Annoyotron is simple in that it frustrates new players to no end by an inability to win. At least it makes them crazy until they realize that the only way to "win" the game is to remove themselves from the game. In other words, the only way to succeed and end the game is to kill oneself. In my game, I hope to plan out numerous ways in which my player can "off" themselves. Some methods may use objects within the game's simple layout and others may be elaborate.

I intend to have the layout and basic coding done for Thursday. Hopefully, I will also begin working on the code that tells a player when they've died and ask them if they wish to restart the game.

By Tuesday I plan to be creating numerous and hilarious ways in which a player can permanently remove themselves from the game...before starting over that is.

My technical skills at using Inform 7 and my knowledge of how to create the proper code for my game make me feel confident that I can accomplish my goals. However, I think I may need a refresher course in how to actually kill a player because I haven't done that in a game that I've created thus far.

Well, now you know what it is that I'm up to. How about taking a look at what my peers are planning to make?

For a class project I was assigned the task of coding a website that would work on the iPad and an iPod Touch. The end result is an online professional website that I can show potential employers. Of course, there is always more data that I could add, bits of code to be added or tweaked, but those are details that I can add later on.

If you take a look at the linked video I've provided below, you'll be able to view a video I made featuring my website in the form of pictures captured on my iPad. The video shows several screen shots showing a progression through my website and how I altered my code to the final end result.

Original website video

You can also view my website directly below.

If you'd like to see my other two class projects, they are at Scritch Scratch towards progress and I'm here to Inform you...

The wisdom and insights within these online pages have supplied me with leadership experience on which to base my decisions in leading Seton Hill University's student newspaper, the Setonian. But the most relevant point made in Coffey's last remaining pages focused on balancing one's personal time against the time that is required to guide a news organization.

It seems to me that finding a line between my personal time and my professional leadership time is always tricky and kind of hard to pin down. Being an undergraduate student, my time schedule is constantly changing pace and direction. However, I somehow manage to make everything fit when it comes down to it, and that's what matters. At the end of the day,if I'm no more crazy than I was when I woke up, my day's been pretty good. Nevertheless, I very much value the advice of the editors and managers presented by Coffey. Don't underestimate just how much a piece of good advice will serve you in the future, even if it's not in a leadership position reference specifically.

For my first attempt at a professional IF game is "Awakening" and I designed it to be user friendly to those who are new or have never before played IF games. Below is a screencast video of a user playing my game who has never played IF before.

Screencast 1

After watching the above screencast, I welcome you to watch the video below, another screencast, that is of a player facing the final version of my game with some IF experience under their belt. I did add a few additional details to my final version, but I'm not going to spoil the surprises.

Screencast 2

The two most important concepts that the above screencasts have taught me that you can never fully predict what a player will type into your game, and that you can never have too much detail in your game. Having synonyms and as much detail as you can will give your game a liveliness to it that will wow players. If I had more time, I would most definitely put more detail into my game.

Since I have come to the end of IF, I know that I have realized a few key concepts: I love to write stories no matter what form they may take; I have a passion for teaching others what I know (as learned by helping my classmates with their IF projects); and that I most certainly have a special place in my heart for IF. To many IF seems like an outmoded method of playing games, but to me it has become a perfect tool for literary abandon.

If you'd like to take a look at my other projects, you can view screencasts of them at Scritch Scratch towards progress and Coding away the hours

You can also play through my finished game by clicking on the link below.

Awakening

If you have not read my past blogs about my project or don't remember what they say, my project features altered photos of Lego Batman characters and arranges them in different patterns on different levels in a pong game. My official title on Scratch's website is "Final-Final Version - Batman Pong."

I had planned at the start of this project to manipulate the game by the use of a timer. However, this greatly complicated my game to the point where bugs kept cropping up and my blood pressure level was mounting. All the same though, this game did test my patience and drive for perfection. Never have I so frustrated with a project that failed my expectations, both of myself and my computer skills. Using Scratch certainly taught me valuable lessons in ingenuity (in my attempts to fix the hellacious program bugs) as well as in recognizing the limits of a computer program and the limits that I, myself possess.

Below are some links to screencasts of users playing my game and their reactions to it. I recorded these videos on my MacBook using Apple's QuickTime Player's "New Screen Recording" function.

The screencast below features a friend of mine playing my homemade Scratch game. She had never played any Scratch game before and had never seen my game's code before either.

The second features another friend of mine who had sampled my game in an earlier version. (A fair warning though, there are a few moments of questionable language in this clip, but not till closer to the end.) Both of these screencasts gave me excellent feedback on how to improve my game as well as giving me honest reactions to how players reacted when playing my game. The two most important concepts that I think I need now would be an opening screen that provides players with a quick explanation of how to play, and to fiddle around with the timer or variable ability to make the screens change levels automatically.

