Example 1: Sid Meier’s Civilization V
Civilization V (Abbreviated as Civ V) is an excellent example of geography that plays a very important role in how the player interacts with the game. Civ V is a game about building your empire, gathering resources, settling cities, and developing your nation. The game starts off in 3000 BCE, and you begin with only one basic technology; agriculture. From there, you research mining, trapping, archery, and animal husbandry. As the game goes on, your borders expand, you settle new cities, meet other civilizations, and befriend city-states. The game will progress scientifically into the future, where you can eventually build death robots and nuclear missiles to wage war on your opponents.
As you can imagine, geography plays a very important part of this game not only because of the military tactical aspect, but also the resource gathering aspect. If you are in the early 1900’s and you just researched flight, you’re going to need oil to be able to build your planes. Unfortunately, oil only becomes visible on the map once you research a certain tech. So it’s possible to find out you have no oil until it’s already too late. In this scenario, you have several options for how you can acquire the resource you need. You can either ask a neighboring civ to trade you the resource for something they need, you can settle a city somewhere where the resource is, or you can raise an army and do a hostile takeover of any civ with that resource. So geography is very important in the placement of your cities, as well as the arrangements of your troops, farms, mines, universities, navy, plantations, roads, ect. Where you settle and how you expand your empire early in the game can greatly affect your production and resource pool late in the game.
Civilization V (Abbreviated as Civ V) is an excellent example of geography that plays a very important role in how the player interacts with the game. Civ V is a game about building your empire, gathering resources, settling cities, and developing your nation. The game starts off in 3000 BCE, and you begin with only one basic technology; agriculture. From there, you research mining, trapping, archery, and animal husbandry. As the game goes on, your borders expand, you settle new cities, meet other civilizations, and befriend city-states. The game will progress scientifically into the future, where you can eventually build death robots and nuclear missiles to wage war on your opponents.
As you can imagine, geography plays a very important part of this game not only because of the military tactical aspect, but also the resource gathering aspect. If you are in the early 1900’s and you just researched flight, you’re going to need oil to be able to build your planes. Unfortunately, oil only becomes visible on the map once you research a certain tech. So it’s possible to find out you have no oil until it’s already too late. In this scenario, you have several options for how you can acquire the resource you need. You can either ask a neighboring civ to trade you the resource for something they need, you can settle a city somewhere where the resource is, or you can raise an army and do a hostile takeover of any civ with that resource. So geography is very important in the placement of your cities, as well as the arrangements of your troops, farms, mines, universities, navy, plantations, roads, ect. Where you settle and how you expand your empire early in the game can greatly affect your production and resource pool late in the game.
Example 2: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
The week that I submitted this screenshot, we were discussing the concept of space versus place. One of the first games that came to mind to submit was Majora’s Mask. In MM, at the center of the world is Clock Town, a small area where the majority of the population of the land of Termina resides. In Clock town, there is a bomb shop, a general goods store, a bank, a curiosity shop, several minigame shops, an inn, a post office, and a few residential buildings. You spend most of your time in Clock Town running from building to building gathering supplies, completing quests, looking for heart pieces, or just passing through on your way to another area. You pass through Clock Town quite frequently over the course of your adventure, so you grow to remember the people and layout of the town. But what makes Clock Town truly a place rather than a space is the NPCs who inhabit it.
The NPCs in Clock Town aren’t just static models who stand in one spot and give you one or two speech options. No, every NPC in Clock Town has a name or title, a schedule, a backstory, and have a quest attached to them. Now, the unique aspect of Majora’s Mask is that the moon is falling, and you only have three days to stop it. If you run out of time, you are forced to use the Ocarina of Time to go back in time three days and try again. Because of this, you see each NPCs schedule played out many times over the course of each playthrough. You eventually learn that the Stockpot Inn opens at 10am every day, that the Postman delivers the mail at noon every day, and that at exactly 10pm on the second day, the Bomb Salesman’s wife makes her delivery of Big Bomb Bags. In this way, every time you pass through Clock Town, you see the citizens going about their daily business, and you begin to remember their schedules, and if you need to interact with them for a quest, you have to look at your clock, and try to remember where that NPC would be and what they would be doing at that time. You develop a certain fondness for all the people and places around Clock Town, and it becomes a familiar second home. Especially since it’s one of the four places in the entire game where no monsters will attack you. Because of all these aspects, Clock Town becomes the most important place in all of Majora’s Mask, and because of that, even today I could tell you exactly when Kafei checks his mail, or when the Milk Bar opens, or when the Curiosity Shop gets the Nighttime mask in stock. Clock Town will always be a Place for me, filled with the NPCs I watched live their lives as I tried to save their town.
