Board Game Analysis: Pandemic

The game me and my group played for this weeks assignment was Pandemic. A game for 2-4 players where you are given a role/character with different abilities that are supposed to help you save humanity. Each player is given one of the following five roles: Medic, Dispatcher, Researcher, Scientist or operations expert. The goal of the game is to avoid the extinction of mankind by not allowing more than 7 outbreaks to happen, by not allowing a disease to take hold (running out of disease cubes for any one of the 4 diseases) or running out of player cards. The only way that the players can win is by discovering the cures for all 4 diseases.
A turn consists of three ”phases”. During phase 1 the players execute their actions, each player is granted 4 actions per turn. These actions consists of: Moving to a ”connected” city, taking a shuttle flight (travel from one research station to another), placing a research station, traveling to the location displayed on one of your player cards, removing 1 disease cube, finding a cure or ”sharing knowledge”. I will explain these actions along with the objects in the game, below. During phase 2 the player draws 2 player cards. During phase 3, two infection cards are drawn and one disease cube is placed on each of the cities shown on the cards (the amount of infection cards drawn will be increased later on, I will explain this below).

Cards: There are a couple of different cards that come with the game. These are the player cards, role cards, infection cards and action cards.
The player cards have 3 versions of themselves; epidemic cards, event cards and Cure/city cards.
If an epidemic card is drawn, three things will happen. First, a card from the bottom of the ”infection card” deck is drawn, the city shown on the card receives 3 disease cubes. Secondly, the pile of discarded disease cards is picked up and shuffled to then be placed back on the top of the infection card deck. And lastly, the infection rate is increased by one. These also act as difficulty modifiers, there are three difficulties and they depend on how many epidemic cards are mixed in with the player cards.
Event cards are special action cards that can allow players to do special things, such as ”Airlift” which allows a player to pick up any player pawn, and place it in any city on the board.
The cure/city cards are colored with the same color as one of the diseases and have the name of a city within that diseases spreading zone. These are either used to find cures, to travel to the city shown on the card or to build a research station in the city shown on the card. In order to create a cure, you need 5 cards of the same color, and you need to be in a research station. You can also give these cards to another player by sharing knowledge with them, in order to do this you are required to be in the same city and it needs to be the city shown in the card that you are trying to give away.
Role cards are handed out to all the players in the beginning of the game, these tell you the special ability you have been given.
Action cards are more like cheat sheets, showing the player what he/she can do with their 4 actions.

Roles: 

The Medic is given two abilities: First the power to remove all disease cubes in an area with one action. Secondly, if the cure for a disease is found, he/she can remove all disease cubes from a city without spending action points.

The Dispatcher is given the ability to move another player’s pawn to any other player pawn on the board. The dispatcher is also allowed to move other player pawns as if they were his/hers own.

The Researcher is allowed to give his player cards (”share knowledge”) without having to be in a specific city, instead, the only requirement is that he/she is located in the same city as the player that is given the card.

The Operations Expert is allowed to place down a research station anywhere he wants as long as he/she is standing in the city where they want the research station (in other words, no specific card is required anymore).

The Scientist is allowed to create a cure using only 4 of the same colored player cards instead of 5.

 

Some rules to keep in mind
-If a city has 3 infection cubes on it, and an infection card showing that city is drawn, instead of placing a fourth disease cube, one disease cube is placed on each city connected to that city. This is called an ”Outbreak”, after this has happened move the outbreak token up 1 number. If 8 of these occur, the game is over.
-If an epidemic card is drawn, the infection rate is increased. After a set amount of increases to the infection rate, the players will start drawing 3 infection cards after each of their turns. After increasing further, the players will have to start drawing 4 infection cards after each of their turns.

 

Setup

The game begins with each player being given their role cards, when this is done, three infection cards are drawn and 3 disease cubes are put down on the cities shown in the cards. After that, 3 more infection cards are drawn and 2 disease cubes are placed on each of the cities shown on the cards. Lastly, 3 more infection cards are drawn and 1 disease cube is placed on each of the cities shown on the cards.
Each player draws 2 player cards. The player pawns begin in Atlanta, where the first research station is also placed. After this the game is ready to be played.

