Prompt 2: Describe the challenge of the game as if the designer was working to thwart you.
This game wants you to lose because otherwise the game would last forever. Because this game involves seeing how many times a player can bounce a ball off of a red platform before they mess up and fail to bounce it upwards, if there was no intent for the game to make you fail, the player could easily bounce the ball on top of the platform forever. Moreover, there would be no skill that comes in getting a high score for this game if the game did not want the player to lose. So, in order to make the player lose, this game employs randomness in the direction that the ball comes off of the red platform as well as through the placement of the green vertical bar in the middle of the area where the ball can bounce above the red platform. Thus, these abstract forces that are the randomness in the direction of the ball coming off of the red platform make victory difficult because these directions include directions that are nearly impossible for the player to account for and move the red platform in time to bounce the ball on it again. Overall, the game wants the player to have skill in moving the platform in a way that can account for these changes in directions since this force intends for the player to lose. Lastly, I would say that there is nothing within the game that wants to help you because the whole point of the placement of the green vertical bar and the randomness in direction intend to make the player lose. Thus, the player must try to avoid the green vertical bar as much as possible while accounting for bouncing the ball on the red platform in light of the random directional bounces of the ball off of it. This is because if the ball hits the green vertical bar, especially the bottom of it, the ball starts to bounce downward super close to where the red platform resides, even if the red platform is directly below the green vertical bar. With that said, the optimal plan of action is to try and bounce the ball either to the left or right of the green bar.
Prompt 1: The game has a very simple goal of keeping the ball from falling down with straightforward controls. The uncertainty in the game comes from how the ball will bounce off the paddle. Many times it is not very easy to guess which direction the ball will bounce, especially when it hits near a corner. The rectangle in the center of the screen also adds an element of uncertainty because it might redirect the ball in a completely different direction then expected. Victory is not defined by the game and is up to the player to decide what point value they feel is considered 'victory' for them. Fundamentally the game is all skill with how the player can predict the ball's movement and account for it. As the point total goes higher, every bounce feels more important because the player doesn't want to have to start from the very beginning. The main difficulty and uncertainty of the game is through the ball bouncing and thus if the player masters predicting the ball's bounce, they can go on forever. The one element of real randomness in the game is the angle that the ball will launch at when the game starts. This forces the player to adapt on the fly and not just memorize the ball's bounce patterns off of the first bounce. Depending on the angle of the bounce it can be impossible for the player to move the paddle the necessary distance in time and this becomes the main thing to react to as a player.
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Prompt 2: Describe the challenge of the game as if the designer was working to thwart you.
This game wants you to lose because otherwise the game would last forever. Because this game involves seeing how many times a player can bounce a ball off of a red platform before they mess up and fail to bounce it upwards, if there was no intent for the game to make you fail, the player could easily bounce the ball on top of the platform forever. Moreover, there would be no skill that comes in getting a high score for this game if the game did not want the player to lose. So, in order to make the player lose, this game employs randomness in the direction that the ball comes off of the red platform as well as through the placement of the green vertical bar in the middle of the area where the ball can bounce above the red platform. Thus, these abstract forces that are the randomness in the direction of the ball coming off of the red platform make victory difficult because these directions include directions that are nearly impossible for the player to account for and move the red platform in time to bounce the ball on it again. Overall, the game wants the player to have skill in moving the platform in a way that can account for these changes in directions since this force intends for the player to lose. Lastly, I would say that there is nothing within the game that wants to help you because the whole point of the placement of the green vertical bar and the randomness in direction intend to make the player lose. Thus, the player must try to avoid the green vertical bar as much as possible while accounting for bouncing the ball on the red platform in light of the random directional bounces of the ball off of it. This is because if the ball hits the green vertical bar, especially the bottom of it, the ball starts to bounce downward super close to where the red platform resides, even if the red platform is directly below the green vertical bar. With that said, the optimal plan of action is to try and bounce the ball either to the left or right of the green bar.
Prompt 1: The game has a very simple goal of keeping the ball from falling down with straightforward controls. The uncertainty in the game comes from how the ball will bounce off the paddle. Many times it is not very easy to guess which direction the ball will bounce, especially when it hits near a corner. The rectangle in the center of the screen also adds an element of uncertainty because it might redirect the ball in a completely different direction then expected. Victory is not defined by the game and is up to the player to decide what point value they feel is considered 'victory' for them. Fundamentally the game is all skill with how the player can predict the ball's movement and account for it. As the point total goes higher, every bounce feels more important because the player doesn't want to have to start from the very beginning. The main difficulty and uncertainty of the game is through the ball bouncing and thus if the player masters predicting the ball's bounce, they can go on forever. The one element of real randomness in the game is the angle that the ball will launch at when the game starts. This forces the player to adapt on the fly and not just memorize the ball's bounce patterns off of the first bounce. Depending on the angle of the bounce it can be impossible for the player to move the paddle the necessary distance in time and this becomes the main thing to react to as a player.