Homework 11: Game Design

          The assignments this week is to identify 2 games that i consider very good and enjoy and therefor play a lot. And then 2 games that are not very good and therefore didn't play much at all.

1. Great games
1. Paper Mario 64
1. Paper mario 64 is an increadable game that i still enjoy playing to this day. despte the game being over a decade old. It has a really cool "space" where the world is completly open to the player. The places you cant go at the beginning are reasonably blocked off and tied to actual story progression. Then once unlocked, you can freely move back anf forth to your favorite places in a world that becoes bigger and bigger as you play.
2. The "time" of the game is mostly free wandering with combat as a turn team based fighting style. The player has a lot of control over how long the game takes in combat and generally in the game itself. All of the the text is stoppable, and most of the enemies are stoppable. There is also no day or night cycle.
3. the objects attributes and states of the game are all themed around the idea of the world being paper. The story itself is a combination of a story book and a play. all the objects are made to look 2D with small intractable objects being 3D so that you kno they are important. The attributes are the same as most open world games, health and money and speed, as are the states with combat or noncombat.
4. There are a very large amount of basic actions in the game, from item choices, fight or flight, and just talking to characters. However when it comes to "strategic" actions there are actually some really cool choices. The player when they level up can choose to increase their action points, health, or badge points. The action points are the cost of skills and ablilities in combat, health is well health, and the badge points is how many points you have available for badges. Badges are all of the passive or active skill and buffs your character has, what moves you can use, and even strategic information like enemy health. Then as you progress you gain companions in the game that you choose which is the one you start combat with and you choose which ones to "upgrade" and give new abilities to in the game.
5. As far as rules go, they are very basic and easy to understand. Combat is turn based, you can only "fight" the enemy characters and everything else is very basic, to the games benefit.
6. Skill isn't a very big part of the game at first, and most of the game can be done with out a lot of it. However it does reward mental skill in quick math to know how much damage is needed to kill one thing or another. And an item that you get very early on is the luck star that makes so that every part of combat if you press a button at a specific time you can increase your outgoing damage or decrease your incoming damage by in some cases a significant amount, and no social skills.
7. Chance plays a very small factor in this game. your attacks do a set amount of damage, and enemies do a set amount of damage to you.
2. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
1.  The space that Ty exists in, is Australia. The game is a semi open world, where the player can randomly wander from place to place and back as many times as they want as long as they use these rambow colored portals that areound the hub world. Some portals you have to progress to get too, but once unlocked you are able go back to any place you have already visited. 
2. There is no time limit on the game, but there are time specific missions and trials for the player if they wish to challenge themselves. Everything else time has no relation and time does not pass during the game.
3. As far as objects in the game, all objects are 3D models with some physics and collision. Though you can only interact with things by talking to other characters or attacking. The states and attributes of the game are surprisingly nonexistent. Everything has the same basic state for almost the entire game as well as the same attributes, and it works well and is still enjoyable.
4. The actions avialable to the player are also pretty simple. Your character can talk with NPC characters or attack the enemy NPC characters by biting them (you are a tiger) or using your boomerangs (which are your primary way of attacking). As for Strategic actions its hard to tell if this is really strategic or not,but the player is encouraged (not forced you can playe the entire game without doing this though it would be very difficult) to find secret "golden cogs" in order to allow a machine to produce new "special" boomerangs. If the player chooses to go after a lot of these then the character ends up with a decent assortment of weapons to play with and help progress
5. The rules of the game are pretty standard here as well, where the player can do pretty much whatever they want in this single player experience. You cant kill allied NPCs and if you loose too much health you die.
6. This is an old game and a pretty simple one targeted at a younger audience. So most of the game requires almost no skill other then the mental ability to explore the very large and complex maps and find everything and some basic platforming skills. Other than that most basic enemies you just have to stay moving and attack them once or twice.
7. Chance doesn't really exist in this game at all. Everything is set, from the enemies to the rewards to the levels.
2. Not so great games/ games I didn't enjoy
1. Superman 64
1. This is a game that is hard to describe in terms of game mechanics why it is bad, because of how little there are. Your character is mostly invulnerable and can fly through an infinite blank city. And that's about it. The space you exist in is this city and what i believe is a lex corp building. There are no discernible features about anything or information for the player that i was able to find. Though there was a coop vs. mode that consisted of flying though small levels on hover chairs and shooting at each other.
2. Time is not a factor, there is no time limit or anything else really.
3. The objects are N64 3D models with some color but not much else other than blank buildings. The attributes and states don't exist. your character, superman, exists and so does 1 car and 2 goons. And the empty city. You can find power-ups randomly in order to use the rest of superman's powers but they are temporary and scattered though the empty blank city.
4. The only actions available to the player in the single player is that of flying and picking up the car. That is it. in the vs. mode you can fly and shoot at each other.
5. there are no rules in the single player, but the multiplayer is just a death-match.
6. There is no skill involved in the games single player or multiplayer other than remembering where the map.
7. If there is chance in the game its in parts of the game that i never got to because the beginning part of the game has nothing in it an no way to progress that i found
2. goat simulator
1. The space of the game (and its 3-4 iterations) is an open world free walk around that takes place in a small town. You can move around freely, though some places may need some creative platforming to get too. 
2. The "time" frame of the place is fixed. No time really passes and the player is allowed to spend as much or little time messing around in the game area.
3. The objects are all 3D models with some random physics which are, by design, supposed to interact and not make sense and even break the game. There is really only the play/wander state that player starts in, though the player can find secrets around the map that allow them to have or use power ups of different kinds and change player attributes.
4. When it comes to actions, the game is pretty much a rag-doll simulator. The got can lick things and get its toung stuck to them, jump, or rag-doll. If you gain power-ups (by finding them as secrets) the player then can do random things like use a jetpack or drop random goats from the sky.
5. the rule set is nonexistent. it is a free roam where you are encouraged to break the game by exploring and messing the objects. there are no rules. Though you can get combo points for doing different random things.
6. The combo system allows some form of skill if your want ot make the biggest combow possiable, but really you can break the game by piling some objects in a small room and jumping for a few minuits in order to get the biggest combo.
7. There is no chance in the game. Everything is either you do it or you don't.