Research for project 8

Super Meat Boy

Super Meat Boy is an independent video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes and developed by Team Meat. It is the successor to McMillen and Jonathan McEntee's October 2008 Flash game Meat Boy. Super Meat Boy was released on the Xbox 360 through Xbox live arcade in October 2010, on Microsoft Windows in November 2010, on Mac IO X a year later in November 2011, and on Lunix in December 2011 as a part of the Humble Indie Bundle #4 and in May 2012 as a part of the Humble Indie Bundle 5. Players control Meat Boy, a red, cube-shaped character, as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from the game's antagonist Dr. Fetus.

The gameplay is characterized by fine control and split-second timing as the player runs and jumps through over 300 hazardous levels while avoiding obstacles.

Personal response

I’ve played the game so I have a pretty good knowledge on how it plays and works it’s a really fun and challenging game with lots of content, hidden levels, playable characters and music.

The game has great controls that takes a bit to learn but when you do that game feels fast paced and fun. The controls need to be good in a game that needs you to make pin point jumps with important quick timing. This game almost has not interface other than the level and character select. There’s not life bar because you die in one hit the only thing you see on screen that’s not meat boy or the level is the timer in the top left of the screen.

Visual style

The art style for this game has a cartoony style like it was meant to look like a Flash game (because it was at one point) and has a very Newgrounds style (the site where it was first made) the characters are simple looking but still very stylized, Cel shaded, funny and likeable. The backgrounds are all interesting and different for each level. Most of the art in this game was done by the co-creator Edmund McMillen.

Research for project 8

Sound/music

Super Meat Boy’s soundtrack was composed by Danny Baranowsky’s’s who previously composed the soundtracks for the indie video games Canabalt, Cortex Command, and Gravity Hook. He also composed the music for the original Meat Boy. McMillen knew of Baranowsky's other work, and approached him late in Meat Boy 's development, asking him to supply whatever tracks he had on hand. For the soundtrack of Super Meat Boy, Baranowsky incorporated the music he had provided for Meat Boy into an expanded soundtrack. He tried to ensure that the music would accompany the action on the screen without overpowering the sound effects

The music in this game is fantastic I’m listening to the whole sound track as I’m writing this it’s really good. Every piece of music goes with the part of the game it was made for. It adds atmosphere, hype, urgency and fear/mystery to a lot of the levels. But some of the best music is in the menus. There is no dialog in the game because none of the characters speak the only sound your character makes is when they get blown up, smashed or cut into little tiny pieces. And with there being not talking in the game the music has to be good because it’s the only thing you’re going to here thought out the game that’s not a death sound effect you will be hearing that a lot. You can get the whole sound track from the game on their website here http://supermeatboy.com/51/SMB_sound_track_release_/

The music’s great and the game would not be the same without it.

The Room

Research for project 8

The Room is a 2012 puzzle video games developed by British-based Fireproof Games. The game was originally developed for the IOS platform and released in September 2012. The Android version debuted as part of a Humble Bundle in March 2013 and was subsequently released on Google play.

The Room presents the player with a series of strange boxes that have a number of physical mechanisms on them. The player is challenged to figure out how to open each one - typically by undoing a series of locks - to access another puzzle box within it. The game uses a variety of motions enabled by mobile device touchscreens to simulate actions in real life, such as looking around the device, turning keys, and activating switches. Through the game, a story involving the research of an unnamed person into the fifth Classical Element, "Null," which is described in notes found through the various box puzzles.

