Week One: Red Remover Gameplay
The game I chose was a simple desktop flash game: Red Remover. The premise is simple; using just the left click of the mouse, the player tries to remove red shapes from the screen, and keeps the green ones. The game has very simple graphics — just shapes onscreen (some with faces, some without) with an abstract, 2D background (mountains, a cityscape, etc).
The only button during gameplay is the pause/reset button at the bottom right corner of the screen; clicking this button shows more options (LVL Select, Reset LVL, and Resume at the bottom of the screen, with a Video Walkthrough button on the top right). The order of these buttons did not feel intuitive (I kept getting mixed up with the LVL Select and Reset LVL buttons, because it felt like the Reset LVL one should have been first; more intuitive options might have been Restart, Resume, and Home.) Additionally, the video walkthrough button in the top right corner led to an obsolete page.
During the beginning of gameplay, each level introduces a new rule to the viewer. (Some of the rules include: “RED shapes are MISERABLE. Remove them all by clicking on them”, “DARK RED shapes are STRONG — you can’t click them! Make them fall off the screen instead”, “GREEN shapes are LOVELY. Keep them onscreen J”, “BLUE shapes are NEUTRAL, it doesn’t matter if they stay or go”, etc.) Initially, the the player completes the level by clicking on red shapes, and making them disappear. After several levels, dark red shapes appear; they cannot be clicked, and can only disappear by falling offscreen. When the green shapes are introduced, the player must find a way to keep them onscreen while getting rid of all red shapes. The levels become more complicated, as the player must find ways to move and manipulate the shapes onscreen; some levels are stationary, others are kinetic (shapes facing in certain directions will move with different gravitational force), some require complicated maneuvers with rolling balls, weights, ramps, etc.
Personally, I really enjoyed this game, especially for someone who feels intimidated by physics games. The instructions were incredibly straight-forward, and gradually increased in difficulty, but while some levels were difficult, they never felt overwhelming or impossible. However, seeing as I am not an avid player of these types of games, I imagine they may have felt too easy for others despite feeling approachable for me. The only frustrating thing was the buttons, which were not located in intuitive places; I often clicked the wrong one because of placement and a hard-to-read font. However, I was able to complete all forty levels of the game in one hour or hour-and-a-half long stretch.
