Alto’s Odyssey is a nice mobile game available on both Android and iOS. It is the finalist of 2019 Independent Game Festival under excellence of visual art and excellence of audio.

The game is about an endless sandboarding adventure. The background is a beautiful and ever-changing natural landscape. The player has to jump to cross the obstacles and cliffs along the way. It is designed to be enjoyed by returning player and newcomers alike.

The next adventure awaits

Link to the game: http://www.altosodyssey.com

Lens 1: Essential Experience

The essential experience of Odyssey is to expand and build upon the feelings of being alone to an adventure in nature. Besides, it also encourages the player to step out of their comfort zone to explore the beyond of the world. This kind of experience is achieved by the fluid physics-based actions of the sandboarding, procedurally changed backgrounds, dynamic lighting and weather effects, and the beautiful background audio.

Lens 2 & 3: Suprise & Fun

Odyssey surprises player along the way with various natural phenomena and wildlife. The player has to jump. During the jump, the player can enjoy the fluid physics-based action in the air. Besides, the player can also control the body to land fluidly and successfully.

Lens 4: Curiosity

Odyssey offers the player with a small screen into a much bigger world, through the endless sandhill and procedurally changed backgrounds. The game tries and boils down the essence of immersion. It wants to offer a place where the player can escape.

Lens 5: Endogenous Value

Along the way, the player can collect coins for a higher point. The coins are placed creatively to encourage the players to jump and control the body accordingly. Sometimes it also leads players to a second way to do sandboarding rather than on the sandhill.

Mechanics:

The procedure of Odyssey is quite simple. As the player is on an endless sandboarding adventure, player just need to tap to jump over the obstacles or cliff and hold to control the body before landing. There will be several goals for player to accomplish at each level. The game is over when the player fail to jump over the obstacle or cliff. With the collected coins, the player can buy some special packages to help recover from the death or delay the timer and so on. The game is easy to learn but difficult to master.

Aesthetics:

Odyssey has built a beautiful polygon wild world. The world is expanding endlessly through a small window. Environments is changing accordingly. The background audio matches the action of player, which helps the player to be immersed inside the wild world and control the actions better. It has received critical acclaim as a “piece of interactive art”.

Story:

Odyssey is mainly about adventure. While the world is expanding procedurally through the small window, the player is encouraged to explore and continue this endless adventure.

Technology:

Odessey is designed in Unity 3D, and then taps into Metal 2 for iOS. The game is now available on both Android and iOS. Besides, the game is well achieved with a silky 60 frame-per-second. Metal 2 allows much more access to the GPU compared with OpenGL. During the game, the view never stutters or shakes.

After completing The Witcher 3 I felt a deep loss. I truly became its protagonist Geralt of Rivia; and by the time a legendary career of slaying monsters had come to an end, it was as if a chapter of my own life had ended as well.

A Witcher is a genetically modified professional monster killer. The game follows Geralt on his various quests and contracts, and the friends (and many foes) encountered on the way.

Official gameplay:

Official website: https://thewitcher.com/en/witcher3

The Lens of Surprise:

Geralt is only compensated for contracts on specific monsters, however, other monsters are uninclined to leave you alone as you explore or transit through the open world. Some of your greatest bouts will start running into a dark swamp ill-prepared and low on health. Contracts themselves can often be much more complicated than initially presented. A degree of adaptability and creativity is needed to be successful in quests.

Introduction

PUBG is an online multiplayer battle royale game. In this game, up to a hundred players will be placed into a resources randomly generated map which the players can choose the spot to scavenge. The players will need to scavenge for weapons and equipment including different types of gun, broadsword, grenades, medical kit and so on to kill others and/or heal themselves. Apart from the attack from players, the available safe area of the game’s map will decreases in size over time in order to force the players encounters. This game also has different play modes according to the attended team size including single, duo, squad whereas the last player or teams standing wins the round
Here is a link of a youtube video showing some moments in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6h-p4mW5Ks

Experience

I used to play this game, especially last year vacation, I could spend a day on playing this game with my brother and friends but I have not played for several months. In general, I really enjoy this game since it has brought lots of funs for me.

Reasons I love this game

• the fun of cooperating with my friends, being able to communicate and cooperate with my friends make us feel relax and pleasure
• it is more about the experience than the results. good skill is not everything, although ‘have the chicken dinner’ will make us quite excited, we still get a lot of laughs from any kinds of stupid mistake we made
• the vivid environment including settings, scene, sounds make us immerse in the nervous and irritative situation.

