Sploder is nominally a web-based game-making tool, but, actually, it’s more a collection of tools that make different yet somehow all sort of same-ish platform games. I think either different developers made different tools and then one person bundled them together or one developer kept starting and stopping projects and decided to release all of them instead of making one really good tool. They all sort of are meh with inconsistent creation metaphors, inconsistent levels of in-tool help, etc. It’s all sot of haphazard, and it’s hard to recommend Sploder over something like Construct 2 or GameMaker Studio. I basically wrote this in a review for Graphite (not yet published), too.
Category Archives: Games Research
#GameAWeek Challenge: Button Quest
Back in June/July, before sHMUP bLUFF, I worked on Button Quest, a game using Flowlab with Sandra Danilovic. Part of the challenge was to learn the web-based game maker well enough to review for Graphite.
#GameAWeek (Month) Challenge: sHMUP bLUFF
I’m reviewing Sploder for Graphite.
It’s a web-based game-making tool meant for kids and classrooms. Everything is driven through the web interface and there’s no programming involved. There’s also tons of pre-built sprites with animations and pre-defined behaviors (friendly NPCs, enemy AI, etc.).
The first thing I noticed about Sploder is that when you create a game, you have the option of creating a specific kind of game: a platformer, a puzzler, a top-down shooter, etc., and each of these choices gets you to a particular interface specifically for making that type of game.
And this made me want to try to push Sploder as much as possible, to create games within particular genres that break the genre. For example, what if we (Sandra and I) made a shooter game where the enemy aren’t trying to kill you and instead actually heal you or something?
In trying this out, I discovered that all you do in Sploder is drag and drop art onto a stage. Each object has behavior associated with it that cannot be tweaked. You can’t, for example, change how often and for how much damage a particular enemy ship shoots. You can’t change its speed or anything…
So, I played around with it a bit and came up with the game sHMUP bLUFF, where you are meant NOT to do anything other than watch. But Sploder still has built-in controls, so you could take control of your ship whenever you want. So the game is an exercise in trust… trusting that your wingman is there for you and will protect you. And maybe it’ll succeed and maybe it won’t. And if you take control of your ship, do you break that trust?
And I sort of saw this as a metaphor for living with a loved one who suffers from depression. The player ship is the person who suffers from depression and sometimes just can’t bring themselves to do anything… The wingman is a friend or family member who is trying to protect. (But perhaps this is the wrong metaphor… like often there’s just nothing anyone can do, really… there’s no “fixing” or solving the problems of depression… there’s only coping, so I don’t know how good a metaphor this game is, really, but there you have it… what it can sometimes feel like.)
sHMUP bLUFF
In other news, Ana and Dennis are still making games regularly!
Most recently, Ana made a game about moving called Mover, based sort of on her previous game Paper Pusher. (Grats on the new *house Ana!)
Dennis continues his trend of making small Unity games. Check out Mental Block and Hello, Universe!
And in other other news, we got a session accepted at NASAGA on our Game A Week Challenge!
#GameAWeek Failure! “On the Difficulty of Being an ANT”
Check out unfinished failure: On the Difficulty of Being an ANT: The Interactive Version!
Last week and this week, I’ve been sort of stuck in a moment of nonproductivity with regard to the #gameaweek challenge that I’m doing with Ana, Dennis, Melissa, and Greg. Ana is super inspiring and still going strong and even wrote about her experiences in the ProfHacker column for The Chronicle of Higher Ed!
My moment of stuckage can be primarily blamed on two things. First, I’m making a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game with Inklewriter based on Latour’s dialog found in his book Reassembling the Social. It’s an interlude between chapters in the book and features a professor having a conversation with a student, and it’s called “On the Difficulty of Being an ANT.”
Continue reading #GameAWeek Failure! “On the Difficulty of Being an ANT”
#GameAWeek RPG Quest
This week’s game is a Twine-based game called RPG Quest: Legend Age.
Spoilers and reflections for this game and last week’s Stay Awake Little Kitty after the break.
Stay Awake Little Kitty! #gameaweek
The game I made this week started out as one where you try to keep a student awake in class, but I watched a bunch of cat videos on YouTube last night…
Co-op Space Card Game prototype ready for download! #gameaweek
I did it! I finished a set of print-n-play files for the Co-op Space Card Game I’m making!
Co-op Space Card Game.prototype rules (PDF)
Co-op Space Card Game.print n play prototype (PDF) FIXED! (There was a printer set up error… print Actual Size on 8.5×11 in. paper)
The art is NOT final. Nor are the rules, really…
Continue reading Co-op Space Card Game prototype ready for download! #gameaweek
I’m teaching “Intro to Interactive Media -> Text-based and Adventure Games” this quarter!
And here’s a copy of the syllabus:
BIS236B Intro to Interactive Media -> Text-based and Adventure Games (PDF)
#gameaweek moar card gamez
This week continued to see some great #gameaweek games from Ana, Dennis, Melissa, and, new to the mix, Greg Koeser. It’s astonishing how much we’re providing commentary for academia. So far we’ve seen my Flappy Bird clone that shows the futility of trying to succeed as an academic, Ana’s work/life balance game that also seems pretty futile last week and now this week her IF game about grief but also about getting tenure, Dennis’s IRB approval game that is yet another sisyphean experience. Melissa created an old-school first-person RPG, similar to the old Wizardrys, except that it’s sort of mashed up with Desktop Dungeon in that you need to explore and kill things in a certain order like a puzzle game. Greg’s entry is a card game! It uses standard decks of cards and features bidding and winning cards using other cards.
I continued to work on the Space 4X Co-op Card Game ^TM.
#GameAWeek Game Two Extended
I’ve been at GDC this week and haven’t really had time to work on a new game. I did get a chance to revise the rules for the Space 4X Co-op Card Game, though.
It’s probably a little incomprehensible without the actual cards in hand to refer to, but here the latest version: