Game Design 1 Project 2

Where is Phil? -- A puzzle game of you taking Phil out of the maze.

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Describe how the images, sounds, and writing change your experience of a puzzle. Where is Phil? is the sequel I have been waiting for. I learned a lot about Phil in the previous installment, Who is Phil?, but his life was so interesting I found myself wanting to know more about the how and why of it.

The story of this game interacted with the sounds and rules to help fulfill my curiosity about Phil and his interactions with his family and the world around him. We start off the game by understanding we need to collect all the grass to continue on based off of the dialogue. Phil must really love his grass, as it also made an appearance in the original game. What drilled this idea into the player’s head though was how when Phil interacted with grass, he detached from his owner, likely enjoying the grass too much. Then the player had to go back and get him. Luckily for him, it was to go and get more grass.

The sound of his excited bunny hops really pulled the player into this experience with Phil, with them traveling and working together to get all the grass. Every move was calculated but also fun. It wasn’t always easy though, with the interaction of the various rules, sometimes it was challenging to get him to go to the correct spot. The player can really tell that while Phil may love grass and his owner, he’s not exactly the easiest to get along with sometimes. In the previous game, we could see that with him tearing up clothes all over the house.

The story developed as the player cares more about Phil, wanting to get him as much grass as possible, and find even greener pastures. Then traps are introduced and when you accidentally move him on to one, it’s so sad to see him get hurt and the level reset. I felt like I needed to get him even more grass to make up for my mistake. Phil is a great bunny and all of these elements of the game worked together to help me realize that, and understand what being part of his family would possibly be like.

Prompt 4

The first level of this game is to tell the basic mechanism that the rabbit can follow the avatar once the avatar moves next to the rabbit, and the player should lead the rabbit to eat all the grass and get to the final destination in order to go to the next level. At first, I switched my position with the rabbit a lot and confuses me because if I switch twice, the rabbit will be one space far from me. It took me a lot of times to figure out how this mechanism works and I ran to this issues several times when I try to make the rabbit eat the grass.  The second level allows me to get more familiar with the mechanism but it is not challenging. However, I ran into several problems when I get to the third level. When I try to lead the rabbit to eat the grass, it fails. I just keep switching positions with the rabbit and the grass, which is quite disappointing. But when I moved two piece of grass together and the rabbit can follow my avatar in the same direction as I approach to the grass, the rabbit successfully eat the grass. Then I finally realized that if I need to eat the grass, the rabbit, avatar, and the grass should be on the same horizontal or vertical direction. If there is not enough position for the rabbit, I should do it by switching positions with the grass so that I can make the extra room for the rabbit to follow my avatar. Once I figured out the strategy, it is less difficult for me. The final level adds the element of doors and i need to push the keys to the door so that I can pass through them. I doubted my first decision that whether I am going on the right track, but it disappeared immediately because I found it is the only door that I can open. One trouble-spot is that I can eat all grass without opening all the doors, so when I eat all the grass and bring the rabbit to the red point, the game did not end. I have to open the last door and then go to the final destination to end the game