Experimental Gameplay Project

Semester: Fall 2005

Project Website: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/experimentalgameplay/

In Fall 2005 I was on the Experimental Gameplay Project, which is essentially a group of students that prototype minigames to explore what is fun, engaging, and original gameplay. Each week we picked a theme (such as "gravity" or "growth") and each of us built a game based on the theme. We each worked by ourselves, and only had a week from start to finish to design and build the game, including design, programming, art, and sound. In one semester, we each made 10 games each.

Since mid-semester, our new focus was to be truely experimental, and explore topics that haven't been explored through gameplay, so things get a little wierder post-Round 6. Here are the games I made:

		Musical Bubbles exe zip A game that trains your ear. Musical bubbles float up the screen, and you must pop the ones that aren't in key with the musical scale.
		Nodework (Round 9 - Dissect) exe zip Build a network across a grid of nodes to alter the state of an input shape to match the target output shape. Each node affects the current state of the shape, and you must determine the effects of each node.
		Troy (Round 8 - Violate) link A web-based augmented reality game exploring the topic of violation of privacy on the internet.
		Blind Art (Round 7 - Turn-Based Games) exe zip This game is a bit more "experimental" than my previous games. It's a two-player game based around your ability to effectively communicate directions to another player, in this case to each draw the same picture without seeing each other's canvas.
		Guidance (Round 6 - Gravity) exe zip Your mouse is the center of gravity for the system. Move the mouse around to guide masses around the field, getting colored masses to their matching colored targets to score points.
		Grow 'Em (Round 5 - Birth) exe zip Plant seeds and pull up to procedurally grow flowers. Breed flowers together to make new seeds and reach the target flower.
		Fiery Pursuit (Round 4 - Temperature) exe zip You're a flame on a board, and you have to keep moving or you'll burn right through. Move around the board collecting tokens and trying not to burn away too many tiles.
		Tradewinds (Round 3 - Airflow) exe zip Blow a ship around the sea through buoys, avoiding the ever-growing shark population. To blow the ship around, you blow into a microphone. The game can also be played just using a mouse.
		Riff (Round 2 - Chains) exe zip Click on adjacent tokens of the same color or shape to create combo chains. See how big of a chain you can make, but don't stop making chains or you'll run out of time!
		Linahopp (Round 1 - Decay) exe zip Draw barriers with your mouse to block red tokens from reaching the center, but barriers decay over time! Use barriers to also help guide green tokens to the center and collect points. (My high score is 3200, see if you can beat that)

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