Exercise 4.6: Premise (p107)

1. League of Legends: League of Legends is mainly a 5 v 5 team game where players, as "summoners" of their champion (the term for characters in this game), summon themselves in a champion onto summoner's rift and fight against the opposing team to destroy the enemy team's nexus. This was the premise a few years ago, but it's something that Riot Games is stepping away from for their new, younger audience that they want to focus on. It's especially apparent from all the buyable skins of popular champions that they're rolling out (although I can't deny that I would love to buy them as well) and most importantly from the recent cliche and trope-y champions that they have been creating like the "edgy guy with a long side bang", "the magical cat with a book" or "hot chick whose the daughter of Kassiden [another champion in the game]". 
2. Risk of Rain 2: You and a maximum team of 4 players shoot down from a space in space pods onto a planet. It's your mission to explore it, gather artifacts to make yourself stronger and then find the portal to the next realm. However as you progress, you must be able to keep level with the difficulty of each planet you travel on, else you and your team will be wiped out, unable to reach the final boss and to the domain of the moon.
3. Stardew Valley: You, and maximum of four other farmers, have recently moved into town, occupying a small farmland littered logs, rocks and shrubs. At first you'll start out small, planting tiny seeds and selling them into a bin, but eventually your farm will grow larger and larger as you gain more money to expand the farm not only to vegetables and fruits, but to even domesticated animals and mushrooms. And just in case you get bored with farming and fishing, there's still a lot of other things you can do like brefriend the townspeople (and even woo them) or partake in the spontaneous events in town.
4. Path of Exile: You wash up upon the shores of a deserted island, filled with nothing but dread of what hidden things are kept away here. Just like many others, only the most cruel and wicked prisoners are tossed away onto this island, but what you begin to discover is that you and the other prisoners are not the only inhabitants here. As you grow stronger, building the pathway to the height of your abilities, just what other secrets stowed away by the Empire will you discover?
5. WarHammer: End Times - Vermintide: Goddamn are rats disgusting. And I'm talkin about small rats skittering across the murky sewer water, but these rats? Thank god they don't exist in reality. The rats in Vermintide are humanoids, as large as you are and maybe even bulkier than a body builder. Oh there's all kinds of rats in this game. And it's your job to hunt them down.

Exercise 4.7: Game Characters (p113)

1. Diana, League of Legends: Diana is labeled a heretic amongst the tribe of Solari, the worshippers of the Sun. Unlike them, who believe that the sun's light is the brightest source in their lives, Diana believes that even the moon shines as bright as the sun, if not brighter. One night the moonlight leads her into a cave, remants of old moon worshippers, the Lunari, hidden away on the walls. She finds a sword shaped like a crescent moon and takes it as her own. Because the opposing existence of Leona, the holy warrior of Solari, is the game, the existence of Diana is enhanced as the lone voice that carries the celestial esscene of the moon, fighting her way on the rift with her beliefs.
2. The Stranger, Furi: The Stranger wakes up in an unknown place, chained up, not knowing who he is or where he is. He meets The Voice, a strange man with a bunny head masking his face, who frees him - only because he wants out as well, but why wasn't The Voice chained up like he was? As you make your way up of what seems to be the depths of a prison, you encounter different people, each of them confronting you with the purpose to keep you locked away in here and so you begin to question yourself. Who am I really? What's so bad about methat my existence would dreadfully interfer with the outside world? 
3. Clementine, Walking Dead: Clementine is a long girl who finds herself lost in a zombie apocalypse. At first she travels with a group of strangers, but when they get wiped out, she's left all alone again. It's only until she meets AJ, a sort of fatherly figure that she has someone to hang onto while growing smarter on her on as well with every close encounter. In Walking Dead, at times you switch between the persepctives of AJ and Clementine, this play with perspective allows the player to get intimate with the heartwarming relationship  that develops between Clementine and AJ and [Spoilers] only hits harder when Clementine has to shoot AJ before he turns as his last wish.