Reasons I quit this game

• Break of fairness – increasing plugs make the game less attractive to me
• not able to run at my laptop – my laptop configuration is not good enough to run this game smoothly, therefore each time I have to go to the internet bar which is really inconvenient and costly although being able to sit together with team member will enhance the coordination and enjoyment.
• aesthetic fatigue – after a long time intensive period of playing this game, I fell somehow boring about this game which means I rarely get the feeling of excitement from the game any longer
• The most important one – my friends quit this game, the meaning of this game for me is to play with my friend as a team, once my team has dissolved I also lose the interest of playing this game.

Lenses

Lens #43 – Cooperate

• this game allows the player to compete as a group which needs the cooperation between friends.
• the group could be formed randomly or specified by players.
• the technology of remote voice communication built inside the game will allow the player to play with people from anywhere which is really convenient.

Lens #44 – Competition

• as there is cooperation, there is also competition
• within each match, there is competition among the player within this round
  • the setting of HP and safety area will force the player to encounter
  • outside the match, there is also ranking which is the competition among the whole players of the game
    • world Competition
    • ranking board with lots of data
• there are people who are nor care about the ranking but there is also, and often, the majority of the players who really care about their ranking.

Lens #79 – Freedom

• As a result of not having a story or background, a high degree of freedom is provided
• there are no specific rules that require the player to finish a certain task or find a clue except one general goal – survive and win the game
• actually, even the general goal is not compulsory, people may have different activities with different purpose. (for example, people may do not chase the champion but to having fun with friends )
• this is one of the key reasons that I enjoy this game.

Lens #37 – Fairness

• people can only spend money buying the outfit which will not affect the combat power
  • everyone is offered with the equal position of each match at the beginning
    the resources are generated randomly, the landing position is decided by the player
  • the safety area is generated after calculation but no one knows before it shows in the map
  • every player start the game without anything
• people could report plugins and the game will punish the related accounts if it is real
• Logically, it is really fair with the setting of offering an equal position however the problem in real life is the management of plugins is insufficient and the large amounts of plugins can ruin the game

Elemental Tetrad Summary

• Story
  • no story setting like background or characters
  • focuses more on the interaction including competition and cooperation between players
• Mechanism
  • common goal: kill the competitor and survive to the last to win the game
  • there are no specific rules instead it gives the player a great extent of freedom by
    • providing the various weapons, vehicles, equipment
    • the settings based on the real world, such as
      • people will lose HP if they jump from a high position, the points deducted increase with the height
      • people can swim in the sea/river but they need to take a breath
        the speed of moving will varies with the different vehicle used
• Aesthetics
  • in general: realism rather than fantasy
  • mimic the real world to construct a lifelike environment so that the user can better immerse themselves in the game
    • different weathers have the corresponding effect
    • different maps, landforms
• Technology
  • The 3D replay tools
    • allow players to zoom around the map after a match, tracking their own character, following enemies’ movements,
  • the voice communication tools

Legend of Sword and Fairy 6 is the eighth work among Legend and Sword and Fairy Series, and is also the 20th anniversary of the Fairy Sword. It tells the story of a secret history discovered by characters’ adventure when they looking for something lost. It is a role-playing adventure game with fighting system and plot. Each character has its own feature and secret, that encourages players to explore more.

Lens #7: The Lens of the Elemental Tetrad

MECHANICS

It uses dual system mode that players can choose either instance combat system mode or round combat system mode, and designs a variety of systems to increase the playability.

There are three different levels of difficulty in the game for players to choose: simple, normal, and difficult. It is impossible to choose the difficult level at the first time before all major missions are finished. At the same time, the game also provides the “difficulty down” function: players who feel excessive pressure in the game can downgrade the difficulty of the game, but once the difficulty is lowered, it will not be able to recover, and can not challenge the difficult difficulty of the BOSS.

STORY

 

AESTHETICS

Lens #1: Essential Experience

This game is beyond life, because the story and background in it as well as the skills of the characters, are not realistic, therefore normal people cannot experience. It provides players a different experience that allow players to immerse with the adventure, feeling themselves experience all those things. It is like a movie, or a book, in all is an new experience for players.

Lens #2: Surprise

Lens #6: Problem Solving

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is a online multiplayer battle royale game published and developed by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of Bluehole. The game was inspired by a Japanese film Battle Royale, and has sold over 50 million copies worldwide within a year of its release. With over 400 million players across 5 platforms, PUBG is one of the most played video games.

Website: https://www.pubg.com/

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7zR0oJTOqU

Lens 7: Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics:

The main objective of the game is to be the last surviving player/team in the game. Up to 100 players, 50 duos (teams of 2 players), or 25 squads (teams of 4 players), are battling each other in the game. Players can choose to actively seek out and eliminate enemy players, or simply hide and avoid being killed while other players are battling each other.

Players are able to pick up healing items to regenerate health during the game, and can operate vehicles, on both land and water, to move around the map. Random supplies will also drop from a passing plane in a crate, free for any player to claim. Random areas will also be bombed from time to time.

