three forms, each having their own health pool. This allows the player many ways to tactically tackle tasks, depending on how they allocated their skills.

The wizard form allows the player to create different sized boxes and – after a skill investment – platforms.  That, in combination with the wizard’s ability to levitate objects, allows you high control of the special game environment. The downside of this form is its inability to handle physical encounters.

The thief form allows the players to shoot specialized projectiles depending on skill point allocation, as well as grapple to available surfaces in the upper 90 degrees from the character.  The thief allows intricate range attacks on enemies, in combination with quickly be able to traverse the environment via grappling hook.

The knight form allows the player to block attacks, and melee attack through barricades. The majority of this forms benefit is being able to traverse the environment safely, but in the slowest fashion. This form you can traverse the bulk of the game with, however can’t complete any of the puzzles itself.

Co-op has two noteworthy modes. One allows the team of two - three to each have their own unique versions of each forms, or for them to have to share the three. If you play the game as sharing the three forms, it feels as a 2D RPG, with a high influence on team-synergy.

Objectives

The game progress physical objectives – this consists of completing each chapter by reaching the furthest right side of the environment, while traversing a series of puzzles. The puzzles require the aforementioned forms, with synchronized use of their skills.

Exploration – Throughout the environment lies Easter-egg like chests that give the player concept art of lore-poetry for acquiring them. Some of them are very obvious to get, where some of the more complex ones require a bazar turn, or a crucially placed explosion. This gives exploring the beautifully built environments a reason to be explored top-to-bottom.

Leveling – as mentioned, there are skills you require to unlock to complete some of the puzzles. To get the experience you need to level, you require these blue orbs that are spread around the level similar to the placement of Mario Coins. After collecting 50 orbs, this grants you a skill point. There is no leveling curve, as it is always 50.

Rules

One of the main and only rules of this game is the occasional need of a high-tier skill in an early game chapter. This makes it so you require to re-play the chapter after you get the skill, to get the loot behind it.

Resources

There are two primary resources in this game:

Health – That being what makes your forms die or not, while having all three of your forms die means game over. This resource replenishes via check points and via health-packs rarely found within the level.

Blue Orbs – This allocates to experience, which is required to better improving your character. Though the mechanic of gaining orbs is more of a treasure hunt than killing enemies, this way of leveling up feels more controlled by the developer than the player.

Game State

The last checkpoint you’ve reached, your characters skill tree, all of the chests you’ve ransacked, which orbs you’ve collected, and what chapter you’re on would be a required state to save. If any of those were lost or unrecorded, the gameplay would suffer significantly.  If the player didn’t have their skill tree saved, as I’m sure you get at this point, you’d have no access to any of the unlocked skills you need to advance further into the game.

Information

Total – The player has total information of every skill they have access to, its cost, and its description. They have access to how much health each form has, and whether or not it’s dead.

Privileged – the player has privileged information over the plot progress as they can tell when the story is climaxing as the chapter numbers increase, yet they’re not too sure if it’s the last hurrah.  They also have privileged information on the puzzle rooms, as they don’t know the answers, but the way to solve it is always there.

Hidden – the treasure chest Easter-eggs, enemy and boss placement, and some orb placements.

Player Interaction

Players can interact with each other via using their forms-skills to aid their ally. An example of this would be the wizard levitating their teammate over a gap via a summoned platform. Other interact is a form a form of negative play, in which you could intestinally kill your teammate. An example of this would be the wizard levitating their teammate over a gap, then dropping the summoned platform.

Theme

The game as it’s located in a high-fantasy universe with bazar array of unearthly creatures. Also the fact the environment is solely based on a 2D plane in a 3D world clearly depicts this game to be a far stretch from earth.

The plot in this game has clear focus on teamwork and the ability to use each other for their unique advantages, while helping them with their disadvantages.

Final Thoughts

This game is such a beautiful example of classic game design techniques in combination with some real unique features. I hope I could differentiate this blog from my prior one, while still coming to similar conclusions.

Until next time,

Jordon

Blog Quest: Critic-al Hit! Trine 2

Hello internet folks, Today I shall be tackling the task of judging and degrading a game yet again. As before, I’ll be cutting it into bite sized chunks for your reading pleasure, in hopes of passing on meaningful insight as to whether or not you may enjoy the game.

Unlike the last game I reviewed, this game stumbled into my life a mere two days ago. I didn’t play the prequel, I read little to nothing about it, and it was a mere dollar-seventy for three steam copies. For that price, I could scrap together a few friends and get a quick game to critic! I’ll also be Dekonsting this title later this evening, so consider this blog a biased player review, and if you’re interested in learning a more factual analysis, read the blog directly succeeding this one.