As I look forward to closing Scratch for the last time this semester, I do have to give the program some credit. Yes, I did learn a new use for my ingenuity and a healthy respect for the limits that computers and their programs present to coders. However, I did not give up on my game. I did have to re-work significant parts of it, but I found my drive for perseverance and followed it to the conclusion of my game. That being written, I am not sad to see Scratch go, only the possibilities that I was unable to achieve with it.

Nevertheless, I strongly encourage you to take a look at what my peers have made for their various projects, Scratch included, in our New Media Projects class.

If you'd care to look into the other two projects that I've done, you can find descriptions of them at I'm here to Inform you... and Coding away the hours

Note: All of the screencasts that you can view on the blogs linked to this one were made on a MacBook Pro's QuickTime application and are screencasts of my class projects.

Scritch Scratch towards progress

I'm here to Inform you...

Coding away the hours

After you've perused my projects and blogs provided above, take a look at my peers projects.

"Newspapers will never be able to completely rid themselves of complaints about bias. Some readers so strongly disagree with editorial policy that nothing the most scrupulously fair news department does will be enough. Other complaints come from people who do not want a fair and balanced news report, but one that advocates their point of view. As long as newspapers exercise a public-service obligation to expose corruption, incompetence and injustice so the public can take remedial action, they will find critics among people who like things just the way they are."

Shelby Coffey III's Best Practices: The Art of Leadership in News Organizations section about "Learning" featured a quote by Steve Isenberg that really struck me. "Our journalism schools are not connected with schools of management, schools of health, schools of environment, schools of business or schools of law. Yet they’re within these universities." As soon as I read this, I felt a sense of pride in my choice of attending Seton Hill University's New Media Journalism program. Not only has this program provided me with the basic tactics of journalism, but it is a program that provides students with the knowledge of today's technology and how that technology will play a part in the future.

Coffey later addresses the future of news organizations in our world of ever-advancing technology in his section "Future of News." My favorite quote from this section was said by Tim McGuire. "The news cycle is our artificial creation. We’re the only ones who believe in a 24- hour newspaper cycle. It is our little fairy tale. The news cycle is now immediate. It is a half hour or less. The world is moving and breaking around us. That says a lot about how we have to position our newspaper, why we do have to be sophisticated, thoughtful and full of explanation and full of relevance of how this matters to you."

I think that this quote reflects journalists' "perfection" in the news field, as well as the realistic view that we need to work with what we have while hoping to be more caught up with things tomorrow. Today's news is racing over airwaves, zipping its way through cables, and inundating reporters and the public alike. Our main priority is to keep reporting the news to the public with as little bias as possible without becoming like the technology that will continue to serve our journalistic endeavors.

Take a look at what my peers have to say on these issues.

If you take a look at the Scratch homepage, then you'll quickly see that Scratch is designed for children (or adults new to learning code). Personally, I liked aspects of Scratch in that you can make your own game with funny characters and a crazy storyline. However, I felt limited as well. My Scratch project involved my attempt to create a Lego Batman pong game. If you're interested in my game and want to see some of the games that I used for inspiration, then check out my Wrapping up with Scratch blog entry. If you'd like to try and play my sad attempt of making a complicated game, then get your mouse ready and click. And if you really want to see what gave me a hard time, then check out my Glitches are Funsuckers blog entry. Then again, you can also check out my entry of Scratching away at coding that shows my initial reactions and tribulations of coding in Scratch.

The next unit, and my personal favorite, was the Inform 7 unit. Creating my own story with Inform 7 gave me the freedom that I was missing in Scratch. However, Inform 7 is much more complicated than Scratch. But I feel that it was rewarding. If you'd like to check out a few game reviews of interactive fiction that I wrote and see what inspired my own game elements, then click on my Hello my story...that's all code blog entry. My thoughts and original plans for my interactive fiction game are on my Tap your fingers for a new game blog entry.

Care to check out the interactive fiction game that I made for my second unit project in your web browser? Then simply click on Awakening.

And finally, for the third unit project, I created a website to showcase my own online resume. As of right now, this resume is not as complete as I would like, but I plan to rapidly improve it for future employers to look at for my near search for an internship. If you'd like to read a bit more about my website, then see my blog titled A resume for the internet savvy ages.

But what does all of this mean? It means that I hope that if any of my potential employers find their way to this blog, that they will see my ability to organize information while at the same time being creative. I hope that they will understand my skills at learning new concepts and my eagerness to couple my creativity with new programs. But most of all, I hope from my website and what I have written on my blogs that they will recognize my drive to improve upon all things.

