Print n' Play Deconstruction:

Aether Captains: The Search

   The goal of Aether Captains: The Search (AC:TS) is different depending on the team that the player chooses. The objective of the Criminal player is to place a marker on each of the three crime scenes or by wounding all four police on the map. For the police to win they must surround the criminal on all four orthogonal sides with police pawns, barricades, or the edges of the map. This goal is made very clear in the instructions and also makes sense when considering the roles the players are playing as. The basic mechanics that allow the player to do this are moving their pawn(s) and using action cards drawn from a deck. Action cards can be used once and give the player some form of ability that turn, whether it's the criminal shooting a police pawn or a the police officers taking away a card from the criminal. Each side's card fit their position and allow for a very dynamic play through.

   

   The game pans out over a 4x5 array of randomly shuffled and placed map cards. The player must have their pawns on one of these cards, meaning their is only a sense of blocks, no vertex or line usage. The basic operative actions the players may make are translation of their pawns. Each turn the player may move one of their pieces by one map card orthogonally. This means no diagonal movement only side ways. Some map cards are special, others are just spaces. Special cards include sewers, crime scenes, and a police station. The sewers are a means of transportation for the criminal when he has a "Take to the Sewers" card allowing him to move himself to any other sewer map card on the board. Crime Scene cards are where the criminal must leave their marks in order to win the game. The police station card is where new policemen may spawn after being wounded if the police player has the "Call in Reinforcements" action card. 

The criminal has placed a mark on all crime scenes and won 

  

 The available spaces the criminal can move may be altered though if the police create a barricade. This is an action card that allows the police to block off a space on the map, essentially changing the state of that space. Another space change in state is the marking of a crime scene. In terms of states that a players pawns can be in, the criminal has only two states, on the loose and captured. He is captured when surrounded and unable to move. The police also have two states, in the field and wounded. Any police pawn may be made wounded when the criminal uses the "Shot in the Dark" action card to shoot and wound one. They may only be brought back in with the "Call in Reinforcements" action card played by the police player. 

Policemen have set up a barricade to strategically block the criminal from getting to the crime scene

   The rules are very solid in that no loopholes were found while playing. Gameplay flowed quite naturally as a turn based game and nothing was left up to ambiguity. Rules for each side's pawns differed slightly in their abilities and such, but everything felt balanced and fair. Just as a criminal could wound an officer, the officers could place a barricade and foil the plans of the criminal. Which brings me to the strategy involved in the game. There's a lot of strategy that both sides must implement in order to win. The criminal must figure out a path that they feel would be most efficient, taking into account they may or may not have cards that allow them to do certain things to benefit themselves. Which is where the timing of action card usage is powerful. Saving a "Shot in the Dark" or "One Step Ahead" card for a surprise wounded officer or quick movement can quickly take the police player off guard and make or break the game. Whereas these cards could also be used ineffectively by doing something that the police could easily recover from. The same goes for the police players, who must do their best to protect the crimes scenes and try to figure out the criminals desired path and block them off in their tracks to surround him. Strategy intertwines well with chance in this game though. 

   Chance plays 2 main roles. The initial set up of the board and which cards the player may draw from the deck each turn. The initial set up could give the criminal an easy home run to each of the crime scenes, or spread them around meaning avoiding police and traveling are more important. The chance of cards come into play as the player may get to take out an officer or create a barricade just in the nick of time to spoil the plans of the player they're against.

   I had a great time playing Aether Captains: The Search, it inspired joy in me when things went right, and disgruntlement when my own plans were destroyed by surprise attacks. The game engaged and immersed me successfully, marking it as a well designed board game.

Print and Play Exploration

36D6 (Or my rendition 20D10)

   36D6 is a very simplistic game about pitting dice against each other. The original game involves putting 36 D6 dice in a 6x6 array and rolling them against adjacent ones until there is one die left. The two players then add up the points they got and whoever had that most won. 

   Since I only had access to 20 D10 dice I played 20D10 where there were two teams. Each team started with 10 D10s and the game mechanics were the same, except rather than waiting till one die is left, waiting till one team is fully defeated and then counting points.

   This 2 player is very abstract, with a minimal level of skill required, and a purely chance based victory system. Though it's gameplay is so simple I wouldn't count this against the game quality. Due to the simplicity and speed of gameplay there was no sense of distraction and the games goal is very upfront. This allows for players to be sucked in and have moments of surprise when one die manages to take out 5 others consecutively due to the luck of rolls. Making it overall an enjoyable, quick game.