From the few words I did hear, I heard it was worth playing, and I was not disappointed.

That game being: Frozenbyte’s: Trine 2

Players

First and foremost, let’s describe the three playable characters. They are Amadeus the wizard, Zoya the thief, and Pontius the knight. 

The wizard is the character you solve most of your physical-puzzles with.  He allows you to create crates and planks of varying sizes (left mouse), as well as levitate certain objects around your screen (right mouse). It should be noted the wizard has no way to physically deal damage, thus being unable to kill monsters. I played this character 98% of the time with my group of friends, so he is my most known. Trust me when I say he cannot kill monsters!

The thief is a bow-using stealth character that also has an amiable grappling hook. She can shoot her bow (left click), as well as imbuing those arrows with secondary effects. The grappling hook can grapple (right click) onto many surfaces in the game environment. The thief is very good at dealing damage from a far, and is very quick at navigating the environment.

The knight is your typical sword-n-board warrior. He can swing his mighty sword (left click) which break environmental blockades and barrels. He is also able to raise his shield (right click) in a direction depending on the mouse location. Being that this character can take the most hits, he is the best way to encounter most combat situations with.

I should note that if you have played the first Trine, these characters should not be strangers to you, as they are reoccurring. In a game like this I feel it to be the best choice with its method of storytelling, however as I didn’t play the first Trine, I did miss some of the bark humor.

Objectives

The game progress in the sense of physical objectives is fairly ambiguous, though very easy to see once you reach it. What I mean is; essentially you’re always moving to the right of the screen along a 2D side-scroller given some context via the prologue/epilogue. Once you complete one chapter, you move onto the next. Though you’re not directly told to “Go kill boss X at the end of tunnel of Y” in each chapter, you can very well assume that some major objective is approaching as you progress along the level. This, though sometimes making you feel confused as to reason, lets the sudden-boss fights give you a jolt of fear. Many “Oh sh!t” moments were had during the Skype call whilst I was playing.

The clearer and more apparent objectives in this game are the “rooms” you encounter that break up the entirety of the level. Often times a level consists of 15-20 rooms that are as simple as jump across this chasm, or as complex as mini Portal-esk level sequences (they were definitely thinking with portals when they were designing the game, and there’s nothing wrong with that!).

The final objective worth noting is the fact that you can level up by collecting these blue bubbles. Upon leveling up, you get skill points that you can spend in your skill tree. These skills unlock perks for the characters, such as more boxes on screen, exploding arrows, or using your shield as a parachute.

Procedures

Woohoo! I’m at the part where I can explain the main mechanic of the game! The main procedure in this game is you ability to switch between any of the characters at any time.

Example: you’re running along as the thief, when suddenly: a fireball is coming right for you! You can quickly switch to the knight, shield block, and all is safe.

I thought it was cool too.

The skill tree I aforementioned in the objectives is crucial as your Trine is the one that levels up, and that leads to you spending points based on which of the favourite heroes you like to play.  This creates a unique mechanic allowing certain room-types to hold more difficulty based on your skill point spread.

Rules

The rules in this game are pretty lax in regards to how many there are. The rule I found the most annoying was not allowing you to have access to all the blue bubbles the first run through of a story quest. This is due to the game knowing you don’t have the properly allocated skills. Which i got a little fussy over. I want those bubbles, dam it!

Resources

There are essentially two resources in this game:

Health – This one is the most obvious, however a bit unique in this game.  Each character has their own health, and when one dies you are unable to switch to them. This means that you may screw yourself over if you allow your wizard to die; only to find out you need him for a levitation puzzle.

You’re able to raise dead teammates at checkpoints, so if one dies you don’t have to restart the whole level. The difficult part is reaching that freaking checkpoint as a wizard while sprinting through hordes of goblins with NO WAY TO KILL THEM- sorry, flash backs from last night.

Blue Bubbles – Though not the official name, this serves as essentially exp that lets you gain levels and spend skill points.  It’s only late in the game where you really need some of the higher level skills to complete the rooms. The blue bubbles in general are a resource for the majority of the game that: is nice to have, you aim to get it, but you’re not sweating it if you miss it.

Unless you feel the need to collect every.single.bubble.

Not like I can relate to that, or anything –cough–

Conflict

The conflict in this game is based off a story mechanic established and - what I’m to understand - fully explained in the first game. The mystical "Trine" has bound the three characters together into one common entity, and thus the player controls only one character which can be switched to the other two at any time.

