Stacking

The game stacking is honestly a very interesting concept I have never seen before. The game is super interesting! In the beginning I did not understand how to play the game. This was frustrating. But as I tried random controls I was able to figure out the game. 

The game works as the player being a small magenta square with a tiny pink square inside. You do not know this explicitly. Blocks begin to fall from the top of the screen. These boxes are random colors and in random places horizontally. Some fall to the bottom of the screen while others fall a little above it. They are randomly dispersed horizontally though. Your tiny box navigates the game by trying to jump on the boxes and travel upwards. You use the A, D, W keys to go left right and jump. This also wasn’t explicitly stated. I am pretty sure the goal of the game is to make it to the top but I never was able to reach this point. I made it far up but never to the top. Another thing the player must consider is a box hitting them. A player cannot have a box fall on their box. There is a score at the top as well. I am still a little unsure of what that keeps track of. Does it keep a score of how many times you get to the top? I made it pretty far up and it never kept score of that so I am assuming that is what it means.

Other than the confusion I think this game is a super cool concept. Playing a game to climb stacking boxes without them falling on you sounds like a super fun interesting concept. I also loved how colorful and exciting the game was. It has great potential to be a game in the future. 

This game is fun but incredibly  frustrating. This is due to the randomness of the game. Because the blocks of the game fall randomly at any point on the screen it makes it super difficult to do well. In the beginning, some of the blocks don’t even hit the bottom of the screen. Because of this, your box can’t even reach the boxes, even by jumping. This makes it hard to start the game. If the user can’t reach the boxes they have to wait for another box to push it further. This only happens sometimes but because the height is random that is frustrating. The other frustrating part is the horizontal location of boxes. Sometimes you will have traveled high enough but a box is coming to land on your box horizontally. I understand this is a challenge of the game but sometimes there is nowhere to go on the screen. This makes you fall to the bottom. And once you are at the bottom it is nearly impossible to climb back up because of the amount of boxes on top of you. 

To improve this game there are a few things I would do. Although randomness is a major part of the game I would probably reduce the amount of it. Because everything is random, the random outcomes often make the game very difficult to play. Having restrictions on height of blocks or horizontal location relative to previous blocks would be great. Another change I would make would be to add instructions to the game. The lack of instructions makes the game super hard to learn how to play. It should be explicit which keys are the control and which thing the player is controlling on the screen. I would also find it useful to have a restart button. 

Stacking is a game that primarily makes use of a lot of uncertainty and randomness. At first, I wasn't even sure what the objective of the game was or how I was supposed to interact with it as a player. The score counter on the screen gave me the impression that I was supposed to receive points and aim for a high score. I was confused by the white circle on the top of the screen, and never really did figure out what the purpose of it was. Throughout this game, assorted colors of squares fall from the top of the screen. They fall from randomized places, which adds to the overall uncertainty of the game. I did not end up being able to score any points in the game or reach the top, which I believe was the objective. Honestly, this game was frustrating in that regard to me and felt very challenging. It felt like the game was working against my chances of success through its randomization and mechanics. As I figured that I was supposed to use the simple controls of moving left, right, and up to climb up the blocks and reach the top of the screen, I started trying that out. With the upward moving control, I was not sure exactly how to work it properly, but it seemed that I could phase through the blocks (in any amount) to reach the top of one or more blocks that had stacked. The blocks also stack in random ways. Sometimes, a block will simply stack on top of another. Sometimes a falling block will replace or overlap with an existing block. Sometimes a falling block pushes the blocks below it downwards, even sending some off the screen. As the blocks fell, it became apparent to me that I was supposed to avoid the ones that were falling. I did not want to be hit by a falling block, or get squished in between an existing block and the one that stacked on top of it. Because of this, it seemed that my two strategies were to move around on top of the stacks while trying to avoid falling ones or to sit at the bottom, hoping not to be squished into the ground, until I could phase to the top of multiple blocks in a stack. This game had a certain element to it of keeping me hooked and wanting to try to succeed/reach the top. As soon as I got hit by a block, the game instantly restarted-- I was transported to the bottom of the screen in my starting position and blocks began to fall. The visual design of this game is fairly simple, but it's interesting how a seemingly simple game can pose such a challenge for players. The frustration that this game created fueled my attempts to keep trying, as I wanted to score points, reach the top, hit the white circle, or just do anything that allow me to maybe progress in some way or "win" the game. While I ultimately wasn't able to achieve this, I felt challenged and intrigued by the uncertainty and randomness at play in this game.