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Wednesday 10 January, 2007
Part Two of the Gamelog assginment dur 1/12/07
start time: 9:10
end time: 10:05
After returning for a second round of game play of Tiny Toons I began to see some very solid design features. For example, most music was very stage appropriate like the ship stage with the boat, sky and most everything is a happy orange and the music is this cheery sailor tune that makes you get into the level and really enjoy the gameplay. Also, when playing through the castle level again (yeah again *sigh) I noticed that the music was very erie when a bass onldy every once in a while to ad to suspense. The elemet of music is very important in a game and is very enjoyable in Tiny Toons. The problem I had with the music is that it stranglely resembled Kirby and so did the whole ship level, it was very well made so I hope that was just because it was copied from another game.
I also found that the characters play an even bigger role in the gameplay then I had though. The cat is able to use its claws to grab onto walls in order to save from death, the duck has a special whirl wave underwater that none of the others can do and Buster has enough speed to out run the girl that's in love. I found that there is a lot more methods to be used before the level starts in order to get through easier. I choose the wrong character on accident for one level and found that without following the design that the developers have created it becomes very difficult to get anywhere in the game. I found that the only real complexities in the game was picking the right character but even that is easy because there are only three choices. The rest of the game is skill and timing. I wasn't able to find any secrets or cheats like in Mario and that could be cause I didn't run across them or more likely they aren't there.
I plan on making a platformer for my game design project so this game does help me because I know what was enjoyable and what was rediculous. I would try to take the essential platforming elements from this game, like making a lot of easy jumps then a hard one or two to make the player feel like they have accomplished something. Also the constant bombardment to keep the player interested, nothing impossible but constant easy tasks and then throw in larger ones to finish off. I will try to aviod the problem Tiny Toons had of constant randomness where nothing makes sense and each level (though well designed) doesn't come together with the previous one. One of the best and obviously main features in the game is the option to choose multiple players and I feel this is Tiny Toon's strongest feature so I will try to incorrporate it into my platformer.
Overall the game has a nice feel to it but if you didn't know the show Tiny Toons then it would be not comparable to Mario or Kirby. The levels are much like Mario where your constantly trying to stay above an imaginary bottom which I find myself wondering why is it that you standing on some random piece of grass that seems to be higher then everywhere else? and why is it so bad that you go down? In a good level where there's lava under you or your obviously hundreds of feet in the air because your on a cloud I can understand falling being a problem but in spots there was a strangle feeling that this was an ordinary piece of dirt and if the duck doesn't make it to the next one then he was going to be fine. Though this isn't a major flaw it does bring in the idea of level design that makes sense. Hitting spikes hurts you (true, true) but why does setting in a puddle? This game does a good job on most accounts of making good sensable levels but things like lack of flow, no story, and no complexity explain why games have advanced some much since 1991.
A very enjoyable game overall and it was interesting to go back play it with a closer examination.
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