Game Design Elective

In addition to working on our semester-long projects here at the ETC, students also take at least one elective per semester.  This semester I am taking Jesse Schell's Game Design course which so far has been both entertaining and educational!  Our first project was to design a new and improved version of hopscotch, my version of which you can check out here.  It's funny, even such a simple game as hopscotch has a lot of rules to keep track of.  For my redesign, I put together a hybrid of hopscotch and sudoku called Hopsudoku to try and add a puzzle element and make the game more attractive to an adult audience.  One thing I underestimated was the physical component.  Hopping doesn't sound like a very strenuous activity but hopping for long enough during playtesting does get tiring!

Our second project was to write a list of at least 100 games we've played throughout our lives, listing at least three for each year we've been alive since we were five, and include comments about memorable parts of of each of their designs.  You can see my list here.  I did my best to avoid overusing sequels as long as I could, but had to break down and do so to fill in some problem years here and there.  It was a very interesting exercise to go back and try and remember what stuck out the most for me over my gaming career, it might be fun to go back to it again at some point and try to make the list as exhaustive as possible and see how high a number I can get.

ETC Semester Project - Spring Entertainment

So with the first semester and BVW behind me, I'm now moving forward as a member of the Spring Entertainment project team here at the Entertainment Technology Center.  Spring Entertainment is a client project working for Seven Springs Mountain Resort.  Our goal is to create an iPhone game that advertises the variety of experiences available to guests at the resort.  You can read more about the project and follow our progress in our weekly newsletters available here.