IAT 312 Fall 2021

Game Design Showcase: 29 November 2021

IAT 312 showcase poster - 2021 Fall

Join us for our live-streamed Game Design Showcase on Monday 29th of November 2021, from 12:30 - 2:20pm

On Monday 29th of November 2021, stu­dents from my Foundations of Game Design course (IAT 312) will show­case their final game design projects where they were tasked to design a (dig­i­tal) boardgame that is not only fun to play (addresss­ing what  Lazzaro  calls “People Fun”), but also “trans­for­ma­tive” or “pur­pose­ful” (aka “Transformative Fun”, what Lazzaro refers to as fos­ter­ing altered states): That is, apart from being fun to play, the game should also be meaningful/purposeful or add value by some­how trans­form­ing the user, e.g., by pro­vid­ing a novel/meaningful user expe­ri­ence, dif­fer­ent perspectives/viewpoints, altered states etc. To this end, stu­dents reflected on topics that they care deeply about that could help create a better world, and are worth design­ing a pur­pose­ful game out of it.

How to participate?

To par­tic­i­pate in our show­case, join us at 12:30 pm Pacific Time using this Zoom link

Schedule: [draft]

12:35–12:40: Introductions from Instructor and TA, overview of the course and the projects in the showcase.

12:40 — 14:20: Game Showcase & team inter­views: Each team will be show­cased for about 12min (10-15min), start­ing with the short project video pitch/trailer of their game (using zoom screen shar­ing), fol­lowed by Bernhard inter­view­ing team mem­bers and TA screen­shar­ing live game­play footage (if all goes well with the technology…).

14:20: Closing:  Final Q&A, audi­ence ques­tions, closing

If you missed the show­case, you can watch the record­ing below (unfor­tu­nately the video only includes the slide view — some­how the room camera didn’t get recorded nei­ther locally nor on zoom, sorry… ):

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Want to try out Games from prior classes?

type “IAT312” into the search field on the Tabletop Simulator site on Steam or through this direct link

Project posters

Details about the Game Projects:

Addiction: Overcome or Succumb

Overcome Addiction, Live a Better Life

Website of Team 1–1

Razor: Substance abuse is a pitfall that many fall into, and not many can get out of. Overcome the addiction while ensuring survival throughout the game. Can you be the help of others and yourself?team11_139856_17664042_IAT312_jpg_Poster

Our game is a turn-based, col­lab­o­ra­tive board game in which play­ers coop­er­ate with each other to over­come the strug­gles of drug addic­tion within a cer­tain period of time. Players are set in a town with a fic­tional char­ac­ter that is in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. It will not be a walk in the park so work together and find new ways to recover from drug addiction.

1 minute game trailer:

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project video:

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Veiled memoir

Find your way, find yourself

Website of Team 1–2

Razor: Embark on a spiritual adventure in the mental world of an Alzheimer’s patient, work with your teammates, collect resources, overcome challenges and find back your forgotten memories.team12_186949_17664895_Veiled Memoir-1

Veiled memoir is a cooperative-adventure game in which each player will take on a basic abil­ity (phys­i­cal or mental) to explore the map that sym­bol­izes the mental world of an Alzheimer’s patient named Racheal, where play­ers need to col­lect sup­plies and ulti­mately help Racheal retrieve for­got­ten mem­o­ries. The player’s main goal is to find cer­tain items hidden through­out the map, which con­tain Recheal’s memory frag­ment, to unlock four impor­tant for­got­ten mem­o­ries. However, during the game, play­ers will encounter var­i­ous chal­lenges rep­re­sent­ing Alzheimer’s symp­toms, such as mon­sters caused by hal­lu­ci­na­tions, and dis­ori­en­ta­tion caused by memory inco­her­ence, etc. Players need to coop­er­ate with each other to over­come chal­lenges in order to win the game.

1 minute game trailer:

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project video:

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Re-Educate

Don't let your identity wash away

Website of Team 1–3

Razor: You must save the mind and memories of someone who is going through conversion therapy.team13_96269_17662333_Team1-3_Poster

You and the other play­ers are each given an emo­tion that you will play inside the mind of an indi­vid­ual who is going through con­ver­sion ther­apy. You must save their mind and mem­o­ries from being brain­washed or they will for­ever lose their sense of self.

The mind is made up of tiles that as the game pro­gresses will slowly be lost to being brain­washed and as the tiles are lost so are pre­cious mem­o­ries so it is everyone’s job to work together to save this person.

1 minute game trailer:

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project video:

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Climatic Crisis

Manage your Worth, Together go Forth, Save the Earth

Website of Team 1–4

Razor: Ensure the main enemy (Climate Change) is threatening enough to make players want to cooperate to take it down while ensuring that there are enough incentives to tempt them to sometimes act in their own interests as well.team14_189609_17664561_IAT312_D101_Team_Four_Climatic_Crisis_Poster

‘Climatic Crisis’ is a cooperative-strategic game in which play­ers will have to manage their own assets and make deci­sions in con­junc­tion with other player’s actions to pre­vent the Earth from per­ish­ing due to cli­mate change while trying to defeat a common enemy. Each player will rep­re­sent an indus­try or cor­po­ra­tion (energy util­ity com­pany) on Earth, and their choices will impact the Earth’s well-being, which is cal­cu­lated in the form of green tiles on the board. The Earth’s land and the player’s own land serves as a global health point for all the play­ers, so they will have to manage and make deci­sions wisely based upon each other’s actions to pre­vent cli­mate change or else they will lose the game.

1 minute game trailer:

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project video:

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Don't Carry The Weight

"It’s okay to be stressed, but we can't expect to carry it alone either. Let's share the load and reach the end together!"

Website of Team 2–1

Razor: ‘Don’t Carry The Weight’ is a cooperative game where players work together to cope with different stresses in life. team21_161496_17664700_Poster_small

Every player embod­ies a char­ac­ter sus­cep­ti­ble to stress. Players team up to help each other nav­i­gate through the stressed filled rooms and find a way out of the clouds of stress. With the help of encoun­ter­ing pos­i­tive events, play­ers can main­tain their mental health and find inner peace.

1 minute game trailer:

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project video:

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Once I heard someone got rich by NFT 

You wouldn’t buy the receipt to a JPG and sell it to others for insane amounts of money at the cost of the planet, would you?

Website of Team 2–2

Razor: Buy and sell NFTs, cause natural disasters, make profit in a way that doesn’t make sense. team22_144636_17664860_SHEEEEEEEEEEEESH

“Once I heard some­one got rich by NFT” is a sim­u­la­tion game in which four play­ers com­pete against each other to become the rich­est through buying and sell­ing NFTs. Each player role­plays as a person who recently began invest­ing in NFTs. Players move around the board and encounter oppor­tu­ni­ties to buy or sell NFT at fluc­tu­at­ing prices, events that alter the market, or sur­prise living expenses. While play­ers are trying to max­i­mize prof­its from deal­ing with NFTs, they must also be cau­tious of the neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact they are con­tribut­ing to. Every trans­ac­tion con­sumes an increas­ingly large amount of elec­tric­ity. If the play­ers exceed the elec­tric grid capac­ity, major deter­mi­nants for the play­ers will occur.

1 minute game trailer:

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project video:

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