Links for Me: if ( 1 + 1 == 1 ) { e8z = true; };

if ( 1 + 1 == 1 ) { e8z = true; };

Aside from the clever way of making you play a
memory card game to unlock the links to this group's
various projects, the website is pretty hard to navigate.
Getting to any of the game interface projects is next to
impossible.

Something tells me this is not the place to go for easy, clear,
and intuitive interfaces.

But then again, I seem to have broken formatting and word
wrap on this blog post, so I guess I'm not the best judge.

Links for Me: Tale of Tales

Tale of Tales: The Endless Forest

The Endless Forest is an online game, played mostly through a screen saver, that deals with simple exploration, communication, and looking at the world created for you. There are several different scenes (one humorously based off a Doctor Who item, which gets props from me), and your main objective is to walk around and enjoy them. You can do deer-like things, but the game presents no objectives for you to accomplish.

Communication in the game is minimal - you are limited to what you can convey in your deer form. Gender is irrelevant, as everyone is required to play a male deer - because "antlers are pretty," they say, but it is mostly to make you communicate as a deer, not as your gender counterpart.

Aside from the deer characters of this game bearing a creepy resemblance to the forest spirit in Princess Mononoke, this game is a pretty good match for the exploration side of our game - exploring for the sake of seeing what is out there. Minimalizing communication by limiting the player to a specific form is an interesting concept - making them communicate by action and emotion, rather than words, could be a concept we could use in our space exploration game. This game definitely warrants more exploration.

Links for Me: eScavenger

Only three links here to review, so let's have at the first one.

eScavengers - Let The Adventure Begin!

Aside from being a sort of puzzling dual website, this game seems to be an online game where you compete with other players in order to gain in-game currency, which can be traded for more tangible products. Online retailer subscriptions, various products, and so forth.

The method of playing involves a scavenger hunt through selected pages of companies that sponsor each game. The game gives you a hint, the answer type (image, text, number, etc.), and you have to scour the page to find the item that matches the hint and select the correct area with the crosshairs. Incorrect guesses penalize you with time, which I assume lowers your overall reward. It involves careful reading of each page, which explains why it has specific sponsors, because it forces you to read the website carefully rather than skimming over it.

As to how I think the game works, I'm guessing it's all pre-determined, rather than an on-the-fly scan and hint generation. Since the game only requires you to get about 6 answers to clear the level, then the creators can pick 20 hints from 20 different pages and just randomize them.

As to the relevance to our project, in dealing with the whole internet scanning idea, it doesn't quite match. Rather than translating the page into a whole different format, the game makes you deal with all the formatting the vendor wants you to see. The pages are likely pre-formatted and pre-loaded, and don't deal much with how pages can change and can be edited. As for the competition aspect, it kind of follows the idea of discovery, but hardly a who-can-discover-this-first, and more of a who-can-complete-the-levels-fastest. The real world prizes for game resources is a good motivation, but obviously out of the scope of a project made by two college students.

All-in-all, a good game that makes dealing with webpages a game rather than a chore (even if it is a blatant advertising ploy on the part of the company sponsoring it), and a good way to reward people for participating.