Anyway, been studying for the quiz the last couple of days (quietly freaking out about it actually - I an blog discussions and write assignments that go for 1000s of words, but the old memory is starting to be a bit less reliable (I blame it on my age :-) I've read the whole text and understood it, but will I remember the right things? We'll soon find out.
Anyway, as I've been reviewing the chapters, I've been thinking about their ideas in terms of my game. These are some of the random thoughts that have come up - will put these in some sort of order/to use after this quiz!!
- The oranges get bigger over time as the tree matures i.e. they're worth more points which is a driver for letting them get older, and live more sustainably. Although staying in one place longer is dangerous (more likely to get hit by farmer or bird)
- Defense mechanism- squirt stinky poison to repel framer and birds. To activate it, have to stop flying? Stop eating for length of time of the squirt cloud dispersing? Not dangerous as you can't be attacked, but you have to stop eating and if there's a shortage of food, it could be a trade off?
- Keyboard controller version: space bar is stop. Hold space bar to suck the orange power; click arrow once to start flying in that direction? Hold down to speed up? or hold down just to fly as long as you want? If you're mid flight and stop pressing, do you fall to the ground, to be stomped on by farmer? What if you run outs of energy mid flight? Die or get attacked to die (because you can't escape)? If you run out of energy and just fall to the ground, can you just walk along and crawl up a tree?
- Oranges expire after X seconds/minutes even if you don't eat them?
- Health indicator - signified by bug with more or less open wings? As you run out of health/energy, can the buzz sound when you fly start to run down at a lower tone, like a car running out of gas?
- Change levels - wind gust (wind of change) carries you to the next level or a new orchard. Advance after you an stay alive long enough (sustain the food source). Winds of change premise - player control stops and the bugs hops on a gust of wind - 'i'll try my luck in a different orchard and let this one rest a bit'
- Special oranges can give you bonus squirt power (which you only gt two of at the start?). Maybe they only reveal themselves as bonus oranges hen you have taken 7 of the 10 points - they change colour and if you stay to the end, you get the bonus? Motivation to fully eat the oranges
- The longer you stay alive you get bonus lives (start with two in reserve). As there are no bonus point scenarios, and all bonuses are to do with staying alive longer, this reinforces the sustainable living concept (the longer you live, the better you have to manage the limited resources)
- Occasionally there's an evil bird, same warning sound but it's got a farther reach? If you get behind it you're safe? Or can this one turn around vs the others that fly straight? Or can they randomly turn mid flight? Or sit in trees in wit for a while?
- Birds and farmers only run/fly the length that trees exist - the less trees, the more likely you are to get eaten when you are eating!
- 'The end' - getting there you've proven you can live sustainably, so you're allowed to go and breed more stink bugs and teach your off spring the way they need to treat their environment to live forever in harmony with the humans and the planet
- There's an energy running out sound to warn the player without them having to look at their status and look away from
- Game total can be played in 1 hour (4 levels). That's a lunch hour and the Hilleman max playing time (I don't imagine this is a game that people will save and return back to)
- Different levels, more random trees, different birds, faster farmer etc. As you progress to next level, you float past the sign to the new orchard, with the farmer's name and a description of the new situation
- As you advance, you turn from a green bug to brown bug to iridescent bug?
- Premise of game - see if stink bugs are better than humans! But at the end it's revealed that they're better but only because they learned the sustainability lesson. If the farmers go down, so do you (just like in actual life for humans!)
- Whenever you are in flight or start flying, the farmer stops an randomly sprays. Every X mins he runs out of spray and has to reload - this is the time to plunder the lower tree branches
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