For the Video Game Analysis Activity, answer the following questions on this document:
- Game Overview:
- What is the name of the video game, and who are its creators?
- What is the primary objective of the game?
- Game Mechanics:
- How do players take turns, and what actions can they perform on their turn?
- Are there any unique or innovative mechanics in the game? Describe them.
- Theme and Story:
- What is the theme or story behind the game?
- How well do the game mechanics and components support this theme or story?
- Strategy and Decision-Making:
- What types of strategies can players use to win the game?
- How important is decision-making in the game? Provide examples of key decisions players must make.
- Player Interaction:
- How do players interact with each other during the game?
- Are there any cooperative or competitive elements? Explain how they impact the gameplay.
- Challenge and Balance:
- How challenging is the game for new players versus experienced players?
- Is the game well-balanced? Are there any dominant strategies or imbalances?
- Aesthetics and Design:
- How would you describe the visual and physical design of the game?
- Does the design enhance or detract from the gameplay experience?
- Personal Reflection:
- What did you enjoy most about analyzing the game?
- Were there any aspects of the game you found frustrating or lacking? How would you improve them?
Key Terms:
Here is a practical list of game mechanics common to video games. It is by no means a comprehensive list, but it will help you better understand the meaning of the word mechanic in the context of video games:
- Turns
- Different types of movements (running, crawling, flying)
- Card drawing
- Time limit
- Resource collection/gathering
- Shooting
- Switching weapons
- Pushing
- Pulling
- Dragging
- Shooting
- Winning condition
- Losing condition
- Rock-Paper-Scissors
- Randomly Generated Numbers
- Aiming
- Quick Time Events
- Score points
- Experience Points
There are hundreds of them. It is worth noticing that, as we have seen, a mechanic could be either an action that the player can perform or a more abstract rule of the game.
Gameplay is the flow between challenges, mechanics and outcomes.
Designers often analyze this flow by looking at gameplay loops: sequences of actions and events repeated by the player.
Stomping on a koopa, kicking its shell to defeat another enemy, then jumping again to dodge the ricochet is gameplay. The small atomic pieces of jump, stomp, kick and jump again are mechanical elements that combine to create a gameplay loop you’ll experience many times.
Questing is an example of a longer gameplay loop, composed of quest discovery, travel, objective completion and reward collection. The player actions along that journey can involve many different mechanics, from stealthing to combat moves to multiplayer interactions.