Our week started with a lecture from Jordan Magnuson about game poems and what it takes to make a good game poem. At first, I thought that game poems were based on already existing pieces of literature and just depicted the context of poems through game mechanics. To my surprise, it was fair more than that. Game poems take the concept of poetry and turn it into a tool for telling a story using game as words. The games get structured like poems, are not really long and use metaphors as a key storytelling element. That way, the person who plays these games can use their own imagination to understand the message the game tried to convey.
One of the good examples of game poem that I got a chance to play was The Forest and the Trees by Jill Murray, which was actually made using unfinished bits of the project that never had a chance to be finished, almost a decade old.
It leads you through chances you didn’t take, and opportunities you missed because you doubted yourself. Procrastinating, you find yourself getting lost in tons and tons of ideas and projects you never got to finish. But, eventually, knowing that no one else will do it for you, and nothing but death would help you get out of endless cycle of trying, you find yourself getting way back to where your passion lies – within your heart. And it makes you rethink, makes you consider the possibility of getting back to where you were, using things you have now.
Our weekly task was also connected to game poems, and I teamed up with one of my group mates to make our own game poem. We based it on the Ukrainian metaphor, “Don’t run ahead of your father into hell”, which means that if you’re rushing too much, you undeniably will get yourself into trouble.
The software that was used to create the game is called Bitsy, and it is a 8bit pixel maker that allows you to create simple yet functional games. You are able to create your own sprites and tiles, give them functional mechanics and even write out a dialogue.
The emotion we were aiming for was impatience, to make the player feel like they’re wasting their precious time. That’s why the first room the character appears in is full of clocks that form a maze, representing the persons mind and how they cant escape the feeling of always being late .
The dots serve as thoughts, if you walk into one, the speech bubble will appear, saying that you’re in a hurry. Two of the dots are place in dead ends, and when you reach them, the bubble would say that you don’t have time for it and there should be an easier way out. Every single clock is a separate tile that was manually placed, and all the sprites and icons in the game were made by us.
When you exit the maze, you appear in a forest with an The Ominous Grandma(tm). If you choose to talk to her, she will point out that you’re in a hurry, after saying the metaphor we based the game on. You exit through the gate, thinking how this old lady wasted your time.
We made two different tiles for trees, as well as added second frames so they could be animated. We places them in a way that makes the player follow a certain direction, as if guiding them to meet the old lady.
The gate was also animated. It was a little tricky to figure out how to make it look like it’s creaking open, but we decided to just get rid of the centre pixels in the second frame, making it seem like the gate is fully opened.
When you go through the gate, you get to the park full of people who are standing in your way. There is not much interaction with them, except for the character being really mean towards them, saying to move out of their way and make some room.
The pathway was made using different tiles. All we needed to do was make 6 tiles with direction of the path and turns it would take, that way you can give it any shape you want.
Sprites of the people ere also animated. We had two kids and two adults on the location, so their sprites differed from each other in size.
After leaving the park, the character suddenly appears in what seems to be hell that they were warned about, with bubbling, melted clocks and no way out.
We added two different tiles for lava, as well as some regular clocks and trees t make it seem like the inner world of the character and real life morphed into something horrifying. White clocks work like dots in the first room, representing the character’s thoughts. Lava tiles were also animated, making it look like its actually bubbling.
In the end, reaching the flickering dot in the middle, the character asks themself, “Was the old lady actually right? I’ve rusher through too much!”, admitting that their own decisions have caused them to end up in a bad situation.
Feedback
During our game presentation in class we have received some feedback from peers and the teacher. People have expressed their interest in the metaphor itself as it was something new they’ve never heard of before. We also received feedback on environment design choices and some advice on how it could be improved.
This was a very useful experience, specifically because we learned how to tell the story through environment and using minimal amount of straightforward storytelling. Really made me think of how to connect the narrative with environment in my own game.