Prompt 1: Describe the central uncertainty in the game.
Within this game, what makes me unsure of victory is the color of the next block that I am going to place. More so, I am unsure of victory also because of the guessing and placement strategy that I employ on each turn. Instead of struggling with physical skill, I would say that choosing the correct strategy of guessing and placement is the key to mastering the difficulty that this unsureness creates in achieving victory. More specifically, within this game, the source of randomness mainly comes into play after a certain number of distinct colored blocks are placed into the playing field by the player. Then, there exists a randomness in the repeated blocks that are placed after this distinct number of colored blocks is achieved that makes the game more complex than simply guessing. Moreover, there is an extra complexity in how the blocks lie in the playing field after they are placed. Sometimes blocks are knocked out of the playing field and remain fully intact while other blocks are split in half or even stacked. This other source of randomness also leads the player to strategise where to place blocks, such as strategically placing new blocks where many different colored blocks overlap. Furthermore, this adds a source of extra complexity where the player has to strategize how blocks may be split based on the current placement and/or split of the blocks that are in the playing field. Overall, this splitting is hard to perceive because of how random this splitting is. After playing through the game multiple times, I could not figure out why certain blocks split the way they did or why some blocks stacked and some did not. Also, I did not find any pattern as to why certain blocks were split instead of simply knocked out of the playing area. Lastly, this game has very slow movement of the blocks, and since the game only allows the player to place a new block once the block just placed reaches the ground, this movement speed really does not matter in trying to achieve and/or master victory within this game.
Prompt 3: The core verb of the game is the movement of the squares side to side and downward. Once the square reaches the bottom of the frame, it stops and the player loses control. If there is already a square below it, two things can happen. The first is that the falling square will push the existing square to the side and stay at the bottom. The second is that it will disappear because it is the same color as the square below it. This is how the player gains points in the game. Because the blocks stay on the screen forever until they are pushed all the way to the side, the player does not have to remember anything important. An interesting and possibly unintended part of the core verb is that the player can actually use the up arrow to just suspend the square indefinitely and move it side to side without it falling. This allows them to have whatever amount of time they want to be able to move the square precisely. Adding Prompt 4 to this, I think interplay could be added here. Maybe after a certain duration of time, the game forces the square to automatically start falling down. This would add more pressure and difficulty to the game and present a moment of interplay between the game and the player. The pushing of the blocks to the side is essentially the only moment of interplay in the game where it forces the player to possibly lose the chance to match a certain color or have to move the color of their next block to a new location.
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Prompt 1: Describe the central uncertainty in the game.
Within this game, what makes me unsure of victory is the color of the next block that I am going to place. More so, I am unsure of victory also because of the guessing and placement strategy that I employ on each turn. Instead of struggling with physical skill, I would say that choosing the correct strategy of guessing and placement is the key to mastering the difficulty that this unsureness creates in achieving victory. More specifically, within this game, the source of randomness mainly comes into play after a certain number of distinct colored blocks are placed into the playing field by the player. Then, there exists a randomness in the repeated blocks that are placed after this distinct number of colored blocks is achieved that makes the game more complex than simply guessing. Moreover, there is an extra complexity in how the blocks lie in the playing field after they are placed. Sometimes blocks are knocked out of the playing field and remain fully intact while other blocks are split in half or even stacked. This other source of randomness also leads the player to strategise where to place blocks, such as strategically placing new blocks where many different colored blocks overlap. Furthermore, this adds a source of extra complexity where the player has to strategize how blocks may be split based on the current placement and/or split of the blocks that are in the playing field. Overall, this splitting is hard to perceive because of how random this splitting is. After playing through the game multiple times, I could not figure out why certain blocks split the way they did or why some blocks stacked and some did not. Also, I did not find any pattern as to why certain blocks were split instead of simply knocked out of the playing area. Lastly, this game has very slow movement of the blocks, and since the game only allows the player to place a new block once the block just placed reaches the ground, this movement speed really does not matter in trying to achieve and/or master victory within this game.
Prompt 3: The core verb of the game is the movement of the squares side to side and downward. Once the square reaches the bottom of the frame, it stops and the player loses control. If there is already a square below it, two things can happen. The first is that the falling square will push the existing square to the side and stay at the bottom. The second is that it will disappear because it is the same color as the square below it. This is how the player gains points in the game. Because the blocks stay on the screen forever until they are pushed all the way to the side, the player does not have to remember anything important. An interesting and possibly unintended part of the core verb is that the player can actually use the up arrow to just suspend the square indefinitely and move it side to side without it falling. This allows them to have whatever amount of time they want to be able to move the square precisely. Adding Prompt 4 to this, I think interplay could be added here. Maybe after a certain duration of time, the game forces the square to automatically start falling down. This would add more pressure and difficulty to the game and present a moment of interplay between the game and the player. The pushing of the blocks to the side is essentially the only moment of interplay in the game where it forces the player to possibly lose the chance to match a certain color or have to move the color of their next block to a new location.