Tuesday 15 January, 2008

2nd look

Gameplay

I did a few more levels, and was pleasantly surprised by the variety. My impression of the game before doing this was that all levels would be about moving from planetoid to planetoid. But I'm pleasantly surprised that they have levels with 1 direction for down. Feels more Mariolike.

On one level, I found a Bee suit, which allows Mario to fly around for short periods of time, and to climb on specially marked walls. This changed the nature of the gameplay, as Mario could no longer jump, and traditionally Mario games have been all about the jumping. On another, I raced a manta ray through a water track hanging in the middle of space. The controls for this were radically different from the main game, twisting the wii remote turns the manta ray in one direction or another.


Design:

I mocked it in my first post, but collecting star bits is awfully addictive. The game throws them at you like candy on halloween, but I still like collecting them, even though I don't have any real use for them yet. It's just the simple pleasure of pointing at things on the screen, and being acknowledged with a sound effect.

The game opens up new levels as you gain power stars from old levels. But you don't need to collect all the stars from an old level before you move on to new levels. This keeps things fresh, because if you're bored with one level design, you can move on to one you like, and not have your progress impeded. This adds a casual dimension to the game... play it however you want to play. The unlocking mechanism motivates you to collect that last extra star to unlock a new level, and then of course you have to test out the new level, and if it's a level you like you collect a few more stars from the level, until you're about to open up a new level, and the cycle repeats. This fury of short term rewards seems to be the main addicting factor to this game.

Well done gamelog. For future assignments, add a few more paragraphs on the Design part of the game. You mention good design points, and it would be interesting to hear further thoughts on the subject.

~Sheena Marquez (TA)

You're right about the star bits. I keep on collecting them in the (probably) vain hopes that when I get 5,000 , 10,000, or some other godawfully high amount I'll unlock something cool... :-)