APD Week 4: Play and place – Become stronger

Context

The theme of this week is play and place. Matt shared a lot of cases from previous students in class. I like Qiannyu Ma's idea very much, and very cleverly used "places" to make animation videos. When I was thinking about my work, the first thing I think of is puzzles, which form a complete place through limited information.  Or like Tetris, each object has different results depending on its location. I once saw a model of a magic school made by a 3D puzzle, and the finished product shocked me.( https://youtu.be/XnW3I6Go3gk ) The concept of "puzzle" has been used in many works, among which "place" and "play" are constantly being redefined. I think the form of the puzzle gives "place" a new meaning, it is "location". The importance of "location" is fully reflected here. A specific place is called a "location". So I want to make a more flexible puzzle form, with infinity and uncertainty to express the theme of place. Then I will use the concept of "place" and the form of puzzles to create a new gameplay, and explore the guiding role of designated places in the game process.

Method

I draw the picture first, then I used 2 animation to present a small fragment. It is just a demonstration video, the objects in the video can be brought into the planet or something.  I want it to finally be presented in 3D.

Response

In this video, as the edge shape approaches, by changing the rotation angle of the center object, the edge object completely fills the center object. You can think of it as the form of Tetris, but the only thing that can be changed is the angle of rotation of the intermediate object. When more and more objects move closer to the center, players need to react faster and find a place suitable for them to stay. Of course this is just the superficial meaning in the demo video. And I think it can be presented in 3D. I see the object in the middle as a small planet. In 3D, it needs to absorb more objects of different shapes around it to make its body bigger. So when objects come one after another, we need to quickly find the right position to make the planet gradually stronger.

Reflection

In my initial conception, I was limited by the word “place”. Many scenes flashed through my mind to represent places. But through some other people's works and references, I think the word place has many meanings, so I used the concept of “location” to present my practice. Before this work, I checked many puzzle games, trying to find the meaning of puzzles and Tetris. Because they are a game with a specific place meaning, and as a game that has been popular for a long time, its existence also has a certain value. In the practice, I tried new ideas to innovate the form of the game, and explored the possibilities brought by "place", which made me very satisfied.

Downloads:

Download File: img-1029.mp4