Interested in what my classmates did for their projects? Then click over to the webpage containing links to their portfolios and have a look see.

My website, Maddie's Online Resume, showcases exactly what it is meant to: my resume and related job skills. My website shows employers my educational background, my previous work history, references, skills related to either my education or work, as well as how to best get in contact with me. And it even gives them the chance to meet me first with a short biography.

My website is not nearly complete, because I fully intend to use this online resume for as long as I can. I feel that it has the potential to be a significant tool to use in advertising myself to future employers.

If you'd like to check out the websites that my classmates have made, then check out them out here.

A few of the lines that jumped out at me include: "Acknowledge that there are diverse opinions in minority communities, what some have called the, "diversity of diversity," and embrace this fact in all of your actions on behalf of diversity. Beyond race and gender, keep in mind that economic class diversity also broadens a newsroom's perspective." To me this quote reinforces the fact that you can't please everyone, no matter what you do, who you hire, what you write, etc. However, you can always seek to be the best at what you do. And to do this, creativity is most likely required in some form.

In Shelby Coffey's "Best Practices: The Art of Leadership in News Organizations," there are two sections devoted to the topic of Innovation. Continuously trying to "stay ahead of the curve" and hook reader's interest is not an easy mission. It takes a well spring of creativity, and like I wrote above, not every creative angle that you try will please the masses all at once.

Concerning his organization's creative attempts, Jack Fuller said, "It wasn't like anybody had a grand design. As in most experiences, a lot of [the ideas] didn't work, or they worked briefly and then they flashed out." But that doesn't mean that his organization stopped trying, because then they would be entirely behind in the game. Mark Whitaker said, "At Newsweek, we call it throwing spaghetti against the wall. You throw the spaghetti against the wall and you see whether it sticks. You get reader feedback." Finding out what the majority of the public is interested in shows that something works, although there's no guarantee for how long that interest will last.

Coffey also had another section titled "September 11" that covered leader's quotes regarding the practice of news on September 11, 2001. Out of all of the responses, I am inspired by Steve Isenberg's the most: "Shame on any organization that does not see this as a moment in which its deepest institutional purposes and obligations must be fully honored, and I don't just mean news organizations. This is a moment of honor as well as corporate citizenship, and if you don't rise to it now, then when the hell will you rise to it?"

Most everyone has a deep, personal memory of where they were when the September 11th attacks took place, and through what media they learned of it. My eighth grade gym class had been cancelled as every class was suspended, leaving the entire school absent of sound as our eyes were glued to the small TV screens within each room. I don't think that us kids really understood what was happening, but the news reporters seemed to be on the front lines of whatever strange world we had woken up in that day. I believe that the level of seriousness coupled with the obvious emotion apparent in each journalist and TV news anchor made that day's events real. I wasn't in NY when it happened; the closest thing I'd seen to what was happening were special effects in movies. But the reporter's reactions made them real. I knew that these people weren't acting like they were afraid, they really were, even as they did their best to report on what they were seeing. That day was when many reporters rose to their moment of honor, but leaders realize that such moments can be great or small. And whatever the size of the event, leaders should strive to live up to that honor.

If you'd like to read what my classmates are saying on these subjects, just click.

As of now, my game's title is "Awakening" and the setting is vague in that I never tell the player what the family's farm title is or what the town's name is. However, I hope to clarify this a bit by giving the player a more detailed description of the clothing in the game. I hope that this in addition to the hints of witch trials will give the player enough clues to envision an environment based in approximately 1600 - 1800. The tone of my game is somewhat subdued and definitely shrouded in mystery. The player has no memory throughout their exploration of their family's farm, although the player does gradually recover significant memories by examining various objects.

I think the idea that influenced me the most when coding my game was the idea of having to explore everything and then closely examine whatever I find. I think this is a common theme in many games, but I feel that it plays an important role in interactive games because players create the game world in their mind. Another idea that influenced me is my interest in historical witch trials and fantasy elements. Get all of these ideas together in my head, add my limited coding skills, and this game is what you get.

Here's a preview that will hopefully either draw you in to play my game or inspire you to some creative end:

"This is a dream that is more than a dream.

It may be a you that is more than the you that you're playing now.

But whatever you do, it's of your own choice and a creation of your own ends."

The three lines above are the opening lines of text that they player will see when he/she begins my game. My goal for these lines are to intrigue the player and to make them question the reality of my game. I don't know that I specifically used any creative factors other than listening to my brain's inner ramblings. And I think the only technical issue that I used was inputing paragraph breaks to make the lines break apart.

Anyway, I've pasted below a portion of my game code that I am particularly proud of. This section displays my first ever attempt at creating a flashback, in addition to awarding a point to the player.