Story:

Players are parachuted onto an island to scavenge for weapons and supplies to survive the battle, with the objective to be the last remaining player/team. After certain timed stages, the playable area in the map shrinks, and any player outside the playable area will take damage incrementally. Players have to stay in the safe zone (playable area) to ensure survival.

Aesthetics:

The maps are vast, and players can enjoy exploring every area in the map (if time permits). Due to the different terrains in different maps (lush grasslands, barren dry deserts, snowy plains, urban landscapes), players have to adjust their game-play according to the environment they are playing in.

There are also weather changes in the map that can affect the game-play heavily. Night-vision goggles can also be picked up to enable players to see in the night. Aditionally, elements like fog and thunderstorms can mask the sight and hearing of players.

Technology:

PUBG is available to play on Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Android, iOS, and PlayStation 4. You might require a PC or mobile device with slightly higher end specifications for PUBG to enjoy the best graphics that the game can provide.

Lens 27: Skill

At first glance, one might think that the only skill needed in PUBG is aiming. However, the game enables players to make use of other different skill-sets to ensure survival.

For example, a familiarity of the map gives a player a huge advantage, as you will know where to find the most weapons and supplies, where to hide to gain the upper-hand on your enemies, and what path to take to best advance into the safe zone.

Additionally, the skill to dodge enemies shooting at you requires experience and practice. The time taken to recognize the direction from where your enemy is firing at you is crucial, and can decide whether you live or die. The skill to quickly decide where to aim/hide takes lots of practice to hone.

Sometimes, the skill to commandeer your vehicle effectively can also win you the fight, or even the game. Being able to drive at high speeds while avoiding buildings and trees, and running over enemies, can prove useful if you are lacking in the other skill areas.

Lens 32: Meaningful Choices

When the game starts, players can choose where in the map they want to start by aiming their character’s flight path towards the desired area. Players have to make the choice of whether they want to go to an area known to have an abundance of supplies, fighting off other players who choose to do the same, or to go to a more secluded and hence safer area of the map to start their game.

There are many different weapons in different weapon classes in the game. You can choose from snipers, assault rifles, machine guns, sub-machine guns, shotguns, and a crossbow. Each player can only hold 2 of these types of guns, with 1 handgun and 1 melee weapon. Knowing which weapon to hold at which stage of the game can increase your chances of surviving any enemy encounters.

Choosing your hiding spot in the game can also be crucial to surviving, especially in the final stages of the game, when the safe zone gets very small. Conquering the correct high ground can keep you safe, and give you an excellent vantage point to spot enemies and take them down.

Lens 37: Co-operation

Most players find that playing in a squad (team of 4 players) is the best way to experience the game. In a squad, cooperation is key, and knowing how to allocate the limited supplies among each player in the team will help your team go far in the game. Sharing weapons and healing items is essential to ensure survival.

It is also important to know how to engage enemies as a team. Watching each others’ backs, and communicating effectively the position of enemy players, will help your team to avoid and take out enemies easily.

PUBG has the feature to communicate with your teammates via the in-game microphone and speaker. Being able to constantly engage in active communication with your teammates adds a new element of fun to the game too.

Lens 66: Obstacle

The main obstacle in the game is every other player. At the start of the game, players are usually busy finding weapons and supplies. However, as the game progresses, the level of difficulty usually gets higher as you can expect surviving players to be better skilled at the game. The game-play gets more intense, as players are more careful as they traverse the terrain, looking to take out enemy players while avoiding death themselves.

The other obstacle is the safe zone. As the game progresses, the safe zone gets smaller. Staying outside the safe zone means losing health incrementally to the blue zone closing in, and if you do not rush to get into the safe zone, you might be eliminated. As the game enters its final stages, staying outside the safe zone deals more damage to the player, and players must avoid both enemy players and the blue zone creeping in.

Conclusion:

There are many aspects of the game that a player can try to master. Other than the skill elements of the game, players can also try out-of-the-box strategies to increase their chances of survival. You can even take out better-skilled enemies with the element of surprise on your side.

Even though the standard game-play does not change much over time, different new maps can change minute details of how one approaches the game, and keeping  the game fun and exciting for players.

Link to Overcooked! Launch Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZK7veYPEJQ

Introduction

Overcooked! is a frantic couch co-op indie game from 2016, that challenges up to 4 players to work together, performing cooking tasks to prepare the meals and complete food orders. Players find themselves in the game’s campaign with 28 different kitchens and a final boss level. There is also a competitive multiplayer option where we can play against our friends.

Lens 7 – The Lens of the Elemental Tetrad

Story

The campaign story Overcooked! has is simple and subtle. The chefs (players) are initially challenged to feeding a giant spaghetti and meatball monster during an apocalypse. However, the players failed to please the monster. The Onion King then decides to pull the cooks into a time portal back to the year 1993 to improve their cooking skills. The cooks have to go through the training process of cooking in many different kitchens with different environment circumstances and serving different types of food.