The Room has received positive praise, and the iOS version received several awards. The game has sold more than 1 million copies and a free expansion was released in August 2013. A sequel, entitled

The Room Two, was released for the IPad on 12 December 2013 with iPhone and Android versions in early 2014. An enhanced version for Microsoft Windows, featuring improved graphics and game controls for personal computers, was released on July 28, 2014

Personal response

I’ve never played this game so the personal response is going to be a little light and lack the experience of playing the game that I had with the other two game in my research. The Room is a three-dimensional puzzle game. The game has a minimal story, in which the player is told by letters of a mysterious box in a room in a house as the player solves the puzzles around the box, more notes from the same author - one who previously had solved the mystery of the box - are found, describing the box's use of an ethereal material called "Null", as well as showing the author slowly descending into madness

Visual style

The visual style of this game kind of works like this everything is very detailed because you solve all the puzzles in this game by sight alone. So a lot of puzzles in the game make you look at everything in the room first and then you try and do the puzzle because if you try to solve the first thing you find then you’re not going to be able to do it. Sight is very important in the game so the visual needed to be good and they are in this game it wouldn’t be playable if it wasn’t.

Sound/music

Because they used visuals so well in this game you would think that they could do the same with the sound of the game. Maybe doing something like a sound related puzzle for example like what silent hill or decay did. But then again everyone hated those puzzles maybe that’s why they didn’t try to make one. But it would be nice to see someone make a sound puzzle that everyone doesn’t hate. Other than that the music in the background of the game is really good it help the atmosphere of the game with its eerie music. Makes all the puzzle solving feel like you’re finding out more and more of the games interesting story.

Research for project 8

Machinarium

Machinarium is a puzzle point and click adventure game developed by Amanita Design. It was released on 16 October 2009 for Microsoft Windows , OS X, Linux, on 8 September 2011 for iPad 2 on the App store, on 21 November 2011 for BlackBerry playbook, on 10 May 2012 forAndroid, on 6 September 2012 on PlayStation 3 PSN in Europe , on 9 October 2012 in north American and on 18 October 2012 in Asia, and was also released for PlayStation vita on 26 March 2013 in North America, on 1 May 2013 in Europe and on 7 May 2013 in Asia. Demos for Windows, Mac and Linux were made available on 30 September 2009. A future release for the Nintendo Wii's Wii Ware service was cancelled as of November 2011 due to Wii Ware’s 40MB limit.

Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux and Android versions of this game were released along with Humble Bundle for Android 4 on 8 November 2012, to customers who paid over the average price. The Windows phone version was released on 22 March 2014.

Research for project 8

Personal response

The game is very simple to control it’s a point and click game so you can play it with a mouse only which makes it easy to play if you’re not a hardcore gamer who knows how to use a controller. It’s not the hardest puzzle game but it’s not that easy of a game ether what you basically do is click around the screen looking for pieces to make an item and get past an obstacle in your way. This game has not HUD the only button is a help button that gives you a hint on what you’re supposed to do.

Visual style

The visual style for this game is really cool looking. The game is set in a rusty robotic environment that has seen some better days. Brown and gray hues dominate this once colorful and world. The art of Machinarium is a unique one, not only in the way it is developed, but also in the way it looks. It is unique in its development, because the backgrounds are made from pencil and paper sketches which were scanned and edited in Photoshop. There the colors, textures and shades were added. Almost all the animations are handmade as well, step by step. The hand drawn backgrounds and characters give an organic and authentic contrast to the robotic world. all these aspects borrowed from comics together with the hand drawn style at times makes Machinarium feel like a moving comic book. But the similarities are subtle and you may not notice them straightway “I had to look it up having only played the demo” but they do show there is something to say for the fact that Machinarium is the mixture of two media, video game and comic book style.

Sound/music

The music in this game is really atmospheric and helps set the mood and feel for the game. Yet again there’s no one in this game that speaks so they communicate with beeps and bops. The music really works with the art style and setting for the game by giving it that cold and unknowing of what’s around the next corner. The Machinarium soundtrack was written, composed, mixed and produced by Floex, alias Tomáš Dvořák for Amanita Design. The soundtrack was released on October 21, 2009 in digital format mp3 and Flac and then later on a Collector's Edition CD. You can buy the soundtrack from http://store.floex.cz/album/machinarium-soundtrack and many other places.

Research for project 8

Notes to remember what I was whiting about

Interface

Visual style

Music of the game

2d games

Interface

Visuals colour pixels

World surreal abstract realistic

Audience

Sound SFX music dialogue