For this portion I wanted to keep the aesthetic of the characters cohesive so the enemies are robots as well called “Cyrex” and I made little triangular obstacles.
Obstacles and Enemies
Author: Kathleen Molina
Tilesets for 2D Platformer
I kept it simple and cohesive since my game’s scenery and overall aesthetic are outdoorsy. So I just enriched the color and added flowers to be more original from the examples given in the YT video.
Checkpoints and Portals
I wanted to keep it simple and use lighting animation since the main character is a robot so I created a lampost that lights up green and yellow. Another one that lights up red and an opening that is a portal. The door was tricky to design, it kept looking tacky to me. Might revise it again later.
NPC ART
I made a friend for the main character of my game. Her name is
Mish! And she’s an adorable robot like J.R.
My Scenery – Kathleen
For my scenery, I kept it simple and cute. I even recreated the tulips from Super Mario to give a nostalgic vibe. Starting to hate my background, might change it since I have it set to the parallax layer.
Rewards Items
For my rewards, I decided to create a cute gem box with a small heart inside of it which I’m not sure what it would represent… let’s say XP and the green diamond gem is to gain life.
Syobon Action
I wish I knew how to record on my Windows PC (really wish I had an iMAC) but honestly this game made me laugh so hard. In the picture above my character is dead… I attempted to jump across and that invisible block appeared and made me fall right into that hole. Then I found a mushroom and it made me bigger and as I go to land, I completely went through the entire floor and straight to my death. I laughed again. This game is clearly to troll its audience but I really did try to at least finish it and I think I got halfway through.
There is a game that follows the concept of this game in which you learn as you go and figure out what the mechanics are in order to beat the game, and that is the raids in Destiny 2. Bungie developers will NOT tell you how to work through the encounters of their raids which is why they have this thing called “World’s First” where a new raid is launched and everyone is in a race to beat the raid and get recognition and rewards from Bungie and likeminded gamers. This game though is clearly for the giggles. But if you want a real headache? Try a Destiny raid without looking up any walkthroughs.
Sorting Out the Genre Muddle (RP#4)
To build a Nintendo game, you had to have a Nintendo developers’ license, and they wouldn’t give one to just anybody. All the other console manufacturers followed suit.
Earnest Adams, Blogger, 2009.
If you have been gaming for as long as I have, then you would know when it comes to big companies such as Nintendo having to micromanage, label, and do business in a way where everything they make is exclusively from them just to put a big price tag on it then you’re just as annoyed with what video gaming has become now with the whole microtransactions. Just more ways to get you to spend your dollars on their products and you know what? I buy it. So it doesn’t even matter.
Fiction book genres are based on subject matter and to some extent, emotional tone. There are techno-thrillers, westerns, romance novels, mysteries, spy novels, historical fiction, and so on. The book’s setting plays a role in defining its genre.“
Earnest Adams, Blogger, 2009.
Absolutely. There is no way a book, a movie, or even a game could be successful without having a genre to fall under, whether one can relate to it or not, it needs to have all the elements that comprise epic storytelling in order to stimulate the consumer’s mind. That’s why games like “The Witcher”, its succession comes from the fact its novel had an established fanbase who were heavily invested in the story. It then branched out into tv show series, board games, and video games. The author, Andrzej Sapkowski, would have no involvement in the game’s developments but gave permission for polish game developer company CD Projekt Red to use his characters to create new storylines. The Witcher falls under the genre “fantasy action role-playing.”
A shooter is a shooter, whether it’s set in the Old West or on Mars or anyplace else. A player who enjoys shooters will probably enjoy one no matter where it’s set, if it’s well-made.“
Earnest Adams, Blogger, 2009.
His argument is that with books there are settings to set the tone or narrative of the literature you’re reading but that concept does not apply to gaming. And he’s correct. You can shoot people in any setting in gaming. GTAV, you’re in California shooting police, drug dealers, or pedestrians. In Destiny 2, you are traveling the solar system shooting aliens or other players (Guardians) in their PVP mode. In Red Dead Redemption, you are shooting your enemies in an old fashion cowboy western setting. As long as the location goes with the theme, doesn’t matter what the audience is doing, if its fun then it’s a win.
Video Game Timeline (RP#3)
(1940)
For the Westinghouse display at the World’s Fair, Edward U. Condon designs a computer
that plays the traditional game Nim in which players try to avoid picking up the last matchstick.
Tens of thousands of people play it, and the computer wins at least 90% of the games.”
I honestly never realized video games dated back that far. I did however I know that when going as far back as the 70s that gaming was more of coding, words, and not what you traditionally see nowadays. But 1940? That’s crazy. This basically is what started the pavement to what would become a billion-dollar industry.
(1977)
Atari releases the Video Computer System, more commonly known as Atari 2600.
Featuring a joystick, interchangeable cartridges, games in color, and switches for selecting games
and setting difficulty levels, it makes millions of Americans home video game players.“
This is what I remember as a very small little girl, my uncles playing with this ‘machine’ that I had no interest in. It just looked funny and by then not every single family that I knew had one. It wasn’t until my father bought me my first Nintendo in 1992 that I fell in love with something that would forever be a part of me.
(1996)
Lara Croft debuts as the star of Eidos’s adventure game Tomb Raider.
Players love her, but critics charge that she’s an example of sexism in video games.“
Personal Take: If you ever had a conversation with me about my all time favorite franchise in gaming you’d know it would be Tomb Raider. I had the first game back in 1996 on my Sega Saturn. Growing up my mother and I never got along but playing this game made her and I, for a moment, forget our tensions and just play the game. She loved seeing a female lead in gaming and I just loved that it made my mother nice to me. I would solve all the puzzles and mazes and she would do the scary boss fights for me. And it continued well into my teens with every Christmas my father bought me the new Tomb Raider installments because he hated watching us fight. We even went together to see the movie starring Angelina Jolie. We loved it.
Sexism in Gaming: I didn’t dismiss that part of the quote. I cannot tell you how many games there are where the men have reasonable armor and the women have their belly, chests, or thighs exposed with very little armor for protection. There’ even sexual suggestive games out there like “Catherine”. I guess it’s because the male species have dominated the gaming world for some time now but women, in recent years, have made a come up in numbers. And I have witness some games not over sexualizing the female characters like Destiny 2 and Call of Duty.
Background – Clouds
I wanted to do something simple but with personality so I created silly large clouds as the far back of the scene and regular moving clouds in the front. I had to go back and fix a layer that wasn’t transparent but it was easy to work around and adjust.