The week that I submitted this screenshot, we were discussing the concept of space versus place. One of the first games that came to mind to submit was Majora’s Mask. In MM, at the center of the world is Clock Town, a small area where the majority of the population of the land of Termina resides. In Clock town, there is a bomb shop, a general goods store, a bank, a curiosity shop, several minigame shops, an inn, a post office, and a few residential buildings. You spend most of your time in Clock Town running from building to building gathering supplies, completing quests, looking for heart pieces, or just passing through on your way to another area. You pass through Clock Town quite frequently over the course of your adventure, so you grow to remember the people and layout of the town. But what makes Clock Town truly a place rather than a space is the NPCs who inhabit it.
The NPCs in Clock Town aren’t just static models who stand in one spot and give you one or two speech options. No, every NPC in Clock Town has a name or title, a schedule, a backstory, and have a quest attached to them. Now, the unique aspect of Majora’s Mask is that the moon is falling, and you only have three days to stop it. If you run out of time, you are forced to use the Ocarina of Time to go back in time three days and try again. Because of this, you see each NPCs schedule played out many times over the course of each playthrough. You eventually learn that the Stockpot Inn opens at 10am every day, that the Postman delivers the mail at noon every day, and that at exactly 10pm on the second day, the Bomb Salesman’s wife makes her delivery of Big Bomb Bags. In this way, every time you pass through Clock Town, you see the citizens going about their daily business, and you begin to remember their schedules, and if you need to interact with them for a quest, you have to look at your clock, and try to remember where that NPC would be and what they would be doing at that time. You develop a certain fondness for all the people and places around Clock Town, and it becomes a familiar second home. Especially since it’s one of the four places in the entire game where no monsters will attack you. Because of all these aspects, Clock Town becomes the most important place in all of Majora’s Mask, and because of that, even today I could tell you exactly when Kafei checks his mail, or when the Milk Bar opens, or when the Curiosity Shop gets the Nighttime mask in stock. Clock Town will always be a Place for me, filled with the NPCs I watched live their lives as I tried to save their town.
Example 3: Fez
For week four we were required to submit a map from a game that we found interesting. I submitted the map from The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, but since I already wrote about a Zelda game, I decided to write about Fez, which has a much more interesting map, in my opinion. I hope that’s okay.
Fez is a sidescrolling puzzle game where the object of the game is to explore the whole map and collect various cubes until you collect all 32 light cubes, all 32 dark cubes, and all 4 artifacts. Sounds simple, right? Not quite. Fez is unique because of one game mechanic, the ability to rotate the map 90 degrees on the y-plane. This makes every level a three dimensional map that you can only see 25% of at any given time. You use this ability to access hidden platforms, find secrets, and do all sorts of creative puzzle solving. Fun fact: the game has been out for a little over two years, and there is still one room that nobody has been able to solve. The game has its own language of symbols, and in this room, there is a singular monolith covered in these symbols. When you input various directions on the keyboard, certain symbols light up. The symbol alphabet has been translated time and time again, but so far nobody has been able to figure out how to unlock the secret of the monolith room.
Since the game is played in a three dimensional space, the map is three dimensional as well. The rooms are arranged in cubes, connected by lines to show which rooms lead to one another. You also have the ability to rotate the map, same as you would the screen when you’re in the game itself. It has a legend as well, so you can see the nearest warp gates, cubes, and puzzles that you have yet to solve. When you find everything there is to find in a room, the tile changes to a gold tint, to tell you that you have no reason to go back there. Overall the map in Fez is extremely interactive and useful in navigating the otherwise confusing maze of worlds with secret after secret waiting to be discovered.