Mechanics

Players play the game as cooks and have to fulfill food orders in a given set of time. They accomplish this by carrying out a series of cooking tasks such as chopping vegetables, boiling pasta and washing dishes.
The goal is to earn as much money as possible before the time goes up.
The players are ranked on a 3-star system based on how many coins they got.

Aesthetics

Overcooked! adopted a 3D low poly cartoon style with colourful visuals. It also has a clean and intuitive user Interface and icon layovers. Overcooked aesthetics revolves around a kitchen and cooking activities. The sounds in Overcooked! also contributes to the appeal of the game. Hearing the chopping of food on a chopping board, the fire alarm ringing in the background when the kitchen is on fire makes the players feel like they’re in an actual kitchen. Both the visuals and the music contributes to its appeal towards a large audience base.

Technology

Overcooked! is made with Unity and was released on several platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. It supports controllers and keyboard controls. However, it only supports local multiplayer mode and not online multiplayer mode (online multiplayer mode was subsequently released on the sequel Overcooked! 2).

Lens 2 – The Lens of Surprise

In Overcooked!, there are many kitchen maps that we can play in, and each of them are unique in it’s own way. Each kitchen would usually have different food orders to complete too! The dishes includes soups, pizzas, sushi and many more! When I first played the game, each map that I get is a refreshing surprise to me. There are different obstacles in a kitchen and we have to come up with different strategies for each map. For example, the map may only allow one person to cross a path at a time, or a portion of the ground disappears during a different time intervals. The element of surprises that Overcooked! has to offer lies in each of the maps and the interesting ways us players could overcome it.

Lens 37 – The Lens of Cooperation

The essential experience in Overcooked! lies in cooking and communicating with your friends. As the map designs were created to emphasize the need to work together with your friends. This local co-op game will have you shouting out the orders, telling other cooks (your friends) what to do and informing them what they’re doing. The more the players progress in the game the harder the game gets without cooperating and communicating effectively with your friends in game and in real life. Besides the maps, the nature of the game where players have to conduct a series of steps before a food order can be sent out contributes to this lens. As this series of steps can be done by any of the cooks, having an order assembled by several cooks compared to a single cook would mean that orders would be sent out more efficiently.

For example, in the scenario given below, players have to cooperate and always make sure there is at least 1 chef at the left and the right side of the split map in order to complete orders efficiently.

Lens 6 – The Lens of Problem solving activity

Overcooked! manages to infuse problems very well in the environment. This leaves the players coming up with many different strategies to tackle the problem given to them. Some players are able to adapt well to the problems that they face immediately, however some would not. In addition, as Overcooked! ranks the players based on a 3-star system (and subsequently a 4-star system), this encourages and boost the players to perfect their problem solving strategies just to get that high rank. As the maps are fixed in each of the kitchens, players are able to analyze what went wrong in the previous game and do better in the next round.

Lens 55 – The Lens of Visible Progress

Overcooked! keeps track of your progress and is compiled visually onto a map. The players are able to see which maps they have completed and how well they completed it (based on star ratings). Players can also unlock different chef skins as they progress through the game.

Name of Game: 2Cars

Description: It is a offline one player game. You control the two cars on each side with two fingers. The goal of the game is to get as many circles and avoid all the squares. The flow of the game will get faster as time passes.

Link to Game Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI3OKIvJh5k

Mechanics: the screen is divided into two for each car and again into two lanes. On every lane, there is a vertical flow of square or circle blocks along the road. Players control each car by tapping on either side of the screen, which switches the lane of the car. The game ends when any car hits a square block, and the goal is to hit as many circle blocks as you can before the game ends.

Story: There is no story in this game.

Aesthetics: There is a calming blue background which helps to contrast the bright colored circle and square blocks. The two sides also have their own distinct color for better differentiation. The aesthetic is simple and easy to look at.

Technology: There is no technology needed to enhance the experience of this game.

Lens 1 Essential Experience: the experience that the players are led to is that of driving cars on the road while trying to hit some items and avoid some items along the way. As the speed of the flow increases with time, players can feel the rush and excitement of an increasing challenge. There is also an experience in multitasking when players have to look out for and control each of the two cars individually.

Lens 2 Surprise: There is definitely the element of surprise throughout the game as the placement/timing of the square and circle blocks are unpredictable and users have to respond fast to what they just saw.

Lens 5 Useful Rewards: There is a sense of accomplishment when players manage to hit the circle block as that contributes to the game score. Hence the players are led to keep seeking that goal.

Lens 6 Problem Solving: the problem solving in such a one-player game would be to beat your own previous high score.