My opinions

The core of the game revolves around using your actions wisely and cooperating with the other players in order to win, while constantly drawing infection cards that spread the diseases. The players will have to prioritize threats in order to keep humanity alive, while also trying to meet up in specific places to research the cure. This makes the game a very social experience, since it’s a cooperative game that won’t be won without talking to each other.
In order to win the game, the group needs to have good communication, planning skills and need to utilize the abilities of their roles.

I would say that the biggest strength of the game is probably how ”dramatic” the game can get. We have a couple of examples of that from the rounds that we played. We only won the game once, and even then we were probably 2-3 turns away from losing. We could no longer keep up with the spread of the infections in the last rounds since we started focusing too much on finding the last cure. The player cards would only have lasted us about 4 more turns in the end.
Two of the rounds were lost with us being only 2 turns away from finding the last cure. These rounds both became very tense since every infection card we pulled could mean the end of us. One of these rounds ended because we ran out of the black disease cubes and the other was lost because we hit 8 outbreaks.
So from what we experienced with the game, this appears to be how the usual game plays out, being close to both losing and winning when the end approaches.

The biggest weakness of the game would probably be the fact that the random elements of the game CAN break it. One example of this from when we played the game would be the round that was lost after only 2 of the players had made their first turns. We were unfortunate enough that the areas that begin with 3 and 2 disease cubes were too close to each other and after the first player had finished her turn, she pulled an epidemic card. This caused a massive chain reaction where one outbreak began and caused several other outbreaks to start, so after the first round was played, we were already in over our heads with 2 or 3 outbreaks already having occurred. As player two finished his round, he pulled an infection card with one of the cities with 3 disease cubes on it and the outbreak chain started again (only more severe this time). This resulted in us running out of black disease cubes and the game was lost.
I can’t imagine that this would happen all too often and that we were just incredibly unfortunate that round, however, since it did happen I would still count this as a weakness.

Regarding the target audience

The box of this game recommends it for people of ten years of age and up. Now, I could see this game being played by a ten year old who’s playing together with an older crowd (parents or siblings etc.), but not by a group consisting solely of ten year old kids. My reasoning for this is that the subject of the game is a little bit too serious for an audience that young but also because of the difficulty level of the game and due to the somewhat complex language on some of the cards/rules. My rating would probably be placed around 13-14 and up, not only because of the reasons I just mentioned but also because I think that a crowd of that age would end up enjoying the game a fair bit more.

Sometimes it feels like the people rating these types of games are going about it in a strange way. There is no blood involved and there are no scary elements (other than what you as a person visualize when looking at the board), so it could be seen as appropriate for that age group in that respect. The issue I have with it is that the complexity and enjoyment of the game is not always taken into consideration when the age group is decided. Also from a marketing point of view, rating a game with a lower age recommendation can be hurtful since older players might overlook those games in fear of them being too ”childish”. You can end up with a gap where people of one age group buys the game and don’t enjoy it due to it being too complex or difficult, and another age group who might have enjoyed the game (if they were to play it) overlooks it because they think they’re too old for it.

Long story short, I think that the age recommendations should better reflect the target audience instead of showing who would be ”allowed” to play the game. The first part of this bit was aimed at this specific game, the later part was just me ranting about age ratings/recommendations in general.

 

That would be it for this weeks board game post! Thanks for reading!

3D Week 3

This weeks post will be coming in 2 parts, first a part where I write about the optimization of the crates and later a part about the upcoming task where I will show pictures of an object that I’m going to model in the near future.

Part 1: Optimizing the crates

Post apocalyptic crate

 

This is the crate that was optimized by Folland Rickard. To the left we have the original model and to the right we have the optimized one.