For week four we were required to submit a map from a game that we found interesting. I submitted the map from The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, but since I already wrote about a Zelda game, I decided to write about Fez, which has a much more interesting map, in my opinion. I hope that’s okay.
Fez is a sidescrolling puzzle game where the object of the game is to explore the whole map and collect various cubes until you collect all 32 light cubes, all 32 dark cubes, and all 4 artifacts. Sounds simple, right? Not quite. Fez is unique because of one game mechanic, the ability to rotate the map 90 degrees on the y-plane. This makes every level a three dimensional map that you can only see 25% of at any given time. You use this ability to access hidden platforms, find secrets, and do all sorts of creative puzzle solving. Fun fact: the game has been out for a little over two years, and there is still one room that nobody has been able to solve. The game has its own language of symbols, and in this room, there is a singular monolith covered in these symbols. When you input various directions on the keyboard, certain symbols light up. The symbol alphabet has been translated time and time again, but so far nobody has been able to figure out how to unlock the secret of the monolith room.
Since the game is played in a three dimensional space, the map is three dimensional as well. The rooms are arranged in cubes, connected by lines to show which rooms lead to one another. You also have the ability to rotate the map, same as you would the screen when you’re in the game itself. It has a legend as well, so you can see the nearest warp gates, cubes, and puzzles that you have yet to solve. When you find everything there is to find in a room, the tile changes to a gold tint, to tell you that you have no reason to go back there. Overall the map in Fez is extremely interactive and useful in navigating the otherwise confusing maze of worlds with secret after secret waiting to be discovered.
Example 4: Crypt of the Necrodancer
Our most recent screenshot submission was required to be a game that uses sound or music to enhance the player’s experience. That was timed perfectly, because I had just recently purchased Crypt of the Necrodancer on Steam. This game started out in early development as your average turn based top-down roguelike procedurally generated dungeon crawler, but when the developer was playing through it one day while listening to Michael Jackson’s Beat It, he found himself playing to the beat. This sparked his imagination, and he decided that in order to play the game, you had to move to the beat. This spawned the name Necrodancer, and the game practically developed itself from there. Every push of an arrow key moves your avatar one space, or attacks one time. But in order to keep moving, you have to keep up with the tempo of whatever song is playing, which makes the faster songs even harder.
In Necrodancer, every enemy has their own movement patter. For example, the green slimes just bounce in place, while the blue slimes move up and down. Skeletons raise their arms when they are about to jump, and the Red Dragons’ movement pattern is stop, move, charge fire, breathe fire. You have a window of two beats to hit the dragon, then move out of the way of its fire blast. Because of this, fighting some of these monsters takes lots of practice and knowledge of their movement patterns. This makes the game fun and challenging at the same time. Necrodancer utilizes music perfectly to create a game mechanic never seen before in that genre of gaming.
-Aaron Secrist
Our most recent screenshot submission was required to be a game that uses sound or music to enhance the player’s experience. That was timed perfectly, because I had just recently purchased Crypt of the Necrodancer on Steam. This game started out in early development as your average turn based top-down roguelike procedurally generated dungeon crawler, but when the developer was playing through it one day while listening to Michael Jackson’s Beat It, he found himself playing to the beat. This sparked his imagination, and he decided that in order to play the game, you had to move to the beat. This spawned the name Necrodancer, and the game practically developed itself from there. Every push of an arrow key moves your avatar one space, or attacks one time. But in order to keep moving, you have to keep up with the tempo of whatever song is playing, which makes the faster songs even harder.
In Necrodancer, every enemy has their own movement patter. For example, the green slimes just bounce in place, while the blue slimes move up and down. Skeletons raise their arms when they are about to jump, and the Red Dragons’ movement pattern is stop, move, charge fire, breathe fire. You have a window of two beats to hit the dragon, then move out of the way of its fire blast. Because of this, fighting some of these monsters takes lots of practice and knowledge of their movement patterns. This makes the game fun and challenging at the same time. Necrodancer utilizes music perfectly to create a game mechanic never seen before in that genre of gaming.
-Aaron Secrist