After saving the kingdom a few years past (the first Trine), the kingdom is in trouble yet again, and the trine has found and recruited Amadeus, Zoya, and Pontius. The trouble this time is to find out why the forest has become uneasy and violent. Though they seem to find answers, they keep leading to more and more questions.

The story in this game is light-hearted fairy tell mischief, and thus isn’t quite my cup of tea. However it does its duty, and though I feel the plot twist was about as obvious as a straight man in a gay bar; I still gave a loud “I knew it!” when it was revealed, which in itself is a good reaction.

Most of the physical conflicts are stretched between a whole two AI types, those being melee and range. One runs at you and the other stays back and lobs a fairly-slow moving shot.

There are bosses you encounter, however I couldn’t believe this but they are literally all the same boss with a different health pool, skin, and environment.

The last boss was a unique encounter, however.

Outcome

The outcome in this game is like the end of a book; there wasn’t a question of what the ending was, just how long it took you to get there. The advancing difficulty of the rooms added a very clean difficulty curve. Though I noticed towards the end, you get either insta-killed or nearly killed. Where towards the beginning of the game a simple mess up would lead you to just having to run back around.

Final Thoughts

I genuinely enjoyed this game.  Something I need to mention that I don’t normally do, is that this game is beautiful. Though the gameplay exists on a 2D plane, the environments are all done in beautiful 3D with stunning textures, lighting, and shaders.  I paused and looked at the environment more so than I have in any other game. Albeit I’m not a gamer to revel in scenery, so take that for what it’s worth.

Until next time,

Jordon

Blog Quest: Designing the Demon's Scythe

Hello internet people, today I decided to design another game item. Yet again, I was contemplating which game deserved a strategic new item that would improve but not change the core gameplay.  I was lacking ideas as to anything simple yet revolutionary, like my grappling hook for DDo. So I decided to think less “Obvious” and more imaginative.

Why not a demons scythe? Yea, that sounds nice and fancy.

Oh, I got it; why not a demons scythe, in Mario party! Got item!

Now I see that palm, and I see you contemplating covering your face with it- but hear me out. When you think about, a demons scythe fits perfectly fine in the core of the game. Demons Scythe can appear in many forms in video games, whether it through actually having the weapon, or a spell book that casts it, or an item you can acquire through gameplay. Yes, I’m referring to the koopa store or item mini game. This way, it isn’t necessarily Mario decapitating his competitors in an overpowered fashion, it’s just another item. That turns you into a demon. Yup.

Now I see you nodding, yea, you dig it to amiright? Well, let me tangent before I further explain what the item does. Let me give a quick recap of the Mario Party premise so we’re on the same page.

Mario Party is a party game series featuring – you guessed it – Mario, and his franchises characters.  There are up to nine in the series whilst I’m writing this blog (it wouldn’t be farfetched to believe there’s more to come), and all of them are essentially the same. It’s a turn based virtual-board game, where four human – or computer – controlled characters race to collect the most stars. Every round, each player has a turn, that turn consisting using item (if you have one), rolling the dice, landing on a tile, and that tile then affects your character in one way or another. The main goal of the players on the board is to reach the unique star tile, getting you a star. At the end of each round the players compete in a variety of mini games.

That pretty much sums. However just as a disclaimer, I’ll be referring to Mario Party 3 if I need examples, as that is my most played Mario Party game.

Back to the item at hand; the demon’s scythe is an item you can only acquire through a unique tile that spawns in on the “5 rounds remaining” mark, and will change spaces every round until the end of the game. It will not spawn under a player, but CAN spawn on a star space, or baby bowser space. If this occurs, those tiles get placed elsewhere on the map. To acquire the Demon’s Scythe, you must land on the tile. You cannot teleport to this tile using any item. Essentially; you have to land on it.

Due to how late-game this tile spawns in, I assume players have movement aiding items to help them get to the square. If the item is acquired, the tile will not respawn next round and the player has the item until the game ends.

The Demon’s Scythe item itself has multiple effects, but essentially it’s a charge that lets you turn into a demon-model of your avatar. This changes the dice you use during your movement phase. It lets you roll a 1d6 + 4 dice, and turn every tile you cross into a red tile. Every single tile. If you pass a star-toad during this charge, you get it without pay, and the star tile resets to elsewhere on the map. If you pass a player while using the demon’s scythe, you steal a star.

This item can be combined with any of the other items for nefarious and friend-ending purposes.

This item is different from the other items by changing the board dynamically, in game. No other item allows the player to alter the board tiles, and therefore I feel this item adds a cool new feature.

A few ways I’d have to test is how to maybe balance its power. Though I think this item holds its value for how RNG it takes to get it.

So that’s my item. Hope it amused me so!

-Jordon