Fitness Challenge

Prompt 1: Describe the central uncertainty in the game.

Fitness Challenge is a game revolving around randomness, uncertainty, and player reaction speed. The central uncertainty in this game is the future obstacles that are going to come onto the screen to block the player from continuing to run. The game warms the player up by starting the game running at a reasonable, slower pace; however, once the player reaches a score of about 120the pace of the runner rapidly increases. Making the uncertainty of obstacles approaching much more difficult for the player to prepare for, but not fast enough that the player could not react properly to the upcoming obstacles. Which makes it so that the players only struggle with their own reaction speed in their pursuit for the highest score. There is no pattern for which the obstacles will approach, making it impossible to master this game perfectly, by just memorizing the path due to its randomness. Instead, to master this game, players would have to better their reaction speed to this game's elements. The tension once the pace of the runner speeds up, is similar to that of actually jogging or working out, it makes the player feel more adrenaline to be more alert of the upcoming obstacles. In addition to the running picking up their pace in the game, at the same time players get introduced to slightly more complex obstacles making for a more interesting and engaging game environment. Such as, instead of one hole in the ground, two will appear next to each other. Same will the tunnel, two tunnels can appear next to each other making the player need to roll for longer.

Prompt 2: Describe the challenge of the game as if the designer was working to thwart you.

The game fitness challenge wants the player to lose eventually, because it's a never ending game. The game is basically controlling a running boy and the goal is to run as long as you can. The game will try to make the player lose from two directions: the obstacle from top and the puddle from below. The player can jump or roll to prevent dying from the obstacles. The game anticipated that the player might want to only press jump to escape dying from the puddle, but if the player did only pressed the up button, the timing must be absolutely right to not die. In order to give the myself a longer window to react, I must add right arrow keys to let the character jump longer. This is also part of how the game wants the players to lose, but learn from losing.

The game doesn't really have enemies, only the obstacles that makes the victory(or living longer and earn more points) difficult. An interesting point is, after the player gain over 100 points from living, the game becomes harder, and the rise of difficulty comes not only from the bigger obstacles, but also the running speed of the character. The speed is faster so it shortens the reaction window of the players. The colors and music also changes to alert the player when this change in difficulty happens.

Prompt 3: Describe an interesting moment of interplay.

“Fitness Challenge” starts with a basic set of verbs, essentially moving horizontally, jumping up, and rolling down. Using these verbs, you don’t necessarily change the view, or even the camera, but your velocity has a constant base of moving right and the camera constantly moves right matching that base velocity. In the beginning, players are given a chance to explore these verbs, to understand the controls and their repercussions, as obstacles are few and far between. You must jump sometimes while other times you must roll to avoid obstacles and survive. 

These verbs and restrictions allow for interesting forms of interplay as the base velocity increases and the color and music of the game becomes more intense. This environment induces a feeling that your actions will have consequences, most likely dire ones, and you feel very tense. You soon find yourself being challenged, as your actions, even when no obstacle is in sight, can have large effects. The player is moving so fast a new obstacle could appear so quickly, for example requiring you to roll on the ground while you were just jumping in the air, or vice versa. The actions build up on each other and the player can react to these changes in the environment, even moving horizontally to help recover from particularly tough situations as an even further level of interplay. As the game progresses, this gets even harder though, requiring more caution and thoughtful movements.