Coming into this class I think I had a lot of feelings and ideas about games, but no real way to describe any of those things – I just kind of had an intuition and could maybe loosely explain something, but in a very informal, uninformative manner. Playing games and talking about games was fine, but actually formally writing and thinking about games from a design perspective wasn’t something that I could do particularly well at all. And while to some extent I still don’t think I can write about games all that eloquently, it’s something that this class has definitely helped me develop, and has really helped me nail down my exact thoughts and descriptions of a game using the frameworks and definitions we’ve learned.
It was such a rush just to experience and learn so many things in such a short amount of time, and putting those things to the test in those two projects was exhilarating. Puzzle design, onboarding, narratives, mysteries, and so many other concepts saw real use in the projects. Of these, I think narrative was the one that I saw the most growth in my understanding of – I came into the class with a strict focus on mechanics and systems, coming from a heavy CS and competitive gaming background, and so learning how to lean more into the story side and the ‘hook’ of a game was definitely something that was out of my comfort zone but grew to appreciate over time. Especially on Capybara Clash, despite all the arguing and the uncertainty about the direction we were going to take, I think it was really cool how we narrowed in on a fun, silly idea like capybara fights and were able to lead that into a really interesting card game mechanic with resource hiding/espionage.
Overall I think I’ve really solidified my interest in game dev/design – working on Project #2, I felt like I was finally able to express the creative side and the computational sides of myself in a really meaningful way. Lastly, I wanted to just say thank you to both my groups from Projects 1 and 2 – it was so wonderful to work with all of you and I think we were able to make some really amazing and cool things, far beyond anything I could’ve ever have expected to make. Also the teaching team. And Christina. And literally everyone in the class. Everyone was just so cool. Being able to just vibe and work and be creative with so many cool people in this class through projects and during lectures got me through some pretty tough times this quarter and for that I’m so grateful!
Would take this class again 🙂
