By: Benjamin Hart

Danger Zone is an dogfighting game that is centered around the player character pilot named Prowler and his best friend and copilot Boxcar. They serve on the USS Midway, fighting the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War in a F-14A Tomcat. Your goal is not only to serve your country and try to beat back the communist forces of Northern Vietnam but to also prove that you will not share in your father's disappointing legacy as a fighter pilot. You may encounter pressing issues among the crew stationed on the Midway, issues that pose a danger to the crews that fly out it intercept incoming communist fighter jets, and you can address these issues and help those aboard the Midway become one cohesive unit. Your main goal however is still to become the ace pilot your dad never was.

To do this you must travel into areas that is filled with threats to your well being and regions of crisis and peril on various metaphorical freeways and roads. Or, as your fellow pilots refer to it as, "you gotta take the highway to the Danger Zone".

Image Source: Drinking Game Zone, Top Gun Drinking Game, http://drinkinggamezone.com/movies/top-gun

More submissions by benjamin.har6874 for MDS GDV110 - 'One Game a Day' Assignment

By: Benjamin Hart

Paradise City is an action adventure game with visual novel elements incorporated into it. You play as a man sent to the largest city on his planet, Paradise City, for work related reason. When he gets there he sees that it lives up to the name: the sky is the bluest he's seen in his life, the grass is the greenest and the girls the prettiest. Upon arriving you find an urchin, living under a street. He says he's a hard case that's real tough to beat. He's not the only one there however, and this is where you meet your new friends: homeless children, the dark side to paradise city. This is only the beginning of the cast of characters you meet, and the rest certainly can't wait to meet you. Because it's rags to riches of so they say, and you're gonna keep pushing for the fortune and fame.

After working at your job to buy food, you're free to explore the city and this begins the action adventure elements. Become the Good Samaritan that paradise city needs, or become the villain that will bring the city to its knees. Your various friends from all walks of life will form opinions of you based on your actions, so choose your actions wisely and your friends carefully. Or else you could end up strapped in in the city's gas chamber for a reason the you can't remember, with a surgeon general saying it's hazardous to breathe. Who knows what will happen in paradise city, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.

Image Source: Square Enix, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 2011, http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/deusex/images/3/39/Hengsha.png/revision/latest?cb=20110906182253&path-prefix=en

By: Benjamin Hart

Crazy Little Thing Called Love is a scrolling arcade style shoot-em'-up game where you play as a man who is in love with three things: his gun called Kek, his mouth, which is only capable of saying one word, kek, and most of all his pug, Kekimus Maximus. When one day, aliens steal his pug from him as he is was walking it in the local park. Unhappy with the alien's pug-napping attempt, our hero goes on a brave adventure through his town's streets chasing the aliens - while shooting wildly shouting the only word his mouth will dare utter, kek. Will he save Kekimus Maximus from the clutches of the evil aliens, or will the foreign invaders escape with the pug?

Hold down the WASD keys to move around in the desired direction and hold down the left mouse button to fire Kek the gun and madly shout kek at the same time. The game ends once the aliens have all been killed, including their boss, and Kekimus Maximus is rescued from their clutches, or they have made it back to their space ship with their prize.

Image Source: My World of Warcraft Guild Master Tarah, 2016, http://i.imgur.com/u8yeg9P.png

By: Benjamin Hart

In RIOT, you work as a riot policeman, who is trying to work his way up the ladder to become a captain in the department. To do this you need to resolve potential riot situations peacefully, which can include gently talking agitators in a protest group or setting an example and taking down the more violent members of the group.

Though different scenarios you find yourself in may affect your decision making when it comes to resolving the erupting conflict before it boils over into a full fledged riot. For instance your boss may not be a fan of your violent methods of settling down protesters, so he may ask you to make more peaceful choices next time you lead the squad, or he may not appreciate your attitude of non-interference and ask you to be more proactive when it comes too putting down a scene that is primed for escalation. All the choices will come back to affect you in some way however, so think carefully.


Image Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2015-02/09...

By: Benjamin Hart

Speed Parade is about creating the world's fastest parade that is still entertaining to the audience and isn't a health hazard. You work to create a functional work of art that people still wanting to watch without getting bored or leaving. How you do this is up to you. Do you create a highly intricate display that can only be enjoyed at high speeds or do you decide that you don't want to accidentally cause a catastrophe and opt for a more traditional style of parade speed, flying in the face of the name of the game.