The area that has been highlighted (light green) is the place where most changes took place. For this one, that area was the lid. The biggest issue with the lid was that I had created it as a plane and than extruded specific areas of the plane to create planks. This resulted in overlapping faces and flickering in one area. Looking at the right part of the lid on the left picture, you can clearly see that it only consists of a plane, basically there is nothing there but 2 faces. The lid was given more of a thickness in order to fix this. The overlapping faces were also fixed by deleting them and creating new faces.

Urban Crate

This crate was fixed by Ludwig Lindsttål, same as above we have the original to the left, a zoomed in version of the original in the middle and the optimized one to the right.

For this crate, two areas were the main subject to change (red and light green). Starting by looking at the bottom of the original version (zoomed), you can see that there is a face at the foot of the crate where the planks are pushed in. To fix this, the entire bottom face was removed and replaced with a new one that fitted better.
The upper part of the crate (Light green) Was earlier covering a more or less identical version of the lower part. The entire upper bit was deleted (since it would not be visible anyways) and the cover was place back on top.

For both of these crates, the poly-count was severely reduced and had n-gons removed.

 

Medieval Crate

This is the crate that I ”optimized”. Same as above, (Red and lightgreen) highlights have been added to show the areas that where subject to the most changes, original on the left and fixed on the right.

The reason for me writing ”optimized” is because that is partially a lie. This crate had some 170 overlapping faces, plenty of overlapping vertices and too many n-gons to count on one hand.
So after careful consideration and inspection of the original crate, I decided to remake it from scratch and then optimize the new one.

So after recreating the crate I was left with about 1/4 of the problems I originally had. An example would be that the 170 overlapping faces were now down to just 40. I had no n-gons to fix, nor any overlapping vertices.

So, regarding the largest changes I made when reconstructing, lets start at the bottom! In the original model, the bottom had the same construction as the all the other sides. I felt that adding that extra side only increased the poly-count and the number of potential issues. Another argument for removing the bottom construction was that it’s an area that may not be visible most of the time.

The second zone that had large changes were the remaining sides (so essentially the entire crate). In the original version, the horizontal planks were far more uneven, this resulted in many more issues, especially since I extruded them more than once per plank. I also reduced the total number of horizontal planks, reducing the amount of issues I had with the crate as well as the poly-count. Instead of making them all diferent sizes, I made them with 2 different sizes. To make them look more ”random” I made sure that the planks on the same height didn’t have the same size (or amount of extrusion, this is visible in the image of the fixed crate).
The diagonal planks were also made to be all the same size, this made the creation of the box far easier on me.

Fixing my own crate turned out to be far easier than optimizing someone else’s work since I knew exactly what I had done with my own model. While saying that, having my own work looked at and fixed was a huge learning experience. Since this is among the first models I have ever created, being in a group with experienced people was really helpful.

 

Part 2: The future model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the object I chose to try and model was this dagger. I chose this object because it was one of the best preserved items I found, I thought it looked cool and working with models like this seemed like a lot of fun! The dagger has supposedly belonged to a captain on a ship that sunk somewhere around the (if I remember this correctly) 1700’s. The reason why they think that it belonged to the captain was because of the patterns on the handle and the fact that no item of similar was found along with it.
I figured I was going to use the ”Skyrim” style when modelling it (this is also one of the reasons why I chose it) because it reminded me of a dagger from Morrowind (an earlier game in the elder scrolls franchise). According to me, this dagger would fit right into that universe.
I think that I will put most emphasis on the handle, especially the upper part of the handle, simply because that area is what makes the dagger itself special. Also, the pattern of the handle reminds me of the pattern on the upper part of the handle on this dagger from skyrim:

One of the things that I will try to avoid later on is making the blade too shiny, I might make it look a bit duller just to emphasize the handle area where most of the details are.
What I think will be the hardest part when modelling this dagger is creating the rounded ”valve” like area in the upper parts of the handle. All in all I feel like the entire process of modelling this dagger is going to be challenging since this will still be among my first models.
My biggest concern is that I won’t be able to do the dagger justice.
The edge might also become an issue, but hopefully I can avoid any major problems by not concerning myself with making it look ”sharp” (Naturally I will try to make it look sharp, but it won’t be my main concern).
One more thing that might become an issue (hopefully it’s just an optical illusion due to the angle that won’t become an issue) is that when I was drawing the edge flow, the blade didn’t always seem to align with the handle. It ended up looking crooked. This should however be easy to avoid since all I have to do is model the 2 parts separately and just attach them to each other afterwards (which was the plan all along).

