By Amir Benkelai
The final project takes the form of a "Powerpoint Game", a byproduct of a short written essay that acted as a script with which the game itself could be designed.
To play the game, you may either:
open the .pptx file, head over to the "Slide Show" section, click "Play from Start", and enjoy the experience,
or click on the small icon in the bottom right corner of the presentation below, which will open a new window, where you will want to click on the small icon in the bottom far right corner saying "Play Slideshow", and play from your browser.
If you wish to read the essay standalone, you may do so here.
Making a game on PowerPoint introduces a few interesting challenges, both technical and creative sided. One key such challenge is figuring out what the game should contain, and how that will take form. For this project, that was in figuring out how to tell the player what to do and defining the idea of a “Crypto World”, the implied location in the title screen, with a purple sky. The purple sky was a creative challenge as I wanted to differentiate this as a dimension separate to the real world, the challenging part being finding a way to not clash too much with the color. Using textures may help this problem, and will be considered in future iterations, for certain. This was followed with the question of how to present the research and analysis. Having seen and played many games where information is represented in the form of collectible documents, tapes, CDs, and so on, I had to figure a way to do this when PowerPoint does not allow for slides of different sizes. This led to a rough-ended solution of having pieces of paper laid out against a black backdrop. The black backdrop was at first because of the black chest in the beginning, and it continued as other colors felt awkward or clashed slightly. This could have been done better if not for the PowerPoint technical issue, whereby a more customized document featuring a little more formatting and perhaps naming the strange figure would have been included in a vertical format. However, designing the document, is a creative challenge that would need figuring out in future iterations.
Past these challenges, there were some ups and downs with the project. For instance, a lot of the design choices were a result of what worked best, since there was a limitation of what is available in the icons library, and what I was able to create. This is coupled with how a lot of the animations did feel lacking, but because there were not many options, the second-best thing had to be used. A key example of this is the lack of typewriting animation. However, some things that worked out great is the storyline, which felt rather connected, and the clear-cut goal for the player. The end game design was also reminiscent of early 2000s flash games, which I have found is common with PowerPoint made games, and as such is usually an end goal in terms of design when producing such products. This too then worked out well.
All-together, the project has room for improvement to a “2.0 version”, where textures and more customizable documents should be introduced. The major technical issue here was PowerPoint, as I have little experience with the platform, having become more experienced with Keynote. Yet, since PowerPoint is far more popular, learning more about its abilities may prove useful. Henceforth, the technical and creative challenges of PowerPoint limitations and issues of graphic designing were made up for through a connected arc, and nostalgic 2000s form.
500 of the Reflection, approximately 900 for the essay/script, and approximately 200 words for the “To Whoever is Reading This” piece in the game. Together, this is 1600 words approximated.