We began the AGI evening, or as Rosemary dubbed it, “cute baby night” with some of Calgary’s own Grasshopper beer and a smorgasbord of trail mix and chocolate covered goodies courtesy of Peter. Then we jumped right into Scratch to check out the games we modded based on the program’s pre-made examples.

First we played “Mouse Police” by Peter based on FishChomp (where a fish swims around eating smaller fish, with a chompy sound). In Peter’s version, you play his cat who runs around in a bed of long grass trying to catch mice, whose movements are unique to each mouse based on its algorithm. When you catch a mouse, and you have to catch it for a long enough time since it can still wriggle away just like a real mouse, you’re rewarded with a growing pool of blood while the kitty looks up at you proudly. The game also rewards you by keeping a running total of ‘kills’ within a 3 minute time limit. All this to a soundtrack of Jethro Tull’s “…And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps”.

Next up was Jim’s game, “Meconia”, based on Scratch’s Doodle (where a stick man moves past obstacles across a sheet of paper on lines drawn by you). In Jim’s game, the floating face of an adorable baby must make its way to an engorged, cartoon booby by traveling on meconium ((mi-koh-nee-uhm) n. A dark green fecal material that accumulates in the fetal intestines and is discharged at or near the time of birth) placed by you. But be careful – the baby can get stuck in the sticky, tar-like substance. The game has four levels with increasing difficulty. The first allows a clear path to your milky goal, but in the second you must avoid a spinning, knife-weilding, bloody teddy bear. In the third, you must avoid two killer teddy bears. In the third, a ninja star is added – an homage to our first assignment, N? The lullaby rendition of Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’ plays in the background amidst baby coos and giggles.

Then we played Rosemary’s game, Squid, which was also based on FishChomp. But in her version, you play an artfully drawn, purple squid that must swim around and eat equally beautiful, golden fishies with a satisfying “chomp”. But beware! Some of these fishies are not what they seem! Some are actually the lappets of anglers and when they succeed in luring you in to eat them, their ghostly forms appear for one second with a chilling electronic sound bite. You’re rewarded with points per fish eaten, but lose points for eating ‘bad’ food. A dreamy, underwater soundscape accompanies your gastronomic glide.

My game, “Flu Season”, based on the Scratch game Trampoline (where a girl named Jodi jumps on a trampoline), was our final game to be played. In a background composed of microscopic extracellular space you play a virus which must bind to the receptor imbedded in a plasma membrane in order to infect the cell. You must rotate the virus until you get the right fit with the receptor, after which you’re automatically transported across the membrane. Your successful infection is rewarded with the program’s “Space Ripple” sound effect and the prospect of viral replication. A techno music loop accompanies this immune system nightmare.

Patricio couldn’t make it tonight, but promised to delight us next time with his Greenfoot modded game. Way to keep up with the AGI program on your own Patricio!

Our second piece of homework was to revise and post our N levels on NUMA. Jim, Patricio and I had posted our levels for the world of N to judge. Because I mentioned with mine that it was the first level I’ve ever designed, I received some encouraging feedback from the N community and got rated by five people (3/5!).

Our homework for next time was to revise and post our Scratch mods to the community and to spend time getting to know some other game making programs, such as Game Maker, Inform 7 and Adventure Game Studio. Thinking about the original games we want to make, we should create and import some sounds and graphics to be used in our game and get an interaction working in our tool of choice. See Session 4 on the assignment page for links and such.

Looking forward to interacting with all of you next week!