The game I have chosen to write is called Planet of Insects from Jun Peng's group. The game concept is to pass one level in order to get to the next level. Each level is in a static platform with the main character, some insects and an exit. They have different insects with different mechanisms. For example, the spider's mechanisms are eating the character, weaving a web to cover the hole on the ground and eat honey. However, the mechanism of the snail is different. Snails can't harm the character, instead, they can help the character to destroy the beehive. All the insects loves to eat honey so the character can somehow utilize this feature to complete each level. The overall interface design is clean and cute, which let users to control effortlessly.
The game interface is the highlight of the game. They use 2.5D viewpoint. The visual display of the game status reflected in both level choosing and during game play. At the beginning, there are 3 pages of level choosing before the game to let use choose a level. They use a line to link 3 circles in every page so that player knows that this is the level order of the game.
I love how they design the home interface. The background is out of focus so that the game title and buttons pop out. I also love the floating clouds on level choosing interfaces. They make the game interface dynamic and vivid. It also tells player that if the game is still running or not, since they have static interfaces and they didn't add sounds yet.
In some levels in the game play where players need to destroy the beehive, there is a heath bar on the top of the beehive to display its heathy status and give feedback to the player.
level 1 screenshot [main color: yellow]
level 5 screenshot [main color: green]
level 7 screen shot [main color: brown]
The art content reflected not only on the neatness of interface, but also on the carefulness of choosing the colors. As you can see at above level choosingscreenshots, they choose different colors for the 3 pages of level choosing: yellow, green and brown. In there gameplay, they also use these three main color palettes. They use yellow for level 1, level 2 and level 3, green for the level 4, level 5 and level 6, and brown for level 7, level 8 and level 9. Color changes from light to dark which represent the difficulty changes through level.
I also found that the exit in each level glows through gameplay. Since for the 9 levels, the position of exit are not at the same place, they use such a same visual language to mark for the destination of each level. This is a really helpful part because it tells the players where they should go. so that players can see what obstacles are blocking the way and needed to be killed.
level 1screenshot
level 2 screenshot
One dramatic feature I felt interesting is that players can get different lessons from different levels. When I was playing level 1, I don't need to worry about killing orbeing dead. All I need to do is leading the spider to push the red button for me. But in level 2, the story changes a little bit. There is a corpse flower in this level, andplayers need to lead the spiders there so that they can be eaten by the flower! The interesting part is that the flower is also a kind of "enemy" because when the character gets close to the flower, the flower can eat the character as well. Therefore, this level teaches players that "sometimes you can utilize your enemy to kill other enemies so that you can reach your goal".
There are totally 9 levels in the game, and players need to finish the previous level in order to unlock the next level. Each level the enemies are either changed a little bit or combined from previous levels, so that the player can adapt through levels with a familar feeling. Therefore the difficuty through levels increases gradually.
The innovation part would be the mechanics of the game. In this game, characterskill the enemies in undirected ways. The overall game experience is compelling, due to the innovated mechanics, neat interface, and the joyfulness. The last several levels are very hard and character can easily die, but I felt relaxation instead of tension because of its cute environment, cute character design and cute animation. Besides the game, watching the insects walking is fun enough for me because the animation is really funny.
For the technical part, I don't think the game is that hard to made. The character has same mechanisms through 9 levels, so that they don't need to change the code for that, and same thing happen to the insects. For the animation part, I can see improvement comparing to previous prototypes, when they have less key frames so that the animation was not smooth enough.
The improvement I want to see is that they can somehow adjust the resolution so that it can be open on different computers that have different resolution. The developer in their team told me that the game is now in 1600x900, but my computer'sresolution is 1280x800, which is smaller than it, so the buttons shifts a little bit so I have to move my mouse somewhere around its bottom right corner to click on it.
I would also suggest that to add background music and sound effect into the game. The game's visual interface and mechanisms are all very good, but it still lacksan experience without sound. Background music can encourage and simulate players to play, and sound effect can bring feedbacks to the player which provides better game experience.
I do think the game has commercial potential due to its gorgeous interface design and level design. The cute andclean style of the game is attractive as well. I think if I know some kids, I would like to buy the game for $5 dollars and give it to the kid.
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