Scary Girl
So when I first saw the assignment for this week, I was excited! One of the things I really like to do is play video games, and live stream them for my viewers. I've never played Scary Girl before, so I was excited to test out a new game, especially looking at it from the 4-Layer approach.
The very first layer is the gameplay itself. This category is broken down into 4 subcategories:
1. Coherency: I think for me the most confusing part is the title. "Scary Girl" seems to make you think that the game would be...well...scary, but that's not the case. Besides the characters looking a little misshapen (due to the art style) nothing about this game screams scary. In fact, it's rather quite cutesie.
2. Streamlining: Although this game doesn't use a lot of words, the icons on the left-hand side show you the order in which you are supposed to be completing steps, which I think really helps, especially when the words aren't there.
3. A sense of accomplishment: This, for me was okay. You complete an area and it tells you whether or not you collected all the treasure, and because it's broken up into "rooms" you get the accomplishment of finishing one area.
4. Action confirmation: Out of all of the gameplay areas, this is the one I found the most fault in. An example would be the objects you can jump on. None of the objects you can jump on (such as branches) are marked in a way that lets you know they are different from the ones you can't jump on. I was very frustrated to climb most of a tree only the fall all the way back down because I thought a branch could be jumped on and was mistaken.
The next layer is Narrative Goal. I think for this game it's a little bit of mystery (just because they don't tell you any of the story before you start the game) and a little bit of adventure, since this girl is leaving her room (or treehouse, whatever you want to call it) and going off to find all these different people and complete all these different tasks.
Then comes Narrative Background. Each of the stories uncovered by finding the characters is an example of the story fragments. You could argue that the special toy cat is an object with emotional value.
Lastly comes Mental Modeling. For me this was the most lacking, only because the story itself was so bizarre that it was hard for me to think of possibilities of what could come next. Maybe if I continued to play I would get better, but I found the game to be a little frustrating and really nonsensical. You find "clues" every now and then but its mostly hunting for an extremely ridiculous amount of "treasure". I mean come on, get out of here with your 10,000 fish.
I think for comparison purposes, I'll compare this game to a novel and a board game. When you read a mystery novel, unless there is pictures--which there is usually not--you really have to use your imagination to "build" the scene and characters. You don't have the option to change the story, or the direction the characters go in when you're reading a book. In both, the story is set out for you, but the way you go about living the story is very different.
When you compare video games to board games, they definitely have more in common. Obviously they're both games, which means they're very interactive, and the way it plays out depends heavily on decisions that you make. Board games differ from video games in that the images are stagnant--unless you're playing a game like Scene It (I think that's what it's called). Even though there are things to look at and interact with, it leaves a lot to the imagination. It also means that you aren't able to interact with as many things.
I'll definitely look at my video games in a different light now!
The very first layer is the gameplay itself. This category is broken down into 4 subcategories:
1. Coherency: I think for me the most confusing part is the title. "Scary Girl" seems to make you think that the game would be...well...scary, but that's not the case. Besides the characters looking a little misshapen (due to the art style) nothing about this game screams scary. In fact, it's rather quite cutesie.
2. Streamlining: Although this game doesn't use a lot of words, the icons on the left-hand side show you the order in which you are supposed to be completing steps, which I think really helps, especially when the words aren't there.
3. A sense of accomplishment: This, for me was okay. You complete an area and it tells you whether or not you collected all the treasure, and because it's broken up into "rooms" you get the accomplishment of finishing one area.
4. Action confirmation: Out of all of the gameplay areas, this is the one I found the most fault in. An example would be the objects you can jump on. None of the objects you can jump on (such as branches) are marked in a way that lets you know they are different from the ones you can't jump on. I was very frustrated to climb most of a tree only the fall all the way back down because I thought a branch could be jumped on and was mistaken.
The next layer is Narrative Goal. I think for this game it's a little bit of mystery (just because they don't tell you any of the story before you start the game) and a little bit of adventure, since this girl is leaving her room (or treehouse, whatever you want to call it) and going off to find all these different people and complete all these different tasks.
Then comes Narrative Background. Each of the stories uncovered by finding the characters is an example of the story fragments. You could argue that the special toy cat is an object with emotional value.
Lastly comes Mental Modeling. For me this was the most lacking, only because the story itself was so bizarre that it was hard for me to think of possibilities of what could come next. Maybe if I continued to play I would get better, but I found the game to be a little frustrating and really nonsensical. You find "clues" every now and then but its mostly hunting for an extremely ridiculous amount of "treasure". I mean come on, get out of here with your 10,000 fish.
I think for comparison purposes, I'll compare this game to a novel and a board game. When you read a mystery novel, unless there is pictures--which there is usually not--you really have to use your imagination to "build" the scene and characters. You don't have the option to change the story, or the direction the characters go in when you're reading a book. In both, the story is set out for you, but the way you go about living the story is very different.
When you compare video games to board games, they definitely have more in common. Obviously they're both games, which means they're very interactive, and the way it plays out depends heavily on decisions that you make. Board games differ from video games in that the images are stagnant--unless you're playing a game like Scene It (I think that's what it's called). Even though there are things to look at and interact with, it leaves a lot to the imagination. It also means that you aren't able to interact with as many things.
I'll definitely look at my video games in a different light now!
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