 

Well, that’s the end for this weeks 3D post!

 

3D Graphics week 2

This weeks assignment was to create crates following 3 different themes. We were allowed to choose from: Medieval, Sci-Fi, Urban contemporary, Post apocalyptic or Cartoony.

The initial three I picked were:

1. Medieval 

This is how my first crate turned out! The idea I had when I decided to make a medieval crate was to make a crate entirely out of ”wood”, this is the reason for the plank-like structure on each of the 6 sides of the crate. When looking at crates in games with medieval themes, I looked at fable & skyrim.

Looking at the ones from fable, I got the horizontal planks on each of the sides, this looked a tad bit boring to me and border on being too perfect. Looking at crates from Skyrim, I got the idea of putting the diagonal planks across the crate on each side (I know the skyrim one does not have them on each side, but I wasn’t trying to make it identical either!). The reason why these games fitted as examples for me was because I have spent far too much time in both of these worlds and the medieval themes are obvious in both of them.
2. Post apocalyptic

When creating the post apocalyptic crate, the idea I had was that I needed to create something that looks half broken, as if it had been put together from scrap metals and put together in a rush. The thought was that ”People in a post apocalyptic world won’t have time to bother with creating a perfectly symmetrical crate.” or something along those lines.
When creating this one I only used 1 game as inspiration, and that game was Fallout.

From this crate I took a lot of inspiration, with the slightly crooked metal bars on the top along with the slightly different lengths of the boards on the crate. Fallout is set in a post apocalyptic world and is probably one of the most iconic game series with that theme. Everything is dirty and dark, objects around the world are put together using the remnants of the old world resulting in things not being perfectly symmetrical, people in this world make due with what they have left and try to make something that fills a function rather than focusing on making it look perfect.
3. Sci-fi (Urban)

Now for the one that became a problem for me (as you can see). When I had chosen Sci-fi to work with, I was looking around the room at what others were doing, most of what I saw were sci-fi crates with a ”Future of mankind” type of tone to them, so I wanted to make something different. I wanted to create something alien, and figured I would use Halo’s covenant as inspiration.

The left one is what I meant when I said ”Future of mankind”, the typical sci-fi style. I wanted something that looked more like the one on the right. At first I had trouble doing this because of a lack of ideas as to how I wanted it to look, so I started playing around with the software and tried to create different shapes. At first I couldn’t get the shapes to curve like I wanted them to, after that I had troubles with creating the smaller details (all this because of a current lack of experience with the software). After struggling to create something that looked even remotely sci-fi or even the least bit like a crate, I had an idea. But as it turns out it was one of those ideas that felt right at first but just turned out terrible in the end. That’s the one I created with sci-fi in mind. In the end it wound up looking more like a ancient Greek temple on a pedestal with checkers on top (the checkers were supposed to be a panel to control opening and closing the crate).

However, due to me being thoroughly unsatisfied with the sci-fi creation. I decided to make a new one with a more urban tone. The game that I took inspiration from is Half-Life. I had a little bid of a hard time finding a good picture of the crate that I used as inspiration but eventually I found this one.

 

The one I’m referring to is naturally the one with the green cover on it. These crates are more urban-like crates but in a sci-fi environment. Now these are the only crates that exist in my mind. If someone mentions crates in games, these are the ones I immediately think of. This is also one of the reasons that makes it a good example to use, it’s a game that most of us have heard about, and a lot of people have played.
I’m thinking about shortening the green cover on top of my crate seeing how it ended up covering nearly 50% of what I did, but the upper half is practically the same as the bottom half of it.

One thing that all three of the wooden crates have in common is that I made the plank sections uneven, I did this to make the separate planks of the crates more obvious, this might have been something that would have been better to do with textures on the urban & medieval one.

Board game analysis: Smallworld

When we started this assignment we had an array of board games to choose from, after some brief consideration (since no group member had an extensive knowledge of board games) we decided to just pick one that looked fun, and that game became Smallworld.

Smallworld is a strategy game with small similarities to Risk. The goal of the game is to gather coins and at the end of the game (after 9 turns or so, depending on the amount of players) the player holding the most coins wins the game. The way the player acquire these coins is by holding ”regions” on the board and at the end of the turn you collect coins based on how much land (regions) you control. There are however factors which can increase the amount of coins a region is worth, these come in the shapes of ”Races” and ”Special powers”. For an example, if the player was to be controlling the Dwarfs, they would gain one extra coin for controlling a region with a Mine symbol on it and if they had the special power ”Merchant” they would gain one extra coin for every region under their control. Should the player run out of soldiers to put down on the game board, or simply lose interest in the combination they chose, the player can put the race in ”Decline” allowing them to pick a new race/special power combination.

The picking of races and special powers are to a certain degree random, all in all there are 14 races and 20 special powers, these are randomly put together and at any given time the maximum amount of combinations to choose from is six. The players start with 5 coins each and the first player gets to choose from the first batch of six combinations, these combinations are put up in a row, the first combination in the row does not cost anything, to be able to choose combination number two, you must place one coin on combination number one, to choose combination number 3 the player must put down one coin on the first and second combination etc..
During the first round the players make their initial conquests, starting at the borders of the board, to make a conquest you need to put down two tokens plus 1 token for every enemy token present in the region.
The combinations of races and special powers would be one of the games primary strengths, since every time you play it could look vastly different when looking at what each player could be able to do. The combinations of the races and special powers also give players more reasons to play the game several times, since when you play the game you constantly come up with combinations that you would have liked to see in play.

The special powers and races can also make it very hard to tell which player is in the lead (the value and amount of coins each player possess is hidden) since a player who owns 3 regions can gain similar or even higher amounts of coins every turn than a player who owns 6 regions, depending on what combination of Race/power they control.

The ability to choose new combinations also allows players to easily catch up to each other, so being in the lead in the beginning might not be all that significant.
An example of this would be the first time our group sat down and played the game. After turn one had passed one of the group members had lost all but one of her regions, and the player responsible for conquering those regions was in control of essentially half the board. This naturally drew the attention of the other players who started focusing on stopping the player who appeared to be in the lead. In the end, the player who had sat quietly in his corner of the board, waging practically no wars while holding a relatively small amount of regions, ended up winning the game, being in possession of around 110 coins, with the closest competition ending at 76 coins.

The combinations can at the same time end up being one of the games weaknesses, since it is a strategy game some players might not enjoy the random element of the combinations since they can, at times, end up being insanely powerful. An example of this is the second round we played of the game when one player held more or less half the board for half the game due to the combination he picked. The race he had (sorcerers) enabled him to conquer 4 enemy regions every turn without having to fight, instead he could simply replace 1 enemy token with a new one of his own. This made him very difficult to attack since it was very difficult to attack without leaving at least one weak point in the defense enabling him to quickly reconquer the territory he had lost.

 

The target audience

The game is recommended for people of age 8 and up, however I do not think this is a correct target audience for the game due to its complexity. I would say that the game would probably do better in a group of players aged 15 and up seeing how there are a lot of rules and different tokens to keep check on.

The game box includes:
* Several different boards that are used depending on how many players there are.
*14 Races and 20 special powers.
*Cheat sheets that briefly explain how the turns are supposed to be played out and explain the different abilities granted by the different races and special powers.
*Plenty of the 4 different types of coins valued 1,3,5 and 10.
*Mountain tokens that represent the extra “defense value” of mountain regions.
*Several “lost tribe tokens” that work like a regular enemy token, except that they are scattered around the board from the start of the game.
*Several different special power tokens that are given to players with the special power that is connected to said tokens.
*1 Turn token that is moved down the turn counter every time all players have finished their turns.
*A more extensive rule book that explains all the rules and special cases (which can appear when specific special powers or races clash).
*Tokens (or units) for every race.

