Playing to Learn

3rd World Farmer is a Flash game that lets players manage a small farm in a developing country, and thus experience the hardships and dilemmas faced by the poor. 3rd world farmer teaches its players the difficulty of trying to raise a family while taking care of a farm, in a third world country. It doesn’t look incredible, but it’s clear what things are and where they go. The game is easy to pick up on from a player’s point of view with the specific color tiles for the items after a couple turns you begin to build a stronger base for money as well as start purchasing tools which yield multiplier bonuses the game ends after you purchase insurance for crops. Which is surprisingly easier to do under the strategy I used, which I found interesting was to focus only on the farm and no send anyone to school. I would like to learn the random name generation that the designer uses and the usage of the can and cant put item there mechanics aside from wanting to know how to make a working videogame. If I could improve the game it would be with a little better artwork and add a way to hired hands to help during later stages of the game when children are off at school and the women are having children.

Go rabbit go is apparently a social issue game, the object of the game is to collect as many carrots as you can before a sentient turtle catches you. You can use portals to move from one point of the map to the other, the one trick is that you can’t make your character stop or turn left which I think is either a cheep way of saving yourself from writing multiple control codes or a clever device to make players think of their left turn as three right turns. The imagery isn’t the best out there, but its good enough to tell the protagonist, the antagonist, the carrots, and the portals . I can see that each of the aspects of the game is made in flash, If I were to improve the game I would want to make a more clear storyline including an explanation to the only right turns or I would add more controls-- after all rabbits can jump. I would like to learn how to make portals and creating an antagonist.