So I am going to be completely honest here. I spent a lot of time in class when our computers were unfrozen playing “Arteroids”. In my defense, it was the relevant topic of the day, and definitely expanded my knowledge of the application/project. First of all, the game was fun. Who doesn’t like shooting at things on a screen, honestly? The words that they had programmed in were a little boring, depending on what mode of game play you are in, but when I found out that you could program your own words in I got a little mental “BINGO”! Honestly I put in an email from my bonehead ex-boyfriend and totally shot away at them, naturally with my name as the shooter. It was kind of justifying, not going to lie (what an honest blog post for class!). I think that “Arteroids” is an excellent example on a variation of an old game, and a good attempt at really ‘prosing it up’ (puns are fun).
Second of all, aside from it being fun and an awesome tool for personal revenge, it got a little boring after awhile, sure I wanted to try and get to level 216, but my patience definitely ran out (as did class-time). I think that this project serves solely as an example of what the miracles of the internet can do, although maybe not utilizing them to their fullest potential or expanding on an existing idea to its fullest potential. I don’t have an exact idea of how this could be improved from its current state, so I’m not going to try and pretend to offer up some suggestions. All I’m saying is that I believe that somehow it could be made better. Maybe the color scheme could be adjusted somehow, or have the words fire back as you instead of needing to avoid them, or maybe when you get to a certain point there is some ultimate high-score list that is recorded on the internet forever (okay I lied here and really did offer some suggestions). Although this might be the most fun interactive media we have covered this semester, it also might be the most lacking.
I’m kind of behind this comment all the way. I think though, by saying it’s both the most fun, but also the most lacking, that means it has the most potential. There is so much that could be done to take this theme and run with it. I’m not so modest, so here are my proposals:
We’re text, right? And we’re shooting at text, right?
Shoot with text. Think of the possibilities…
Don’t want to? Fine, I’ve done the programmers the favor of working through not only the problem of what to do, but how to make it look.
First things first: upgrades. Yeah, you start shooting the hyphen. It get’s the job done, but it’s a bit slow, and only blows up individual words. Phrases it breaks into individual words, which then have to be shot… you guessed it, individually.
But wait, [=] comes along. It’s a box containing the equalizer. This is a faster, and obviously doubled version of the first-level weapon. This weapon, as you may have assumed, shoots equal signs.
I won’t ruin all the surprises, lest of course I be contacted by Jim Andrews for my ideas, but just so you have a taste of my following arsenel:
* – ninja stars
Q – hand grenades (explosive)
@ – black holes (remain a few seconds, suck words in)
0)(POW) – bomb (explosive)
The explosives blow up when they hit a word, and have a resulting blast radius that also takes down nearby words. The bigger the item, the bigger the radius.
Ok, so, do I expect any of this to be incorperated into the game? No. But these are the kinds of things I think about when I play games, and I’m sure other gamers do too. They’re the things that ensure games don’t get boring. I say this not to point out how boring Arteroids has the potential to be, but to show that I don’t think its immediate intention was to be a great game. I think it’s more concerned with being something new and interesting, while its actual gameplay features could easily be developed to turn it into something much more.
You hear me, Jim Andrews?
George, I think you might be my Arteroids knight on a white horse.!