Starting this class I was initially scared because i have tried my hand at trying to learn to make a game by downloading the unreal engine and got completely lost and felt it was too much to handle. However throughout the course we were able to ease into developing games and learning how to get into the correct mindset and how to plan out the games being developed and stay on time. As my first time making a game, the tutorials given on unity during the first week was very helpful and was a nice way to ease me into this learning instead of delving straight in like i used to. I also learned to take it slow and do a 2d before attempting 3d games. I learned so much about how to code games and how scripts are used to create the mechanics behind games. I actually was able to learn what scripts are because of this class and im grateful to have learned this since im a CS major. Developing games throughout this semester was fun because we were able to collaborate with classmates and see what other people have done and use that to improve my own craft and learn from the playtest how to improve further. I learned a lot from this class from coding, playtest importance, game design and how all of this is connected. I will miss this class and how fun it was to produce something out of our own work as a team and bring it to the point of being published like the game me and my group did in the picture above. As we developed the game, we wanted to keep adding in more to make it better and to do so as the programmer I searched up a lot of things about unity on google and youtube to learn how to implement these. This class was a real driving factor for me to learn to develop games and I want to continue this so that I could be able to develop better games each time.

For our final project we decided to work on a 2-D fighting game similar to Street Fighter. This is a game that currently has two characters. When the first player chooses a character the other player automatically chooses the other. Each player starts with 5 health and each hit lowers their health by 1. Once a winner is decided the players can either play again or exit the game. So far the project is looking good. The fighting needs a few adjustments and new features need to be added following the play test we had recently. We had to adjust the controls so that it would feel more natural. So far it looks great and animations are looking good. We are now adding a pause menu and already have the art, and just have to put it in as the programmer. For this game it is a group of three including me. The other two group members are both artists who previously worked on this also with the Game Development Club.

On the 24th of April I was able to play a game of Jackbox Party Pack 4 with fellow classmates. The game I was able to play in was entitled Bracketeering. It was a fun game where you type in an object or phrase based on the given topic and whoever gets the most votes gets more points and will end up as the winner. Although I didn’t win it was fun finding trying to guess who will win and vote. Some mechanics i thought i found was voting, button mashing (when there was a tie), culture (since you try to go for phrases that you know the audience would relate to more), and point system. I liked how there were so many more ways to score points than just getting more votes. You could have also gotten points by guessing who would win right every round. Also when a tie arose there was a button mashing mechanic for each side to decide who the winner is. Whenever this happened, my team always won since I could click my mouse very fast. Also this game could play up to 16 players so it would really go good with a large party. Another cool mechanic was you could play using your own devices and could have one screen for everyone else to look at. Playing with 16 people is pretty fun because its easy was to get to know other people, break ices, and really makes the game fun. If it was a game with only bots its not the same because there is no communication and trying to persuade others why your input is better than the others. You can also hear what others have to say about yours too. Overall good game and wished we could play more.

The first ever game i made is entitled “Home”. This game is a 2D platformer horror game. The game is about a person who finds himself inside a home and has to find 3 notes in each of the three rooms before escaping out the entrance he came. My partner Sydney Calinisan and I worked on this game. Sydney had the artist role while i had the programmer role. At first we planned to do 5 to 6 rooms but decided to put it too 3 unique rooms instead to make it in time for deadline. After accomplishing thus far I am satisfied with the outcome and all the knowledge i have learned from making this first game. It works entirely as we expected. From the first playable prototype I learned a lot on how to make the game much better in terms of mechanics, for example making a button and adding the instructions to make it easier for player to play it. The prototype also helped me find some bugs in my code that I would have otherwise missed. After completing our current prototype me and Sydney will have plans to develop this game even more down the line after the final we submit and during the summer.

Game Credits:

Artist – Sydney Calinisan

Programmer – Aaron Jay Macaldo

Background Music – by Chopin nocturne no.20

All Sound Effects – by Sydney Calinisan

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The name of the game my partner and I created is Home. Home is a horror game that is made to spook players and give them a little thrill. The player is supposed to try to escape the home by finding 3 notes in the house.

My role in creating this game was the programmer. When I first started playing this game we discussed that we can cut the rooms down to three so i started out working with one scene and started off creating the platform that the character will stand on and the character itself. Afterwards, I needed the character to be able to walk and move and remembering the tutorial we had in class for the movement of the character, I took code from that project and moved it to this and readjust it to fit the game more. After that I tried to figure out how to get the player to move from one scene to the other. To do this i remembered the first tutorial we did on our own and how it had teleport code. I referenced that when creating my own teleport script and also by creating a game manager. This was able to do exactly as I wanted and I was able to get it working. Then i got the art and put them all in the game for the three backgrounds and the character and the note. That was when I worked on how to get the note be interactable and have it appear on screen and did this succesfully by using the game manager again and another script. The same goes for the end game when backgrounds change and the enemy appears. I used the game manager to change position to where the main camera is. After that I put in the art given to me for animations and animated the main character and a little head to move around when one of the notes was found. Afterwards came the first playtest.