Exercise 4.8: Story (p113) 

1. Furi: I love the dialogue between The Stranger and the people "the bosses" he encounters because what it causes is the creeping thought of who you really are in the back of mind. You begin to realize that all this desparetely climbing out is kind of all for naught if your mere existence is going to destroy the planet. And because The Stranger is not just "himself", but also has the conscience of you as the player. You have a responsibility to decide, based on your morals, if that is truly your decision.
2. Moon Hunters: When I first played Moon Hunters with some friends and finished a run and then started a new run, I was so surprised to see one of my friend's past character's names mentioned under a statue in a temple. In Moon Hunters, you create your own story with every run, and elements of past runs will be mentioned as if you just hadn't killed the messenger of the sun god with every run, which is kind of weird, but also brings the idea of reincarnation into play or time travel. Are the characters you make in Moon Hunters stuck in an infinite loop against the Sun? Only to have the moon disappear in the end anyways? How does this enhance the narrative of Moon hunters then?
3. Papers, Please: Given the power to dictate who is allowed to enter the country, you hold a lot of responsibility as you also have a family to take care of and rent to pay. When you encounter the unfortunate stories of those who are left behind their families and not allowed in or of those who are trying to escape as refuges, you must remain cold-hearted because your life is on the line too. This is a job, so do your as a citizen of this country and you won't be shot down like border runners.

Chapter 11: Fun and Accessibility, Is Your Game Fun? (p341—346)

"Games are voluntary activities; they require player participation—a high level of participation (pg 341)."

Elements of the Formal System of "Fun":

Challenge: This relates to the state of "flow" between frustration and boredom

1. Reaching and Exceeding Goals: What kind of goals do you have in your game? Are there sub goals too? Does the difficulty of the goal correlate to the player's skill or should it be even more of a challenge? When playtesting, ask the players what their goals are so far in the game. This helps explain what kind of engagement they are currently having.
2. Competition against opponents: Many players are inherently competitive and want to compare their skills with others. During your playtests, make sure players have space to communicate with each other and observe these conversations.
3. Stretching Personal Challenges: Even within your own designed system where you shape the way and goals for a player, the player will always find their own way to make their own sub goals. These goals being more satisfying to accomplish when completed because they are based on your own limits and to be able to surpass them means that the player has grown more skillful. Does your game require this sort of freedom? Judge this from what your player audience is and from what kind of player experience you want for your game.
4. Mastering Difficult Skills: If you don't give the player the chance to showcase and master these difficult skills, then obviously what is the point of them? In this case, during their process of mastering these skills you must reward the player in some way while giving them opportunities to do so.
5. Making Interesting Choices: “Games are a series of interesting choices (page 342).” The player's choices should have some sort of consequence, otherwise they are boring. Within your game, you create dilemmas where players should weigh their choices and think of the factors that conclude that decision. During your playtests, ask your players what they think their consequences will be when making that choice.

Forms of Play: What kind of play does your have and does it fit the game? Should there be any other forms of play added and other areas that cause these forms of play?

1. Living out Fantasies: Areas of play that don't exists in reality and provoke the player's sense of curiosity and imagination
2. Social Interaction: Games can be a medium that brings people together, creating precious memories and forming bonds that last forever. Social interaction in games allow for loyal players that will play your game, even ports of it, for a long time.
3. Exploration and Discovery: The act of discovery in role-playing games, especially when you are creating your own story, is something magical and personal. To get inspiration for this feeling or emotions that you want your players to feel, go on a journey or trip on your own.
4. Collection: Although lots of money goes into collecting things like trading-cards, there's always different fun for everyone. I, for one, play a mobile gacha game called Puzzle & Dragons where you collect monsters and make teams to defeat dungeons. Lots of money can be involved in gaining more powerful monsters, we call this whaling.
5. Stimulation: With the advent newer technology like Virtual Reality headsets, there is the possibility of creating more immersive environments and innovative game experiences.
6. Self-Expression and Performance: Giving players a way to show off and express themselves can make your game more engaging while adding a new dimension to your game.
7. Construction/Destruction: Building things is fun, it's like legos - easy to put together and then take apart. As much as constructing things on your on is fun, so is destroying things - these two distinct types of plays can provide a different aspect for your game.

Story: Not only for entertainment, but also a great mechanism in provoking an emotional connection from your game to your player, so create some drama in your game's narrative.

Hollow Knight (Switch) by Team Cherry 

I've heard from many people saying how good of game Hollow Knight was and immediately I compared it to games like Ori and the Blind Forest and Celeste; all platformer games with fluid movements and precision required from the player. But unlike Celeste with pixel graphics and Ori and the Blind Forest utilizing 3D models in a side persepctive view, Hollow Knight is all hand drawn animations and backgrounds. In addition to that, there are over 140 enemies in the game, so that must've been a lot of animations to draw. There also seems to be this theory of the knight that you are playing, not being a "hollow knight", is actually one of the higher beings in the game - meaning a king, not a knight. This is shown by the tablets in the game, that tell you as a higher being, the lore of that world. It is in the beginning of the game, where they show a poem, directing to the one who has given bugs a soul, that the game then shows a clip of you, the "knight". And a lot of players may have skipped over these hints, but they are there.