For our group at least, all these rules and powers where hard to keep track on at first, which can make the first round of the game take a long time. To make it easier on the group we skipped reading the rule book and watched a tutorial instead, this tutorial was about 20 minutes long and explained everything we needed to know (more or less) to start playing. After having tried to understand the rules and eventually having played the game a couple of times, my conclusion is therefore that people ranging from 8-12 years old would probably not have that much fun with it.

 

What I said to be both the strength and weakness of the game is also (according to me) the most interesting system in the game. The way that special powers work together with the races and how those two put together work with the board and other combinations.
To give an example of what makes this so interesting I will put together a few combinations that are incredibly interesting.

Example 1: Decline combo
Race – Ghoul
Special Power – Spirit
The Ghoul ability allows the player to put his/her race in decline while still being able to move, conquer and reinforce them, as if they weren’t in decline.
The Spirit ability allows the player to keep the race it’s combined with to remain in decline without counting towards the maximum of 1 race in decline at a time.

Example 2: War combo
Race – Triton
Special Power – Commando
The Triton ability allows the player to conquer regions bordering to a sea or lake with one less token (although there is always a one token minimum for the conquest).
The Commando ability allows the player to conquer regions with one less token (same restriction as above).

Example 3: Coin combo
Race – Human
Special Power – Merchant
The Human ability grants the player one extra coin for every farmland occupied.
The Merchant ability grants the player one extra coin for every region they control.

Example of a clash between abilities:
The Sorcerers allow one adjacent enemy token to be replaced (and killed) by a sorcerer token. The Elves never lose a token when conquered, and instead always retreat to a nearby friendly region.
When these two abilities clash, the elven region is lost and a sorcerer token is placed, the elven token however is not removed, but instead placed in an adjacent region.

The list of these types of examples could go on for a very long time, in fact, with the races and special powers available without any expansions, there are up to 280 possible combinations of special powers and races. This makes the cheat sheet very handy since it would probably be nigh impossible to keep track on all of these powers and special cases without it.
Looking at the contents of the expansion packs, it is obvious that the creator also knows this to be the most interesting thing about the game since they (if combined) add 13 extra races and 12 extra special powers.

 

Summary

The core game system revolves around choosing the right Race/Special power combinations, conquering regions on the board and knowing when to go into Decline in order to change combination. At the end of every turn you gain coins (which are the victory condition) depending on how many regions you control. The player with the most coins at the end of the game wins.

The biggest strength of the game is the amount of combinations that are available and how much of a replay value it gives the players. A large portion of what makes these combinations a strength is that they act so differently from each other.

The biggest flaw of the game is that it’s very hard to become “good” at the game, the only thing you can really gain is knowledge of what combinations you need to be afraid of. This results in a (at times) very unstable game where skill is not as important as luck. The entire game can be completely changed because one player happened to get a combination that could be considered “overpowered”. This flaw however, is not always obvious since it’s possible and often likely, that more than one player gets a combination of that caliber. Because of the random element the game is probably better played if you don’t have the expectation that it will be a fair game. The game rules can also seem like a lot to go through and may scare off players at first glance, but once you start to get a hang of the rules of the game it is a lot of fun and slowly becomes easier to understand as you play it through.

The most interesting system in the game is how the race/power combinations can work together on the board and sometimes against other combinations.

Even though we started doubting that Smallworld was the right choice at first, we ended up having a lot of fun with it!

Analysis of Screenshots & 3D Level

The first Screenshot to analyze was this one, a picture of batman in a cave with (presumably) the batplane behind him. The first things to take note of in this picture is the tilt and perspective of the picture. The tilt and the diagonal lines in the picture are there to emphasize movement or mobility in the picture making it a ”action” shot. The vertical lines and the perspective are there to emphasize the power of batman, standing on a height looking tall and powerfull.
Batman is made with distinct edges and sharp shapes to make him look threatening. The lighting and coloring of the picture is low key and, apart from smaller areas in the picture, black. The main colors of the image are blue and around the lights green. The color and lighting put together gives off a small sense of sci-fi. This also goes for the textures, everything in the picture is very shiny and reflects plenty of light.