I was able to join the playtest held by the professer on zoom. Me and my partner tested another groups game and they tested ours. The players responded very well and found out that they liked it. During their time playing they were able to stumble into some issues like the notes disappering to fast since interact key is being pressed constantly. Also, they gave some helpful comments on how to improve the game such as varying the speed of the head that moves instead of going a constant speed. Based on the feedback I plan to adjust the speed of the head to make it more realistic and to also adjust the notes so that they have to wait a certain amount of seconds before they can close it.

During our lab last Wednesday we had the chance to play 6 different games with a partner and alternate between playing and watching. Of these games I felt the two games that had the strongest connection was Jurassic Heart and World of Dads. They both had a strong connection, i felt, was because they both had a narrative. They both told the story and the player was able to be swept along. Although they both had different approaches toward getting the player hooked to the story, they both did it well. Jurassic Heart had beautiful art that fits the story very well and had nice dialogue while World of Dads didn’t have that nice of artwork but looked pretty comedic in that the art is fun to look at and laugh about. The dialogue in world of dads correlated to how the player will experience the game so it was interesting to see what the story had in store for us, the players. Third game I also wanted to mention was the QWOP game. Although many others already knew about this game, I didn’t so it caught me by surprise as to how hard it really is. Just trying to get him move the right way was frustrating and i end up falling down to the ground without ever taking one step. I played cat mario and that was less infuriating than this game. During the times we took turns playing and watching, I noticed that while watching another person play, ideas would pop up and i’d want to try them, however I couldn’t since it was my turn to watch. I felt that by watching instead of actually playing you have space to really think of the game and strategies. Also some other things I noticed was I can see where and when the player comes to a change of pace in playing. Such as from the game “This is the only level” it was easy to tell when my partner had a hard time and trying to figure out the level. As the observer I would try to give my ideas on how to solve the puzzle. Ultimately as the observer I ended up wanting to try and enjoy playing the game by getting involved as well by giving my ideas to puzzles and playing along with the story from Jurassic Heart.

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The game Face-Off is a 2-player competitive game where two players compete to win by strategically playing the right cards and having a little luck on their side.

How To Play

Setup:

• Get a playing cards deck and remove all cards numbered 4-10
• Place the deck on the pile with the “O” symbol
• Each of 2 players get their own set of uniquely colored tokens which are not yet part of the board (10 tokens)

Rules:

• At start of play each player draws 5 cards
• To determine who goes first, each player rolls a d6 die and highest goes first
• During each players turn, they first draw a card. The only exception is that the player going first does not draw a card on his first turn
• During each players turn they can only play 1 card from their hand, do the effect of the card (either place a soldier or move a soldier), then their turn ends
• When placing a soldier place your token on top of the soldier to indicate that this is your soldier
• The effects of each card goes as follows:

CARDS EFFECT

King Place card facing down on any of the three empty bases (Beats Jack in battles)

Queen Place card facing down on any of the three empty bases (Beats King in battles)

Jack Place card facing down on any of the three empty bases (Beats Queen in battles)

A-3 Moves any of your own soldiers(King, Queen, or Jack) the (movement card) number indicated (A = 1 space, 2 = 2 spaces, 3 = 3 spaces)

• After playing a number card or a face card “dies” place the card on the pile with “X” symbol (graveyard)
• Once a card moves into a space where an opponents card is at, the moving card stops and they both “battle”
• The result of battle depends on the cards battling (refer to effects of cards above for who wins) and if they are the same card this is considered a draw and both soldiers die and are send to the graveyard
• Once a face card with a token reaches the enemy’s base you are awarded points and it goes into the graveyard
• Once the deck is empty, reshuffle graveyard and place it on the “O” to serve as new deck to draw from

How to win:

The first person to achieve 7 points is the winner. Points are awarded based on the following events:

• 2 pts: a face card reaching the opponents base successfully (Note: if you lose a battle while battling on an opponents base, you get no points)
• 1 pt: to the player whose soldier battles at the opponents base and resulted in a draw
• 1 pt: for winning a “battle” (draws don’t award points unless at a base)

The first time i played this game was in class with one other classmate. During this game we conducted the rules above except we tried playing it playing up to 10 points and including 4 as a card you can draw in the deck. During this game i saw that soldiers were able to get to the other base quicker than i initially thought making it easier to reach opponents base. Also noticed how we both had more movement cards than soldiers so i saw that taking out the 4 cards could be beneficial. By taking out the 4 cards there was an even split between soldiers and movement cards. Also we noticed getting to 10 pts took longer than expected during out game so we thought to reduce it to 7.

The second time i played this game was at home with my cousin where when we played he noticed that going first always had the advantage of having the ability to play a soldier first so during our second game he gave the idea to give the player going first a downside which was not allowing him to draw when he went first so that throughout the game he would only have 4 cards in hand. It seemed to work out afterward but will test more to see if first player wins too often because of going first.

The third and final play session I had to test the game was today in class with 3 other people. In this session we faced situations that I haven’t came across the past 2 sessions for some reason. We came to the dilemma of coming to a draw at a base, and in the original rules draws didn’t award points no matter the area but drawing on a base sounded like a good area for the attacker to get 1 point at least for drawing. This was also to incentive the defender to leave base and be more balanced (hopefully).