The game works by simply dragging and dropping elements from a side menu onto a central creation area, where you can then change specifics about the object you selected, such as the color. Once you have finished creating your parade, you can then trial it at different speeds to find out when and where it malfunctions, and then make adjustments accordingly.

Image Source: Dallas Children's Hospital, http://dallaschildrensparade.com/about-us/gallery/

By: Benjamin Hart

You play as the notorious Mr. Brownstone, archaeologist, geologist and all around great university professor by day and heroin distributor by night. Balance finding rare and precious minerals and relics in hidden caverns and secretive coves while also doing your not so legal trade with the local villagers at night. Make sure your team doesn't discover your career-destroying secret though!

The game has two halves that both contribute to the story. The first half is the legal work you do for your university, which revolves around finding and identifying ancient items from the past and dazzling gemstones. The second is entirely focused on your underground heroin production facilities. You need to make sure these two lives never cross, because everything will go downhill overnight if word gets out that one of the most esteemed members of the archaeological and geological communities moonlights as a drug trading kingpin each and every night! How you prevent the streams from crossing is up to you, just make sure they don't find out that the main man for looking at brown stones is actually Mr. Brownstone.

Image Source: Thumbnail of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmTUOuXPlnA

Rocket Queen focuses around playing as the main coordinator of the Earth Planetary Rocket Docks, also know as the EPRD. As the main coordinator it is your job to make sure rockets are able to dock freely and easily with minimal disruptions to your strict schedule.

To do so requires precision planning for the quiet days of everything going smoothly, with no disturbances or interruptions, while also having rapid adaptability to things attempting to ruin your well laid out (and color coded) spreadsheets of rocket timings. These can include annoyances such as surprise arrivals from high ranking officials that saw no need to alert you to their imminent appearance, rocket breakdowns on the docking bays before a mass influx of tourists for the summer seasonal games or Christmas, to only mention the tip of the iceberg that you'll have to face head on if you want to have a chance of cementing your place as the Rocket Queen.

Image Source: Control Towers International, http://www.control-towers.com/CTi%20Critical%20Medical%20Logistics/GLOBAL+TRANSPARENCY/

By: Benjamin Hart

Show Me a Leader is a multiplayer political game, revolving around convincing the constituents of an ever growing area (starting from a small rural town and progressing up to ruler of time, space and the whole galaxy). To do this you have to both slander your opponents to make them less for the job while simultaneously making yourself more suitable in the eyes of the public while also defending yourself from your opponent's attempts to do the same to you.

Working your way up through the ever growing and changing political landscape of multidimensional politics requires you to be a leader that can adapt to changes on many different planes of existence at different points in time. For instance if there were to be a terrorist attack on an alien planet from a political rival in an attempt to defame you at one point in time in one dimension yet another has no such attack occur you need to be able to balance your campaign on both dimensions without confusing them. Your opponents job won't be too hard if you talk about a terrorist attack when no such attack occurred at the time, date or location as you claim or if you make no reference to any atrocities that happened in an attack that happened and talk of hope and peace instead.

The game attempts to create a meta game as you progress further on and new layers of complexity are added onto the game. Allying with a weaker rival to dispose of a stronger one at an early stage of the game gives you room to then remove the same weaker rival later on once you have strengthened your position.

Both of these points make a core pillar of the game balance: balance your ingame stories and speeches while also balancing your commitment to metagame alliances.

Image Source: Notions Capital, https://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/hes-number-one-trump-leads-gop-field-in-new-poll/

By: Benjamin Hart

Doctor Alibi is a easy to play game that centres around matching people to the best fitting excuse out of their current situation while also doing your best to avoid making them too extravagant.

You play as an imaginary school's "Doctor Alibi", a master forger who can fake any signature well enough to get a teacher to give you the go ahead to leave class. Of course this isn't exactly smiled upon by the school, so you need to be sure that you don't draw any undue attention to yourself, lest you be caught and suspended -or worse- for your little lunch time side job.

The game is a simple iOS game where you get points for matching the correct alibi to the correct person while also making sure that the teachers don't begin to suspect that a large number of students have suddenly come down with the flu in the middle of summer, or that half of your grade needs to urgently visit the doctors this afternoon.

Image Source: phomb on Imgur, Best Excuse Ever, http://imgur.com/gallery/eUdaJd3

By: Benjamin Hart

Make It Right is a story driven puzzle game where you play as a man whose life fell apart around him over the course of a week: he was fired from his job, his mother died from cancer and his girlfriend left him when small issues escalated into a huge fight.

