I observed a fellow student named Mel play a slew of games, all of which had their own interesting characteristics and I will now discuss not only my observations of watching Mel play but also the ways in which the games piqued my interests.
The very first game is called Canabalt. It's a fast-paced side-scroller game that many people will recognize as having made an appearance in a humble indie bundle or three. I've lost track. Either way it's a game that makes for an awesome trailer because it seems fast paced, exciting, and it's actually incredibly beautiful in its own way. Personally I love how everything is slightly pixelated and now in a way that makes the game look bad but in a way that makes the game look nostalgic. Now at its core, Canabalt is a game about timing and movement but more specifically only running forward and jumping. That's all the game requires. And it takes you through a thrilling set of levels at break-neck pace which requires the player to very quickly assess their surroundings and adapt to the situation that they're currently finding their self in.
I watched Mel play the first level multiple times because the game was new and I noticed something very interesting that I've never really thought about before: even though the level is the same every single time, the way in which he interacted with the level and performed all the various movement commands was completely different. Sometimes he went on great streaks through the level with no hesitation and others he wasn't so sure. In essence, he had memorized the contents of the level but they still posed a challenge to him which is something I found very interesting and something I haven't though about a lot before because the game isn't about a health bar it's about not falling through holes and not hitting obstacles. You don't really have wiggle room to do something 90% right. You either didn't fall into the hole or you did. If you did, you lost. There's no inbetween. This means that you either have to completely memorize a routine to get through the level and avoid dying or you have to take it one step at a time and think about each maneuver even though you might've already done it 10 or 20 times before because you have no way of being absolutely sure of doing it perfect the next time unless you take your time.
I also noticed multiple times where the pure pace of the game caused Mel to stumble as he was unable to keep up with the level as it was speeding by him. There were multiple times he fell into holes or hit objects straight on and had no idea they were coming. The speed mechanic behind the game is what continues to make it challenging then even for someone who has already played it a few times or even knows what's coming up ahead.
And while the game might be incredibly simple; arguably simpler than even Mario it has one core thing that keeps it both interesting and fun: the game world that you're interacting with is actually quite beautiful. You really feel like you're in a new world or environment up in the skyscrapers kinda like spider-man actually. Overall I thought very highly of the game and look forward to trying it on my own free time sometime.
Canabalt
The second game I observed Mel play was the ever-famous and ever-popular QWOP. This is a game that I've heard referenced all over the internet but had never seen directly in person before or ever attempted to play myself as this isn't the stereotypical kind of game and it certainly isn't the kind of game that attracted me before taking this class.
QWOP is famous because it's not only incredibly difficult but it's just as ridiculous. The keys are incredibly simple and there's only 4: Q,W,O, and P. And you have to use these to move a person's legs in an attempt to run a race for an unspecified country in the olympics. The only problem here being that the keys do seemingly random things. There are ways to beat QWOP as I've observed on YouTube and they all seem to border on repetition of a core mechanic to move the legs in a predictable and controlled manner the only problem is that normal people attempting the game for even the first 15 or 20 times still have no idea what this core movement mechanic is or how to master it. I watched Mel play QWOP over and over again and the only thing that was consistent from play to play was that there was no consistency with his play every single time. Sometimes he went far, sometimes he didn't, and other times he went backwards and scored negative meters. Overall QWOP to me is something that's interesting and fun for all of about 5 minutes. But credit where credit is due during those first 5 minutes you're laughing uncontrollably as the player's model contorts into unrealistic and unimaginable poses before falling forward onto their face or backwards onto their head. The funny thing about QWOP is that the run where Mel tried to take the controls seriously and employ strategy rather than spamming QWOP in a seemingly random fashion is the one run where he did the worst! Overall I think QWOP is a showcase for a couple very powerful ideas but on the whole is a pretty terrible game.
QWOP
Coming up third is the game Super Puzzle Platform which looked like a pretty awesome game actually. The game itself takes a classic game, tetris, and puts a unique spin on it. Instead of choosing where the blocks fall, the blocks fall automatically and the user has to shoot them in order to destroy them. Sounds easy but they fall faster than you can shoot them which means the user actually needs to shoot combinations of blocks at the same time in order to keep up with the pace of the falling blocks. The trick here is that the player has to stand on blocks or otherwise fall below the level and lose which means you can't shoot all the block and always have to leave some room to stand inside the game or you'll lose. Mel figured out the game pretty quickly as it was rather straight forward but still a very fun game.
The idea behind Super Puzzle Platform though isn't that the core mechanics are hard but rather that once the player gets further and further into the game it gets successively harder and harder to keep up with the falling blocks. These are the games that I really enjoy playing as they're super fast to pick up but still allow the user to demonstrate a high level of skill or mastery if they've been playing the game a long time by making it very far into the game itself and getting to the higher levels. This is also the game that Mel enjoyed the most, or at least portrayed visually that he was enjoying the most since I guess that's a big subjective. Mel might really like seemingly-impossible and ridiculous games like QWOP but he certainly didn't physically display that.
Super Puzzle Platform
Up fourth is Hot Throttle. Honestly I could've written 4,000 words alone on Hot Throttle and analyze every single small piece of it but there's just not enough time for that and in fact sadly I'm not sure I fully understood it. It's the game that Mel played the longest simply because it caught his and my curiosity so intensely right off of the bat but also was the hardest to fully master and understand. QWOP is the hardest to master because of the dumb mechanics that are hard to measure but at least you understand in essence what your character should be doing, even if you aren't capable of making it do that due to lack of skill. In Hot Throttle, even after 10 minutes, neither I nor Mel could really figure out all of the mechanics and what was going on with the player at all points. The immediate gist of the game is that humans that are sweating are racing each other with their clothes off. Initially it seems pretty straight forward but there's a "mood" that the player cycles through as they go through the racing levels (which are in 2d). The entire game seemed to be created to be "edgy" as there were bums and drug addicts on the sides of the streets while racing and they are performing obscene acts as you run by them. There's some kind of mechanic to make the player go faster that looks reminiscent of some kind of explosion out of the player's anus. All in all Mel played for over 10 minutes and never finished better than last place in a race. It's quite a strange game that even involves an item pickup mechanic. Overall it would very hard to recommend Hot Throttle to someone as it's hard to recommend a game to someone that you can't even comprehend. It's made worse by the fact that all the videos like the intro and outros are filled with humans making obscene faces while sweating profusely and saying things that are completely nonsensical. I'd have to interview the creator to have any kind of idea about what's going on or the point the game itself is trying to make.
Hot Throttle
The fifth and final game was called This is the Only Level which got a lot of coverage from both Mel and in class as we watched a student play it at the front of the class. It did a great job of demonstrating a very simple idea with multiple powerful mechanics behind it. Again there's only one level of consistency in This is the Only Level and that's that each time you play it, the mechanics on beating that same level are different. So the title should be taken seriously, as there is only one level that the user ever sees or plays. However how they play that level is vastly different based on which iteration through the level that they're currently playing through. Overall I like This is the Only Level but I feel that it wears a bit as time goes on. It's an incredibly simplistic game which is a good way to research new ways of thinking about human-computer interaction but that's about it for me.
This is the Only Level
