Dev.log Red

I claim no ownership and this is solely for educational purposes.

Regarding dev.log option 2, this week I decided to play a game I recently picked up on sale off of Steam. It's called West Of Loathing by Asymmetric Publications. It is a comedy western RPG where the player is a stick figure leaving their home for the west.
   Mechanically, West Of Loathing is rather simple. As the player I venture into the west to find fame and fortune. Upon approaching objects I get button prompts that bring up either thought bubbles or UI for actions to perform. More options appear based on what is in my inventory. I pick up new skills from reading books,  and can carouse with saloon patroons to find new quests. upon approaching hostile entities I am barred from passing, and an option to initiate combat appears. Combat is turn based and very much not spectacular, the player can use various items, take stock actions, or use 'action points' to perform special moves like other rpgs. I choose to become a Snake Oiler as a profession. I can extract snake venom for medicine or use deadly poisons via actual live snakes in a fight for action points. I discover new locations by picking up quests or having npc's reveal locations on their map.  Throughout I am accompanied by a proud western themed soundtrack with surprising variety in various locations.

   Much of the games dynamic magic after character customization occurs in humorous interactions and dialogue. Any object or character I approach will give items, quests or information, even the cactus human hybrid, but the player can take various interactions to change the outcome, similar to text based games. (the neat, delicate dialogue menus point to this too.) For example, upon approaching a sleeping bandit in a tub, I'm given the options to ignore him, shoot him, tie him up, or ask for soap. He isn't a hostile entity so ignoring him will allow me to walk past him. I chose to ask for the soap, which he gives me without acknowledging that I am contextually an enemy. I'm already entertained, and the soap can be traded for an item back in town, which is narratively sound, since soap would be a commodity in the old west. Tying him up later gives me the status of 'honorable.' and leaves me with the fridge logic of tying up a sleeping man in a filled bathtub.  The sheriff later does not question me as to why two of the bandits are allowed to escape because my dialogue choices allowed me to get past the encounter peacefully, he is only happy to have his prison door back. I was able to this by posing as one of the gang members whom I read about on a wanted poster. I didn't even mention the cool ghost horse I bought!

   There are strong aesthetics of Fantasy, Discovery and Narrative. I chose the game because of it's art style, (something that backfired on me previously when I played Japan Studio's Puppeteer for PS3.) which is simple black and white, with simple stick figures as characters. It's art work calls to mind the stickmen filled flash games of the early 2000's, a hallmark of my childhood, and one of my earliest creative inspirations. This is supported by the developer/publisher page which describes 'making funny games since 2003'. For me at least, it gives the game another aesthetic that isn't properly defined in our MDA readings: Nostalgia. Perhaps these fall under Expression and self discovery however.
   I say Fantasy because the game world is not quite a historical old west. It bears many of it's trappings, but with a tinge of high fantasy and horror. For example, the character classes; Cow Puncher, Beanslinger, and Snake Oiler, (subtly the warrior, wizard, and thief trio of classic fantasy). They are absurd by nature, the snake oiler in particular being a deconstruction of the snake oil salesman trope, the game universe turning this into a respected trade profession. The cow puncher being a version of a cowboy from another universe. In this games setting, cows are dangerous demonic aliens who slaughter entire families for fun. Early on I encountered one of them, a flaming elemental in the form of a bull skull. This gives the game a hidden horrific threat, as it departs from the comedic tone and is treated as a legitimate threat. One npc, Susie Cochrane, relates to us the sad story of her families deaths at the hands of raging cows after we find their graves in the local graveyard on an unrelated quest. There are no jokes in this interaction. The sudden tone shift actually humanizes this npc which is why I say narrative is a strong aesthetic. I took her as a traveling companion because she longed to start over elsewhere, But in her interactions I can see a bitterness and a lasting desire for revenge against cow kind which I suspect will influence the story.  
   I'll also say the game has a Sensation aesthetic, because the humorous writing is actually funny. There is no laugh track and jokes aren't forced. There is bold and clever use of delayed punchline, fridge logic and other literary comedic devices. It arrives at a point where the game feels less western dark humor and more fine English humor, like reading terry Pratchett. I'll definitely be spending more time playing this title. I hope that any game I work on, if it decides to be funny is like West Of Loathing, and knows when to tell a joke and when to make me stop and think. It also struck me that, combat could be the worse part of a game, and the game could still be great. 

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Regarding option 3 from our choices of Dev.log assignments; this exercise is number 2.3 from page 34 of Fullerton's Game Design Workshop:

Exercise 2.3: Objectives
List five games, and in one sentence per game,
describe the objective in each game.

Uno is a turn based card game where groups of players using a dealt number of cards must match color and numbered cards in a discard pile, in order to be the first person to have no cards in their hands.

Apples to Apples is a turn based party card game where players attempt to gather the most 'apples' or green adjective cards by matching from a set of given red synonym cards and justifying the relation between the two in conversation.

Boggle is a toy based, timed board game where players must write down found words from a pile of randomly thrown letter dice, in order to become the one who has found the most words.

Tic-Tac-Toe is a paper based turn based game where players goal is to draw three matching, consecutive symbols in a row without being interrupted by an opponents symbol during their turn.

Kerplunk is a toy based, turn based board game where players objective is to avoid gathering falling balls from a plastic tower that revolves and dispenses them as players draw sticks from it's internals.