Instead of letting it get to him and crush his desire to live and do anything else with his life he becomes a responsible adult for the first time in his life and decides to try and make everything right as best he can. He'll mess up along the way, he knows that, but he doesn't care. He'll make it right or die trying.

Solve increasingly more difficult puzzles to progress through the different stages of the game while also attempting to find a new job and try to reconcile with your girlfriend through a dialogue minigame along the same vein of LA Noire.

Image Source: Shutterstock, Lonely despair man sitting in dark room, http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-275147711/stock-photo-lonely-despair-man-sitting-in-dark-room.html

By: Benjamin Hart

You play as Milly Bays, a once renowned door to door salesman in life who has recently passed on. Only to find upon reaching Heaven that each person's Heaven is personalised, and your Heaven is only slightly different to this.

Each person's Heaven has a door that leads out of their Heaven and to the greater Heaven as a whole, where everyone who has died can talk with one another freely. This greater Heaven now also serves as your personal Heaven: you get to knock on each person's door in Heaven and can attempt to sell them things they think they need but really don't such as AngelClean, a popular cleaning detergent in Heaven, and Jerusalem Jammies, which are apart of Jesus' exclusive pajama clothing line. For the rest of time.

Walk around Heaven and sell infomercial products to various denizens of Heaven each day. At the end of each day your score is tallied, with the goal to sell more today than yesterday and increase your score for an online leaderboard.

Image Source: TV Tropes, Billy Mays, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/BillyMays

By: Benjamin Hard

Yesterdays is an action platformer game where you play through the life of a quiet, asocial high school student who finds a watch with the power to send him back in time twenty four hours. Being an otherwise normal high school student you realise that you can resit a test as many times as needed and study for the exact questions that will be asked do homework you forget about normally on time every time from now on or make a complete fool of yourself in front of that one cute girl or hot guy with no worries or fears of the future. You can just generally be as lazy or do as many stupid things as you possibly can with little to no repercussions, or so it seems from the outset.

However you begin to experience strange effects resulting from your use of this power. Events being to change from what you experienced originally and you begin to suffer from a mysterious nautia each time you change the past. You realize that your nonchalant use of powers you didn't understand broke a lot of things that you also don't understand, but you DO understand that you need to fix the things you've broken before you destroy everything. So you set out on a quest to fix the time streams while not undoing the new high school life that you've made for yourself.

Image Source: Solid Stock Art, Stock Photo of Picture of surprised student girl looking at wristwatch, http://www.solidstockart.com/stock-photo-picture-of-surprised-student-girl-looking-at-wristwatch-569512

By: Benjamin Hart

Fourteen years is a visual novel about a nameless protagonist who is reliving his life after being released from prison. He is referred to solely as "#4801" throughout the story, in reference to his prisoner code that is on the back of all his clothing.

The story goes through my events in his time in prison after being found guilty of a double murder, sending him to the harshest maximum security prison for a hundred miles around for fourteen years. These events cover areas such as his days as the prisons "fresh meat" and the subsequent "loss" of his real name, to accidentally getting himself caught up in the longest gang and turf war the two top prison gangs have ever had, to the immeasurable periods of time he spent locked up in solitary confinement, although not all are focused on negative events. Other events look into his relationships with various prisoners, such as Hal and Wu who become his only friends present with him in this troubled time in his life, the allowance of a pen pal named Riley, his attempts to become educated and learn to be a functional member of society and the discovery of a small kitten on the prison grounds that he looks after.

Image Source: Shutterstock, Angry african american prisoner fettered with handcuffs sitting in courtroom, http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-121501654/stock-photo-angry-african-american-prisoner-fettered-with-handcuffs-sitting-in-courtroom.html?src=WStJ8J4EFSrmYfmL_9PoJA-1-22

By: Benjamin Hart

It's your final year of high school: your college is picked out, your plans of the holidays sorted and your last day of school is going to be the greatest of your schooling career: grab your paint cans and stink bombs, because it's time for a civil war.

There are two main resources in the game, morale and stamina. As we cannot have school children running around a school campus "killing" each other, you simply break down your opponent's desire to continue on fighting instead of causing lasting damage to them. Stamina is used as it is in other similar games: to limit sprinting as well as give power attacks a resource to expend.

Arm yourself with one of three main weapon types: paintbrush and cans, smuggled NERF Mavericks and your trusty water bottle. Each have their own unique strengths and drawbacks.

