Homework 9

Balance #1: Fairness

I think the balance of the fairness relies on all of the following items. I will relate each of the balance type to our game in the following.

Balance #2: Challenge vs. Success

Some of our challenges in the game include getting the message of the hidden place of the dragon ball, practice before the player can upgrade to a better weapon, and the maze. For an experienced RPG player, it will be easier. But still, we have the triggers of exposing the message of dragon ball’s location. The player has to talk to the right people passes by to trigger this message. There are 4 worlds in our game and each world is harder than the last world. The player won’t be able to get into the next world until he/she succeeds in the last world. By increasing the difficulty with each world, we are trying to make the players keep the interest in the game.

Balance #3: Meaningful Choices

One of the applications of Triangularity in our game is the choices of the weapon. The most basic weapon would be the sword. The player will have a sword once he/she gets into the game. But after a while, the sword won’t be enough for the player to fight over the aliens. He/she has to buy a better weapon in the shops. Different weapons can be used to fight with different aliens.

Balance #4: Skill vs. Chance

I am not aware of the skills and chances in our game yet so far. But it’s a good strategy to apply to the game.

Balance #5: Head VS. Hands

I personally prefer a game involves more thinking and strategy rather than just pushing the buttons. I think we are trying to combine and balance the mental and physical elements in our game. For example, the communication between the player and the passer-by involves the information collecting and analysis. The player needs to think before action. While he/she gets into the maze in the house, the player will need to use the sword and use different motions to fight over the aliens in the maze.

Balance #6: Competition vs. Cooperation

Our game is single player game for now and the player will compete with the computer-controlled aliens. We have only have a more specific idea of our first world for now (will have four world in total). For the first world, the player will get the help from the other villagers around him/her. The player will need to cooperate with the villagers (for example, to help the senior lady to carry her stuff or to prevent the villagers from hurting each other) so that the player will be able to get the hidden message from the villagers.

Balance #7: Short vs. Long

The time to achieve the goal for the game will vary for different players because of many of the triggers in our game. For example, the player has to kill enough aliens before they can upgrade their weapons, the player has to talk to the people to get the message and trigger the following steps. I was thinking the way we balance the time of our game for different players can be to add another character in the game who give hints to the player saying like “You should talk to Jim in the shop to get more info.” And we can set up the time for the hints to show up so that a beginner won’t feel frustrated if they cannot find the message.

Balance #8: Rewards

The rewards for our game can be resources (the food needed for the player, coins to upgrade the weapon, etc). Because we have a pretty clear purpose, which is to collect dragon balls and get the dragon out at the end, so the dragon balls can be viewed as rewards at the end of each level. The player who has ever watched the Dragon Balleze should be able to easily relate to the game.

Balance #9: Punishment

The punishment for the player of not fighting over the aliens would be loss of blood. This will make the player die. He/she has to come out and buy the medicine/hurbs to get their blood back.

Balance #10: Freedom vs. Controlled

The controlled elements in our game include the environment, certain message given to the players, the weapon needed to kill one kind of alien, etc. The freedom of the player is that he/she can explore the world and talk or interact with any kind of thing to get message and figure out strategy to kill the alien and get the ball.

Balance #11: Simple vs. Complex

Our current story and mechanics both are pretty simple, especially for those who are familiar with the Dragon Ballze. And for now the storyline is basically “get the message, kill the alien, look for the ball”. It is straightforward. We will try to include some of the complexity later given the time.

Balance #12: Detail vs. Imagination

We set up the story background as in medieval, which makes it easier to tap the imagination. The players is so familiar with the modern settings and technology that they will find it fresh to get into the environment they are not familiar with.