PuckGrinder
Play PuckGrinder.
Finishing is finishing. The number of strokes leftover out of the initial 3 isn’t displayed, even though bypassing the obstacles using only 1 stroke is much harder. Life offers no rewards for doing things the hard way, and no one besides the doer cares about how much work a task took - others only care about the results.
Half-hearted action isn’t action. Hitting the first red bar awards 0, the same number of points as going backwards into the back wall, or not playing at all. Doing the task poorly is the same as not doing it at all.
(GaD Variation #25, abstracted visuals and interactions for NinjaDreams)
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:20 am
Half-hearted action isn’t action. Hitting the first red bar awards 0, the same number of points as going backwards into the back wall, or not playing at all. Doing the task poorly is the same as not doing it at all.
So why award 2 points for hitting the 2nd bar?
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 am
I wanted to convey a clear pattern (score = number of sticks reached/passed), and then break that pattern for the lowest number. If, say, I only awarded score for finishing, I think the contrast would have been lost; if, say, I would have only awarded score for the last two, no clear pattern would exist to be violated, and I think it might just seem like two arbitrary score values.
I probably could have also awarded 0 for stick 2; I don’t see that there’s a huge difference either way as to whether I drew the line on stick 1, 2, or 3, but I had to draw the line somewhere. I wanted the pattern discoverable, especially since not everyone reads the write ups (when I do them), and this was my device for trying to communicate the point to those visitors that only play the swf.
I take it that, to make the point as stated, you would have drawn the line at a different threshold?
(Thanks for the question!)
April 24th, 2008 at 4:16 am
I feel that hitting the 2nd bar takes no effort. Awarding 3 points for the 3rd barrier would make the point more clearly to me - it was totally lost on me until I read the write-up.
I first thought maybe giving 1 point for the 2nd barier etc. would have been an alternative, but 0,0,3,4,etc. sounds more likely to be noticed.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:37 am
I might be better than the average person at these types of games - maybe others wouldn’t get the 4pts etc. and notice the discrepancy.
But if the message is a higher priority than the fiero from finishing, maybe it could be made longer and some of the middle bars made easier - perhaps only going up/down 3/4 of the way or something?
April 24th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I do like the idea of 0′ing out the #2 stick as well, and I think that would make more sense especially for players like you and I. As you know I have a long streak of making some of the games inaccessibly difficult, though, and perhaps choosing to only zero #1 was partly my subconscious over reaction to the concern that, maybe, this is much harder to some people than it is for us (as mentioned in your last comment). It’s tricky to know sometimes without testers or much mainstream feedback. I guess I could start logging gameplay metrics…
I like the idea of widening the field and making some bars easier. The simplicity/symmetry here appealed to me - the player can see exactly where the bar will reach before turning back - but that probably could still be achieved with a longer/lighter layout.
Thanks as always!
April 25th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
On 2nd thoughts, I did maybe notice the discrepancy, being something of an ‘explorer-type’ when playing games. Initially struggling to get past 4, I did kill myself intentionally for a laugh.
Upon noticing the break in the pattern, I indeed thought, ‘ah well, Chris obviously didn’t think it worth giving a score to the 1st thing - it’s too early!
I may have considered the possiblity of the exact message you tried to convey, but never consciously and not for longer than a few seconds.