  • Paint is used as a short range area denial, it's useful for taking on targets that have their backs to you or are taken by surprise, but if they have the chance to extend the gap by even a few feet you'll struggle to connect with them, giving them the opportunity to counter attack.
  • NERF Mavericks come with two key modifications that make them unsuitable for standard use: they shoot their darts extra fast and the darts they shoot have the suction tip replaced by one very sharp needle, making it a very effective weapon for eliminating a target at medium range as well as the added bonus of being able to carry two at a time for dual wield or backup purposes. Using such a deadly (in this context) weapon at very short range is considered unfair and a war crime however, leading to immediate disqualification for the round.
  • Your water bottle is useful as a general purpose tool, with simple modifications leading to its success in different areas, such as the removal of the lid for a one shot at close range or the sudden upgrade from a 600ml bottle to a 1.5 L one for added capacity. However it is the jack of all trades and as such is a master of none, with its base state beaten by paint at close range or the NERF guns as range.

The game plays out like capture the flag, steal your opponent's flag from their spawn and return it to yourself to win the game.

Image Source: Chris Eger, Town celebrates end of school year with community wide water-gun fight, 2014, http://14544-presscdn-0-64.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/water.gun_.fight_.jpg

Garden of Eden is a survival horror game where your goal is to escape the seemingly endless garden that you're trapped in before a wide array of hellish horrors and unspeakable terrors find and eternally torment you.

The game follows a day/night cycle where during the day monsters are active but are more sluggish, making them easier to kill or escape from. Whereas at night they become creatures that some would call refined after years of genetic modification, but they also suffer one key vulnerability: they cannot see at night, meaning that if you can mask your scent, keep away from touching them and avoid making a large amount of noise, you can move right by them and they wouldn't be able to tell.

As this is the Garden of Eden, there are plenty of resources you can collect and then turn into useful tools and potions, to create simple things such as a makeshift spear or a healing tonic or something more exotic like a drink to increase your low light vision.

Image Source: Trikslyr, Developer Insights: Garden of Terror, 2014, https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/gallery/e1/E1RZDLE76OKA1405529736904.jpg

By: Benjamin Hart

The year is 2020. The world is a warzone and everyone looks back at happier times, when they didn't have to wear bulletproof clothing for a trip to the supermarket. Agencies like the Central Federal Bureau for National Security and Intelligence, otherwise known as the CFBNSI, have become the watchdogs of the modern world, protecting everyone from every walk of life both online, from the safety of their command center in Area 51, and on the front lines, where the CFBNSI-Ops team takes all the intel gathered by their friends safe behind a computer screen and turn it into field results.

The CFBNSI-Ops team is highly elite. Only one out of every 200000 soldiers from the United States military as a whole even make it into consideration for the team, and fewer still pass the preliminary inspections and trials to become a CFBNSI-Ops member.

The primary job for CFBNSI-Ops members is to take down terrorist targets silently and without raising alarm, as due to paranoia produced in the populace my mainstream media even the slightest hint of terror leads to demands for costly invasions of foreign soil and unnecessary headaches for high ranking officials in the White House, the Department of Defense and elsewhere.

You have fifteen minutes to stalk your target before they reach their point of contact, whether it be a busy shopping center or a back alley. Then use stealth to take down your mark without alerting anyone to your actions before they have a chance to make their move.

Image Source: JAMES A. WARREN, Special Ops Rule in War on Terror, 2016, http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/05/28/special-ops-rule-in-war-on-terror/jcr:content/image.img.2000.jpg/1464440897243.cached.jpg

By: Benjamin Hart

In this visual novel, you play from two different perspectives, one as the main character and one as their best friend.

As the main character, you watch as they initially lead a perfect life. They have a loving family, a rewarding job, a luxurious lifestyle. Anything they could want to do, want to give, they can afford ten times over. Nothing could ever go wrong.

And then they wake up.

They wake up to their depressing life, where bills haunt their every expenditure no matter how small, their university work piles up becoming more and more menacing with every passing minute, their friends leave everything up to them.

Every night they return to your wonderland, where they live a full life, one where there are no regrets and they can have childhood naivete. Upon awaking, they return to your personal hell on earth, with friends who make no effort to talk to them and a job that has no security. You watch them spiral slowly downwards until they reach their lowest point, where they're a shallow husk of what they were at the start of the game, when they think that slipping into a coma might give them the perfect life they live in their dreams.

This is where the best friend's perspective comes into play. To counterbalance the biased view of the main character you take on the role of their concerned friend, who checks up on them and tries to see what's wrong. It is through this outside view of the main character's life that you see that not all is as bad as they believe it is, and that they need to do all they can to protect their friend and make them finally see that what they're going through is not as bad as they believe it is, that running away from their problems in a coma isn't the solution.

