{"id":167,"date":"2025-11-11T22:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T22:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/?page_id=167"},"modified":"2025-11-11T22:30:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T22:30:34","slug":"poetic-play-emotional-design","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/poetic-play-emotional-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetic Play & Emotional Design"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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On Monday of the second week, we tested their games in the third-grade classroom. These games were mostly textless, relying on visuals and player actions to express the game creators’ thoughts and themes.<\/p>

Below are two games that I understood best and could empathize with:<\/p>

‘On Second Thought’, by Tereza Kotesovcov\u00e1. When you press the spacebar when the blue ball is in the red box, the character’s hand moves upwards. The direction is very clear, and the player needs to follow the rhythm to raise the character’s hand until it lands on another person’s shoulder. However, during the raising of the hand, the character hesitates about their action. The rapid movement of the blue ball makes it difficult for the player to press the button precisely, resulting in some images about ‘accidents’. This is very similar to myself; because I’m unsure if my actions are correct, I miss opportunities, leading to unpleasant consequences. But like the game’s ending, the hand on the shoulder gives the other person a positive feeling; sometimes, actions don’t require thought.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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This is the second game, ‘Loneliness’, created by Jordan Mugnuson. The game involves controlling a single black cube, moving against a sky background. Along the way, it encounters groups of other black cubes. Players can choose to ignore them or approach them, but without exception, the cube will quickly move away and slowly disappear the moment it gets close. Combined with the game’s title, it is indeed a poetic expression of loneliness. On life’s journey, we will always encounter many small groups, but not all of them are willing to accept you. These groups with differing paths are not worth deviating from your original course for. Life is a solitary journey.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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On Thursday, we created a simple game using the website ‘Bisty’, aiming to convey emotions like sadness, joy, and frustration. I was particularly impressed by Iris’s game. She set the blocks to the same color as the background, and players needed to determine their position by the dialogue boxes that appeared when blocks collided with walls. This game could easily cause confusion and frustration due to the lack of visibility and the unclear objective and progression. She effectively utilized game mechanics, such as collision volumes and the dialogue boxes that appeared upon collision, including portals to the next map, to convey the game’s mood. This is something I need to learn from in my future game creation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tClick here to Go Back<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday of the second week, we tested their games in the third-grade classroom. These games were mostly textless, relying on visuals and player actions to express the game creators’ thoughts and themes. Below are two games that I understood best and could empathize with: ‘On Second Thought’, by Tereza Kotesovcov\u00e1. When you press the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-167","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/167\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xl22n24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}