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[Ice Water Games]

Hi! I just joined the forums. Recently started getting myself into making flash games, and have made 2 things so far.

I posted them on Kongregate, where I would go for flash games, but then found this forum and thought, "Maybe I would get some very different and in that way interesting feedback from this community!"

Anyways, I very much identify with the kinds of games I see here before those I tend to see popping up on kong. It is nice to be here.

SO: here are the games, take them how you will and let me know what you think!
(I posted them on kong with little to no description, and I really assure you that I will be just fine if you hate them to death and tell me so)

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Hplus/a-thing

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Hplus/concentric

[RichMakeGame!]

well.. intriguing..

I don't love or hate them, I guess I'm not too sure what I'm looking at

the dots one, i liked the visual of the particle circle coming in. it looks like there's a score top left but it just keeps racing downwards, I had -11000 or similar when I left?

the red square one, the predominant feeling was frustration for me. I wanted to build up momentum with the ball, and came close to, but mainly it feels like moving something through treacle

maybe part of the idea is to figure out what's going on, but bear in mind the threshhold of difficulty for doing that.. if its too high people will just walk away scratching their heads. If there isn't anything further to really figure out, I'd say they're interesting toys/experiments

[flavio]

Sincerely, I don't understand how to play... Maybe a tutorial could help, or at least an instructions screen...

[Ice Water Games]

Hi, thanks for checking them out.

They are like toys or experiments, and maybe I should avoid calling them games, I am not sure. When I am unsure whether something is a game or not, I lean towards thinking that it is, because the definition is I think very broad and not as clear as some people would like it to be.

Anyways I don't have any tutorial because there isn't an objective or way to play that I wanted to necessarily encourage.

I guess that I see them as spaces of constricted possibility that are designed to be played with. I want people to come to it not knowing what to do, and mess around and try to find things to do or find beautiful things.

The points are there in the dot one because I wanted to encourage a sense of mystery, so that people who are less interested in the aesthetics and more in the systems would have something to investigate or delve into. The reason I included this is because of positive responses I got from the first game, the circle one, from people who spent a whole lot of time investigating the system, trying to figure out how to achieve a static screen, which I blatantly hinted could be achieved.

[flavio]

Ok, it makes sense. Thank you for the answer!

[Noyb]

Very interesting. Both of these evoke a lot of the same sensations in me as Knot Phramacard Subcondition J, feeling like I'm in a dream world where everything is always just on the verge of making sense. For the first one, I see that I can extend the influence of the red aura at the expense of my mobility, so long as I can keep the swarm away from the central square, and staying in the center causes the square and the player avatar to fade away until the same stimulus occurs. For the second, it feels like the score wants me to keep the two grey circles in some sort of equilibrium where they continually collide and interact. They begin in this sort of state, which quickly breaks down due to the influence of the yellow circle. I get a strong sense of futility to these tasks, although your posted scores implies a slim but present possibility of success.

When I am unsure whether something is a game or not, I lean towards thinking that it is, because the definition is I think very broad and not as clear as some people would like it to be.

I like this way of thinking.

[Ice Water Games]

Thanks Noyb!! Really nice, positive feedback like I rarely receive (haha).

I am excited to check out that game; haven't played anything by that dev, and he seems to have a nice long list going there, so you may have just opened up a nice new area for me to venture into. I just downloaded it, but I need to wake up in several hours for a final, so I'm gonna wait 'til another day so I can immerse myself stress-free.

The mechanics for both of my games are rather obscured to the player, the first one especially. The first was created without a particular feeling or outcome in mind, but just the code for the circles' movements as inspiration.

The inspiration for the second one was precisely futility, and although I don't want my games to create one big objective outcome in the players, it's really nice to read that that was someone's reaction. I felt that the essentialization of the first game came down to: putting the player as an independent actor in a system in equilibrium and encouraging them to destroy that equilibrium (Kong tells me you haven't seen this happen, but it can happen and I think it is rather satisfying). I wanted to try to reverse things, and I tried with the second game to put the player into a system which requires extremely delicate handling to reach or maintain an equilibrium, then encourages the player to find that equilibrium. I also was interested in giving the player only very oblique and indirect interactions with any recognizable individual actors in the game.



Kind of a rant, but I am starved for talking to people about games and interaction. Just moved to a new place, and haven't yet found a core of people who have any idea that games can be more than violent pre-teen power fantasies.

[Ice Water Games]

Loved Knot-Pharmacard! Helped me understand what approaching my games from an outsiders view looks like, too. It was pretty, but also mildly frustrating and confusing, and when I put it down it wasn't because I was satisfied, but because my interest had petered out.

Thanks Noyb.

[brog]

Hey!  I made KPSJ, just played your games - I had a similar experience of seeing what an outsider's view of my games might be like.  I didn't figure either of them out; in Concentric I managed to get from -1000 points back up to -30 or so, but I'm not sure how and I couldn't manage to get a positive score.  But it's cool to see someone else exploring similar ideas!

What I'm interested in at the moment with this kind of thing (games where you're not told the rules) is to try to encourage people to think scientifically, by making systems that you can figure out through a process of hypothesis+experiment.  The Sense of Connectedness is a step in that direction.

[Ice Water Games]

Awesome! Love the game. Theres a whole lot of meaning and authorship hidden in there, and a close read/play is pretty fruitful and rewarding.

I can see how something like this follows from KPSJ, but for me, KPSJ was solely about the aesthetic experience, whereas Connectedness is like 80% cognition (which is fitting, given the subject matter). When I played KPSJ it was like ongoing discovery and fascination, with very little symbolic meaning. Connectedness however definitely makes an argument, has subject matter, etc.

KPSJ didn't really make me want to think scientifically; it made me want to subject myself to the whims of a system, and enjoy play and beauty and chaos for a little while.

Connectedness, while I totally love it, lost that sense of meaningless fascination for me. Regardless, I'm excited to see where you go next.


Thanks for the feedback. It definitely is great to run into fellow creators. I'm not currently pursuing this line of game design I don't think; I'm sort of creating a new starting point for myself making more either conventional or argumentative games (kind of like what it looks like Connectedness is doing for you, actually), but I don't expect my next few games to feel anything like these first few.


Nice little experiment with Masquerade by the way. Kind of hilarious how much more it affected you than the consumers. Love it.