 

The second screenshot is of Battlefield Hardline. The picture is made up of mainly diagonal lines to emphasize the movement in the picture, that being the 2 people going down a zipline with money falling out from the orange backpack. The money is blurred to also further emphasize the speed of the action in the picture. The picture is high key with blue being the most used color in the background, this is probably to increase contrast and to draw more attention to orange backpack of the person furthest down the zipline.
The textures are very shiny, to me this can look strange when the textile on the characters going down the zipline are shinier than the black glass building to the right of them.

 

The third picture is of Mirrors Edge. Composed of vertical/diagonal lines to strengthen the greatness of the city and to show that the picture is not static, again, showing movement. High key lighting with very little color, most of the city is made up of blue and white to place it in a sci-fi world. The main character in the image is different, she has black, white and red clothing making her pop out from the environment around her. All in all the city is made very shiny, it almost looks like the entire city is made of glass, this is to further emphasize the sci-fi elements of the world.

 

The fourth and final picture is of The Witcher. The picture is made up mainly of horizontal lines, these are usually used to give stillness and calm to an image, in this case however it is made to make the dynamic lines of the two characters in the picture even more mobile. The lighting is sort of mid-key, looking at the dark foreground and the very bright bakground. The colors of the characters are dark, putting them at contrast with the very bright background.

 

 

Part 2

For the assignment to create a level we were given the choice among 3 games and a few feelings to try and convey through the level. The game I chose was Mass Effect and the feeling to convey was Danger.

When I think of Mass Effect I think of a couple of things: Space, indoor environments on spaceships/space stations and one of the earlier levels of the game. The level that popped into my head was the one that’s played out on a train station.

So in order to try and convey the right setting to be able to give the player a sense of danger, I started creating the walkways that the player will have to traverse. I made them wide to leave space for ”crates” and other sorts of cover for the player. I gave the buildings these colors to keep track on separate buildings, the green one is the starting area of this part of the level and the pink building is the goal. I put down the red ”doors” to highlight the beginning and end, just to make my thought process more obvious. To convey danger, I made the walkways narrow and cover less to make the player feel exposed while crossing. I also made the cover face one direction while at the same time opening up the middle section of the train to give space for further threats since it’s placed to give enemies flanking potential.
The area is surrounded by large buildings, the reason why I did this was to make the player appear smaller and trapped, this was also to try and emphasize that the area is not a safe place to be.

Now, if I as a player where to enter an area looking like this, filled with covers and having the walkway where I start blocked off I would immediately assume that I am either about to fight here, or I am going to come back at a later point and have to fight then. Either way the scenario would make me think of the area as a battlefield. The player can see where to go from the start and can also see that the most direct route to the goal is blocked off.

 

When I showed the level to my classmates they understood what game it was from, however the feeling that I tried to convey was not entirely correct. The reason for this, I believe, would be that the level itself could convey more than one of the given feelings. The two feelings that the classmates thought of were Suspense and Aggression, in my opinion these words are, in games like this, closely related to danger. Aggression was guessed due to the covers and the fact that in an area looking like this you are going to have to fight, hence you will have to be aggressive. Suspense was guessed, also due to the covers since you are faced with a situation where you could fail.
Because of this, I would like to think that I managed to convey my thoughts pretty accurately and my classmates understood my thought process as well.

 

Looking at their creations, most of them where of the game journey and used the keyword Solitude. This struck me as an obvious choice, this was also the reason why I chose not to do journey or solitude. It was obvious since Journey is a game that goes very well with the word solitude you are (for the most part) alone in a big empty dessert with large ruins. Even when you are not alone (when another player joins) you are still alone, you are just alone together.
The most used art of element in these pictures where vertical lines to make the world feel bigger than yourself, this also contributed to the feeling of solitude since in spite of all of these large structures, you are still alone.