Next assignment: play a bunch of games. Specifically the ones listed by the teacher. A lot of them are free web games that I've already played before, so it was nice revisiting them. Two of them were You Have to Burn the Rope and This is the Only Level, which we also played in class. The first one is more of a joke, you perform the action described by the title and the game is over. It sets up the tone of a traditional platform game and standard, albeit simple, boss fight, and then the player is treated to a song longer than the actual game, playing with the idea of game length.

The other game takes that idea in a different direction, taking one level and having the player repeat it over and over, with a variant of game play each time. It demonstrates how game play can be derived from limited assets.

We also played Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy in class, but on my own time I played another one of her games, Redder. Redder is an adventure platformer with a retro style, and you explore an alien planet searching for, uh, I don't remember what they were, ancient artifacts or parts of your broken spaceship. Either way, as I played I noticed some graphical glitches, as tiles would flicker and change into other tiles. I thought it could have been due to the programming, some sort of automatic tiling thing, but it got to the point where I realized it was intentional, especially when the music started to be affected. I thought it was really cool how it played with my perception and expectations, as I would wonder what would happen to the game when I got all the collectibles.

 I had also played QWOP before (of course) and the main point of the game was the controls. Using the q,w,o, and p keys, you control each component of the character's legs as he competes in a 100 m dash. Such tedious manipulation and micromanagement of the character's movement leads to hilarious results and also demonstrates the idea of what aspects of a game should be handled automatically by the game and what should be specifically controlled by the player.

One more game I played was... Don't S*** Your Pants, a text based game where you guide a character to use the toilet without soiling his trousers. As you can tell the game is ridiculous and juvenile, but I can't help but giggle immaturely at the entire experience. Here, the game is about discovering all of the possibilities and endings, both victories and defeats, as the game tracks all the endings you accomplish. You also need to think outside the box with all the possibilities, some things we may take for granted in this step by step process, and some things wouldn't come to mind at all.