My First Game Maker Experiment

I’m working on a small game at the moment in Game Maker, in terms of mechanics its similar to asteroids, however the goal is to capture and protect space stations from enemy ships. Its all quite simple at present as I've stripped back most of my features and mechanics to just the core concepts in the hopes of being better able to adapt the game based off player feedback.

I started with a software prototype in Game Maker, the purpose of the prototype wasn't so much to test game features but rather to test myself. I've only ever done small amounts of coding so for the software prototype I set a number of criteria I wanted for the game and tried to implement these in Game Maker. Luckily for me the combination Drag and Drop and Game Maker Language meant that it was quite easy to make my prototype, Game Maker takes a lot of the back-end steps out of programming to allow a designer focus on actual front end features and content.

Having proven that I could make a game with the aid of Game Maker and having a good idea of how I wanted the game to play out I set about building a paper prototype. Soon after starting the paper prototype I realised the my idea of a space exploration game with stealth, trading, mining and dynamic story elements was a bit ambitious. The prototype in particular showed that the game had no goals or objectives, essentially I had hoped the player would spend time exploring and expanding the map just for fun. I decided that for now the game needed goals. Each level will now present the player with a number of space stations which they must capture and defend, once the player controls all the stations in a level they win that level and can move on. Once I have this up an running I think it might be interesting to try stealth missions, a nebula or two and some escort missions if the game as it stands is fun and engaging.

Chinese Checkers

Last night I played a game that I had never paid much attention to, a friend I was visiting has a set of wooden boardgames and after we played a drawn out game of chess we decided to look for something a little less taxing for the novice. From the layout of the board Chinese Checkers looked fun so we looked up the rules online and started to play.

As a two player game it seems fairly straightforward, however I'd be interested in a 3, 4 or 6 player game to see how it changes with the number of players. The design of it makes me think that its a game where more players lead to a better game. It was fun to play but I wouldn't go running back to play again.

I think the lack of a capturing mechanic was something I missed from the game, I'll have to look for some variants to try out and see if they seem more fun with 2 players.

Its a very easy to grasp game so I'd recommend it for young people and non-gamers alike.

Far Cry 2

I started playing Far Cry 2 today, its a game I've had on a shelf since Christmas 2008, something that I've wanted to play but never had to time or motivation to do it. Playing and analysing games will be big part of my future and a game that is as divisive as Far Cry 2 seems like a good opportunity to look at a game with strong design goals and see how they affected the game and my own experience of it.

I started playing this morning for a half hour or so, its very different to most other shooters that I've played but at this stage I can't offer much of an opinion on the game other than that I'm looking forward to spending some more time with it. I suppose the fact that I look forward to playing more must mean that the designers have made an initial connection with me. I'll update with my progress and some real thoughts once I get a few hours of gameplay under my belt.

What is the role of the Game Desinger?

Having discussed this in our morning class I thought it might be worth posting this video from The Escapist Extra Credits Video Series that ties in nicely to the question of what the game designer does. Its interesting to how a designer as prolific as Steve Jackson goes about designing a game.

A good question comes up at the end; does a game have to be fun?

From Space Battles and Penthouses to Robbing Gold

On Wednesday we had our first Ludology and Gameplay class, it was great to just work on some games from a simple, albeit constrained approach. With 15 minutes and various other constraints we had to design a boardgame that could be handed over to another player with no explanation... time was TIGHT! I ended up going with a space themed game that contained elements similar to Ludo, with marginally more real choices.

The game was essentially a two player race to the centre where players move forward based on their dice roll, if a 6 is rolled you move the other players piece and if a player lands on an occupied square the two players battle it out by way of a highest roll. While I'm happy at getting the chance to make the game I feel the game suffered from being a bit too basic and needed some more meaningful choice for the players. A little more clarity in the rules would also have gone a long way towards helping the testers but its amazing what pops up in playtesting that the designer doesn't think about.


Along with my own game I played two other games. One game involved moving construction pieces from each players "Depot" to the centre of the board, where there was a building site. Once all the pieces were in the centre players needed to roll an even number to place a piece on their tower, the first person to finish their tower wins the game. The game was equally as fun as mine, but it too lacked the sense of choice compared to many of the boardgames I've played. As a group of 2 we had to develop one game further and hand it over to another team for testing, we felt that the only way to decide was to roll a dice and luckily for me it was my game.

After this our group played another groups prototype while they played ours. It was interesting to hear what questions and comments the other group had about our game and the rules of it. The game we played was a gold gathering game where players moved on a grid and gathered gold, the player with the most gold at the end of the game wins. We had some difficulty setting up the game and I'm not sure we played it as the designers intended but it was fun and interesting trying to figure out the game.


One thing I noticed with all the games I played was that they were lacking in meaningful choices and generally the winner was decided by chance. I think this is probably as a result of the time we had, our inexperience and the constraints imposed upon the games. Hopefully I've learned some lessons for next time.