The goal of this game would be to try and help people with depression, or friends of depressed people, work through their problems or learn how to help them heal themselves.

Image Source: Ashley Williamson, A Natural Way to Get Out of Depression, 2013, http://www.dreampositive.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/phoenix-by-deviantart.com_.jpg

By: Benjamin hart

You're a rock and roll up and comer on the Sunset Strip in the late 80's. You're a pretty big shot around town and you know it; you sell out clubs when you play and there's almost always a space for you when you're not, no matter what time you get there. So what are you going to do in a club where you pay the tab when you get on stage? Get loaded like a freight train, fly as an aeroplane so that feel like a space brain, that's what! Just don't fall off the stage while you perform, because if you can't bring in the customers your tab may be mysteriously reopened.

You have fifteen minutes before you perform your gig for the night. Drink as much as you can and get as high as you can without blacking out before or during your set, which is played like a rhythm game. The more out of it you are, the higher your score multiplier and the more infamous you'll become on the Sunset Strip, but you'll also find it easier to and harder to come back from a mistake while you play if you're off your rocker.

Image Source: Sia Michel, New York Times, Guitars Groupies and Lots of Hair, 2012, https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/06/10/arts/10MICHAELS_SPAN/10MICHAELS2-superJumbo.jpg

By: Benjamin Hart

In this game, you play as the mayor of a small harbor side town that is looking to expand and grow with the rising industrialization of your country. To do this you must change the town itself; it must expand outwards, grow taller and become brighter, until all other lights pale in comparison to your towns iridescence. Manage the town's growth with either a firm vision of what is to come to ensure a solid future for your constituents or with a happy-go-lucky outlook, letting life guide your hand every step of the way.

Of course not everything will go your way. Wars, depressions, famines and elections all play a pivotal role in the future development of your beacon in the darkness. It is your ability to deal with times of crises and economic downturn that the legacy you leave behind when you step down from office will depend upon, and until the day where you step down your adversaries from political, developmental and business sectors will hang on every word you say and breath you take, waiting for you to make one fatal mistake. For the sake of your town however, you must take all of the faith that your constituents place in you to create a monument to the future, a place they can call home, a city of blinding lights.

Image Source: New York City streets at night wallpaper, http://cdn.pcwallart.com/images/new-york-city-streets-at-night-wallpaper-3.jpg

By: Benjamin Hart

You are the sole moon of a planet similar but not exactly the same to our own. You are also a moon that is blue. As the moon your job is to control the tides of planet you orbit, making sure they are not too large or small so that the life on the planet can thrive and prosper. You watch over the planet and see how it;s species evolve over time and how their revolutions relate to your actions.

Depending on your actions there are many different outcomes, each having their own little butterfly effect. If you end up driving one species of animal to extinction by making it evolve to deal with more or less water or by flooding the plains where it lived, it may become a deadly predator with its new evolution or the lack of the animal in the ecosystem may drive another animal, who was reliant on hunting the now dead species for food, may die off from not being able to find a new source of food.

The game is whatever you want it to be within the confines of the game's mechanics; it can be a peaceful journey through a planet's story or a violent end to an entire civilization's ways of life because you caused a tsunami to decimate their capital city.

Image Source: NASA, Full Moon Photographed From Apollo 11 Spacecraft, 2015, http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/as11-44-6667.jpg

By: Benjamin Hart

The game centers around one main character, a man known only to the player initially as the Wanderer, whose possessions total his car, a 1967 Chevy Impala, his acoustic guitar and the clothes on his back. You meet this deeply troubled soul as he travels down route 66, and you continue to watch his journey from there on out. The game follows the Wanderer's past and present actions, with the player having total control over the outcomes that the Wanderer takes, whether it be in his present situation in a bar on on the road or in a flashback to better days, such as when he was in high school or on a family vacation. There is a default action taken if there is no input, creating a default timeline for the player to change, with their end goal to experience all the possible story outcomes while also trying to make choices that seem right in the given scenario. These outcomes can be as minor as changing a singular thought spoken in passing to changing his entire outlook on a topic, such as love and relationships or on the importance of family.

Image Source: Bethesda Softworks, Fallout: New Vegas Lonesome Road DLC, 2011, http://i.imgur.com/xpeKC2d.jpg

MDS GDV110 - 'One Game a Day' Assignment

Media Design School's GDV110 students come up with a game idea a day.

daily from 2016-07-19 to 2016-09-09