Game Snacks! 🍿

This exercise is based on Jose Zagal's Game Design Snacks: "nuggets of wisdom" for making games. 

You'll need to think of a game you've played to illustrate one lesson you learned from the readings/videos. Reading/watching and then writing will take you about an hour to 90 minutes each week.

Due Sundays by 11:59pm:  Post "Game Snack" to Teams

• Pick one of the readings/videos for the week and some specific design lesson that stood out to you.
• Then, think of a game you've played that helps us understand this lesson. Then, find a YouTube video of it.
• Your examples can be complimentary, critical, or both.
• The more specific, the better!
• Title your post in Teams with the "lesson" you learned and then write a 200–250 word analysis that first explains this lesson and how your example game demonstrates it.
• Post your text and at least one timestamped YouTube link of your game in action that illustrates your example to the Game Snacks channel.

Example: 

"Cutscenes Are Good Breaks For Players"

In the video “What Pac Man brought to game design” by the game makers toolkit, the narrator talks about how in Pac Man there little animations in between levels. The narrator mentions how these can give players a short little break in between levels to rest their hands and get ready to continue playing, Toru Iwatani would call these in-between segments coffee breaks. These scenes would be known as cut scenes which are non-interactive movies that are put in between gameplay. Cut scenes are able to give players breaks and help give story to games. It is mentioned that the actions in the scenes are all based on classic cartoons such as Tom and Jerry or Popeye to give some more life to the otherwise lifeless characters.

In fighting games when a match is about to start, the two characters would usually have some sort of interaction with each other. These interactions can be used to help get players to learn what kind of person the character they’re playing is like or it can be used for something comedic. BlazBlue cross tag battle is a fighting game that uses characters from multiple different fighting games and each player picks two characters to use in a match. At the beginning of a match, the selected characters will interact with each other and depending on the characters selected, it can show off their personality. (https://youtu.be/GPw8d1OK5xc?t=17) Because these intros could be 30 seconds or longer they allow the players to take a short rest after playing multiple rounds or simply if their hands hurt. (note: the intros can be skipped if the players want to skip them) Because fighting games are also very intense both physically and mentally they can use this little break to help prepare themselves for the battle that’s to come.