Mechanics:

• Track Movement
• Campaign/Battle Card Driven
• Secret Unit Deployment
• Rock-Paper-Scissors
• Dice Rolling

During the board game lab I was able to play the game Betryal at House on the Hill and 1 game lasted the whole class and even had to be rushed (even though it was rigged to be quick). I was able to play with four other gentlemen named: Josh, Sergio, and Carlos. We each chose a starting character with their own respective stats in the 4 categories: Speed(dice thrown for movement), Might(Physical Health and Strength), Intelligence(Mental Health i think), and Sanity(Number of dice thrown for omens).

During the first couple of rounds we did the normal finding rooms and discovering events with each new room discovered. The first round that happened was when Josh found the ballroom and got pulled into its walls and got spit up into the pentagon chamber room. Right afterward, I found a vault and was able to successfully lock pick it and gain two very helpful artifacts named candle (let me roll an extra dice on every event roll) and a rabbits foot(that lets me replace any roll i make into a 5 one time). Afterward Carlos found an abandoned room with a girl where he became the first person to roll for omen (the player rolling must roll higher or equal to the number of times someone had to roll for omen, if they fail they become the betrayer). Since he was the first he easily rolled higher than 1 from the 4 dices he had since his sanity was 5. Events like this happened until eventually I unfortunately found an omen room and had to roll for omen. At that time we automatically made it 12 so that the game would end faster and rolling 6 dices with a max of 2 each, it was next to impossible. After failing, I became the Betrayer and the second part of the game happens, the HAUNT. In this part of the game of the many scenarios we could the scenario chosen was #25 entitled the voodoo haunt. For this hunt the rules go as follows: the betrayer must kill the at least half of the heroes to win and at the end of his turn different effects happen to each hero based on the chosen voodoo dolls placed on them by the betrayer; The heroes must go into a room on each of their turns and try to find a voodoo doll based on a quote that hints to where their voodoo doll might be; if the heroes are able to destroy all the voodoo dolls, they win. As the betrayer i chose each persons voodoo doll t goes as the following: Carlos = wax doll with the effect that he takes 1 physical damage, Josh = China doll where he must roll 4 dices and roll more than the number of turns after the haunt or else he DIES, Sergio = Rag doll where he must roll for intelligence and roll more than the number of turns after the haunt or else he takes 2 physical damage. At first it turned into a cat and mouse chase as I try to catch them to hurt them while they are trying to find the voodoo dolls. During turn 3 they were able to find the Wax doll inside the Kitchen thus freeing Carlos from its curse. During turn 4, Josh was unable to succeed in rolling a 4 so he DIED. And during the 5th and final round I caught up to Sergio and attempted to hit him for physical damage, however, he used a dynamite (an artifact he found in one of the events). Instead we both rolled dice and if its over 5 they dont take damage. Luckily i didn’t take damage but sergios artifact backfired and he took 4 damage by his own artifact, leaving him with 1 life. Then at the end of my turn he had to roll over 5 with 4 dice and was unsuccesful, giving me, the betrayer, the win since 2 of the 3 heroes are now dead. GG.

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10547/betrayal-house-hill

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I played the game entitled “Dynablaster” where the goal is to place time triggered bombs on the floor to blast enemies and blast blocks to open new pathways and get powerups. This used to be one of my favorite arcade games when I was young and would play this with some friends. It is playable to up to 4 players at a time. My experience playing it at first was really confusing as there was no controls listed. I had to literally press every button on my keyboard until a menu showed up and found it opened with tab. After that figuring out all the controls was a piece of cake and I was able to start playing. It was very pleasing and much like the game I remembered it to be. It was as simple as I remembered and very fun. However playing the game I realized how irritating it can also be. Although it has simple controls and a simple goal, accomplishing killing monsters I found to be harder than I remembered. Most of the time I find myself not having enough powerups so a monster can chase me and kill me off right away, but when I destroy blocks to get powerups, it is harder to trap those monsters and kill them. Not only that but literally half of my deaths is me killing myself to my own bomb just because I trap myself or I keep forgetting the range of the bomb. Some advantages I see with playing on my own personal computer was that with the controls I had, it was much easier than playing on a joystick on an actual arcade machine. It is also very convenient to play on a laptop as you can sit, stand, or laydown (I was laying down) rather than being forced to stand. On top of it all, everything is FREE. Just to get to the boss stage of the first stage, as you can see below, it probably took me like 6 coins. I can see how this is a very good arcade game in that you die A LOT yet you still want to play. Although you can play as much as you want for free and have the convenience of playing on a desktop of laptop, playing the original arcade machine has a different feel to it. It feels more fun in a way that you are playing it the way the makers originally wanted you to play it and it has a nostalgic feel that emits the hidden arcade gamer in you. Also, games, especially like Dynablaster, where it is much more fun played multiplayer is better on the arcade machines as they have a joystick and buttons available for each (or they have 4 machines connected) however playing on the pc it is possible to play 4 players but rather difficult, and the aesthetic and original feel is not there and not as fun as the original. Overall playing this game brings back memories and was very fun. I will look into other games I loved as well and play those too… looking at you Space Defender.