ARACHNOPHILIA Game: Experience, Challenge, Core Mechanics, Level Design, And Game Dynamics

Assuming a model player who is familiar with browser games, but has not played this game before. Select three kinds of fun (from the taxonomy given in the theory lesson 2.2 slides) which you might expect the player to experience. For each kind, write a sentence justifying your choice, describing how it is exhibited by the game. 

Save Time On Research and Writing
Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper.
Get My Paper

1) Sensation: while playing the game the player needs to control and manage multiple aspects. Which are, continuous monitoring and improving the life meter and webbing of the spider, eating the trapped insects, adding web strands to the weak portion of the previously created web inside the canvas.

2) Challenge

With the three provided goals that are necessary to be successful in the game makes the game challenging. Moreover, with the different other insects that are not necessary to reach the game achievements with multiple level of uncertainty in the game.  This inclusion of the other insects makes the engagement fun in the activity.

3) Exploration

Save Time On Research and Writing
Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper.
Get My Paper

 Initially the game looks easy but with the progress and with the newer insects it becomes important to find out the finer details of game mechanics.  The newly found details can help the players may to know how the game works and they can score better than the previous stages. While understanding the mechanics the player will find short-cuts, tricks to improve their game play.

  • What kind(s) of challengedoes the game present (physical, intellectual, emotional, ethical or social)?
  • What specific skillsdoes the player learn? How are these skills engaged?

1) The “ARACHNOPHILIA” is arcade game that presents physical and intellectual challenges to the player. As they need to think strategically to reach the goal with constraints    

In this way the player can ensure that the webbing is used in a reasonable way. Therefore, it is important to have a patient approach for moving up levels to ensure that winning all the level in the game.

2) Strategy:  The player has to be strategic in this game to reach the achievements with the available resources. Being a strategic thinker in this game they can determine that they do not needs to catch every insect coming in the overall canvas which leads to use of more webbing and reduction in life meter. Therefore, use of the available life and webbing in a specific region of the canvas is helpful in reaching the goals in a strategic and optimal way.

Patience:  for this game it is important to maintain both life meter and the webbing   in order to achieve the different goals in the complete game thus they need to be patient and watch out different parts of the game.

Deep focus: While playing the game the player may learn to deeply focus on any subject. I in this game the player needs to focus on the different parts of the created web. While creating strands the player also needs focus on the parts where insects are trapped and getting weaker with the time

Describe the core mechanics of the game. Give details.

  1. What actionsare available to the player?
  2. What are the rulesof the game-system?
  3. What goalsare set for the player?

1)   The player can select two options from the main menu which are play and artist mode.  If the players want to save the hard weaving worked web which is destroyed by the different passing insects, then they can use the Art Mode. In this mode the player will have unlimited webbing and along with that an undisturbed canvas. In addition to that the player will have  total bee control. With this controls the player can delete when they want to delete a web strand in their canvas in the game.  

 In order to move the spider inside the game canvas the player needs to click on the web to the point they want to move it inside the canvas. In order to make the spider spin a strand inside the web the player have to drag the mouse pointer between the two existing strands/ branch in the previously created web.

When an insect is trapped in the web Click on the insects in order to consume that and increase the life of the spider.  In this way the player will be able to earn points. Along with that eating the captured insects will also enhance spider’s web supply and improve life meter.

 The game gets over when the spider’s life meter reaches the zero level limit leading to the death of the spider.

2) The player in the canvas needs to maintain and restore the webbing in order to add strands to the created web.

 The two bars at the right side displays the amount of webbing remain for the spider in the game.

 The webbing and life of spider have to be continuously maintained by eating the insects and reach the achievements  

 The trapped insects must be consumed by the spider as early as possible. Reason behind this is trapped insects makes the web strands weaker which leads to breakage of the linked strands in the complete web.    

3) There are mainly three goals for this game which Fly Trap: in this goal the player has to eat 25 flies. This is completed in Easy level.

Burning Spider: In order to achieve this goal, the player needs to eat 10 fire flies.  This achievement is completed in Medium level of the game.

 Godlike Invertebrate:  For this goal the, player have to eat a bat when they have a trapped one in the web. This achievement is completed in hard level.

How does the game vary these mechanics over time to create variety?

How does the difficulty curve vary over time? What does the game do to control this difficulty?

1)  with the progress in the game the number of the flies, bees, stag bees, fire flies, moth’s increases that comes to the canvas as well as to the created web. The trapped   insects makes the strands weaker with time. Sometimes this weaker parts of the web do not long enough and breaks for which the player needs to re-create part of the web which may be tiring for players.

2) With the change in the type of the insects and their strength the player needs to re-create and overlap the older strands in order to make the web strong to trap the insects.

In this way it will help the player to ensure that the webbing used in a reasonable way. Therefore, it is important to have a patient approach for moving up levels to ensure that winning all the level in the game. In addition to that the player also needs to concentrate on the noises in the game play as they can be considered as signals for the insects coming through such as Queen bees, fireflies and Bats.

In the gameplay videos you can see a particular strategy for web-building to win the game being used.

What is this strategy?

Why is this a good strategy? Justify it in terms of the game mechanics.

 

1) For the game the strategy is to build the web in one part of the canvas or the tree hole in order to make the spider live longer period of time as well as reduce the area. As there is certain achievement for the players related to the flies, fireflies and bats thus it is not important to catch all the insects that are coming throughout the game.  

2) In order to   pass all the levels in the game only the webbing is not important, along with that it is also important to strengthen the already created web in the canvas.  For a player it is suggested to only at one side of tree using two corners.  In this way the player will be able to cover one third of the compete tree hole to catch the insects in the web. As it is not important to get every insect which comes to the player. Catching every insect will reduce the strength of the web and consequently require more webbing while reducing the life of the spider.