   36D6 works very well as a print and play game because all thats required is to print it and own dice. No amount of prep is needed since all thats required is the board.

   I admire the way it engages people with such simplicity, but at the same time I wouldn't call it a great game due to it's lack of skill, challenge, and complexity.

Allegiance

   This game involved a lot more complexity than the previous, in fact at first it seemed very convoluted. However behind it's large text based manual the game was very enjoyable and had a flow to it that allowed for good and understandable gameplay. The issue with uncommon card games is the initial view of piles of cards is intimidating since the player doesn't start out knowing anything about them. 

   The design involved a good level of complexity, not too much to be impossible to play, not too little to just be rolling dice. There was a way to strategically place down cards that helped you play to your own style, giving players the illusion of ability to win. I type 'illusion' because of how ambiguous it is which team will win. There's no way to know whether the Temple or the Thieves are winning and therefore which ever side you choose is a 50/50 chance. There's also an imbalance between choosing the Temple and Thieves since if the Temple wins, all temple players win; if the thieves guild wins, only one thief can win. This rule seems both arbitrary and balance shifting, making it one of the flaws that stuck out.

   Therefore, what I admired was the level of complexity that was just right, but I disliked the ambiguity of the victor and what one should play.


 

Zombie Plague

   Zombie Plague was probably the most fun of the three games I played. There was an intense way of creating a sense of fear in the human player as they're overwhelmed in numbers. It's design quality was that of a common zombie game in which the human is doing a mixture of running and attacking and the zombies were constantly on the hunt. It's presentation also proved quite pleasant. With a large well designed house over view and good visuals the game felt immersive. In terms of how much to cut, there was a fair bit. Cutting out small barricades and piecing together the large map took quite a bit of time and got a bit tedious.

   There was a lot that I admired about this game. It wasn't too complex, you could kind of skim the rules, start playing and address the manual with usual questions that came up, without disrupting the flow of gameplay too much. It activated the imagination as the game played on, as the human I felt like I was getting into tight situations and just barely scraping by before running away. There were times when I just managed to get around a corner and barricade it off to be safe. I would actually feel elated when such a thing happened, encouraging me to keep going. There were also moments of extreme surprise where a search box wouldn't give me a gun, but throw a zombie right next to me. These search boxes of chance would make or break a scenario I was in and really kept the intensity up.

   However. There was one big flaw behind the game play. Zombie combat was very hard on the zombies. Requiring them to roll 2 dice, getting the same number on both, and then requiring the human to roll and get a 1 to die. This didn't work because the chance of the zombie actually managing to hurt the human was so minimal that it was almost never going to happen. I, as the human, inevitably won even though I'd been attacked 5 or 6 times.

   Despite it's flaws this game was very fun, and with only a few changes this game would easily be a very fun game without much in the way of flaws.

Game Role: Level Designer Presentation

https://docs.google.com/a/c.ringling.edu/presentation/d/1DnPS5HPX4bn0ZSW7rRlmu_c--zUGrEx90WCD6u8UzCc/edit?usp=sharing

Here are some of my pieces of work from Freshman Year

Ninja Sack

This is my Traditional Animation "Ninja Sack". I took a lot of influence from my parkour background and got this sack of flour to infiltrate a building. The piece was received very well and I was one of two freshman to be in the Best of Ringling show for Traditional Animation.

Inventive Vehicle "Sandmobile"

This is my Inventive Vehicle from our Drawing 1 course. I created what I have called the "Sandmobile". A combination of a snowmobile and a monster truck. It uses the elements of both that would most benefit the sandy desert terrain.

 Figure Sculpture "Samantha the Pantha"

With a full class of extra time after deeming my figure sculpture complete, I decided to gear her up with weapons and armor. Of course not so much that such things hid the figure underneath.

Grunt Project "Lava Dweller"

 Here's a link to all of the photos.

Lava Dweller is a creation of mine in Sculpey. I spent about a week on the model, then a longer time adding on and tweaking the 9 layers of paint. This was one of my favourite projects of the entire year and I'm very proud of the end result. 

Summer Piece "Smoked Salmon"

After my first year at Ringling I decided to apply what I'd learned to my 3D art, which is what I did before coming here. My first piece was this punny version of Smoked Salmon. The softwares I used were Blender and Photoshop.

This is a test post. Here is a picture for fun.