Instead of examining the wooden horse for the first time:
say "It looks like a child's toy. The rough pine edges have been carefully worn down. As if mesmerized, your fingers slowly trace the wooden horse's body...[Paragraph break]";
wait for any key;
say "...You're standing in the stable and small clusters of snowflakes are beginning to drift in through the cracks in the wood behind you. A young boy, no more than five years old is sitting in front of you on the stable's floor, playing with the wooden horse. He has the same dark brown hair as you do and you're sure that if you could see his eyes that they'd be matching twins to your own gray pupils. You hear your mother's laughter ring out behind you and you turn...[Paragraph break]";
wait for any key;
say "A slight shiver runs through your body as you once more feel the summer's heat drifting in at your back.[Paragraph break]";
award 1 point;
say "Startled, you take a step backward. Was that my little brother, Sam?"

It took me a bit of time to figure out how to do this, but it was most assuredly worth it. If you're interested in making a similar portion of code, I recommend looking up section 4.5 "Flashbacks" in Inform's Recipe book.

The main body of my game involves the player exploring the family farm setting and recovering the player-character's memory. I employed two main tactics in my attempt to encourage the player's efforts: descriptions that have semi-obvous hints as to what the player should do next, as well as awarding points for the player's diligence in taking and examining key objects.

I've told you some key components of my game already, but I'm going to give away a bit of my ending as well. There are two endings to my game: a bad end and a wise end. The ending was one of the harder coding areas of my game, but I'm not sorry for taking spending a lot of time on it. Without giving too much away, my endings rely upon the beginning and ending of scenes, and all of them are near the final room of the game.

As far as credits go, I hope that you check out the games that I reviewed in my earlier blog because they each inspired me in some way. I wrote this code all by myself, so I've only myself to blame if players find it boring or whatnot. And if the documentation within the Inform 7 program had a name for itself, I would certainly give a big shout out to it for all of its help.

For the most part, my usability tests gave me good feedback. The key areas that they addressed were having more details in my descriptions or in my "room" descriptions, and having more synonyms when talking to three other characters in the game that I had created myself. There were a few glitches that I had failed to catch before, like when I had forgotten to erase a bit of code that allowed a key in the game to unlock a door that I didn't want the player to be able to open. All in all though, I think that I would love to improve upon this game for my term project.

Care to read and see what my classmates have done with their creativity?

The best line from Haiman's section that I loved the most went something like this: It's not so much what you say as how you say it. Any talented shrink or negotiator would probably tell you the same thing. In the first example you can be so focused on getting the information you need, on getting the story in under your deadline that you might not realize how you phrase a question to a mother who's child was just found murdered. But if you ask the mother about her child's interests, gain a "human" side to your reporter occupation, then you're much more likely to gain some of the main details that you were seeking, along with a few that you may not have been thinking of.

However, if you just rampage your way through questions that threaten to break an already fragile psyche, then you're going to become the equivalent to the monster that brought your interviewee to the breaking point to begin with.

Which brings me to Coffey's collection of quotes on managing people. Karen Jurgensen said "(On managing characters) I think the worst mistake you can make is to be cowed by them. You have to just stand your ground." So when you discover that a reporter on your staff bullied or harried a source in order to gain information out of them, especially if said source was the victim of a crime or a child, don't let them slide simply because they got the story. There's more than one way to skin a cat (pardon the bad picture), so there was at least one other method for that reporter to find his or her information other than emotionally bullying their source.

Dick Wald said, "The power-mad person winds up with a staff that isn't worth playing with." So even though you need to hold your ground, don't collect people who only bring you power or consistent success without the talent of knowing how to address different subjects. Different people have different talents. Just make sure that you send the person talented in adapting the way they conduct interviews to a traumatized victim or grieving family, and send the gung-ho reporter to cover a story minus said traumatized people.

Care to read what my classmates are writing on these subjects? Then you need look no further.

There were three sections from Coffey that struck me during this reading: Discipline, Management & Management 2.0, and Values. In the Discipline section, William Hearst III, said, "General MacArthur listed his important daily routines. Number one was to pray to God. And number two was to have the courage to root out the people in the organization who don't measure up." Yes, this may sound a little harsh, but pinpointing one's weaker areas and then attempting to help said weakest link can greatly benefit an organization. No one said it will be an easy thing to do (then again, maybe it will), but it's what you do afterwards that counts.

And that's where Management & Management 2.0 come in. A strong point in this section is to get the right people doing the right job. Everyone has an area that they are more successful in, so play to your people's strengths and you will see your organization grow stronger under your guiding leadership. Tim McGuire said, "There's always tomorrow." So no matter what happens today, you will have the chance to either fix it or prevent it from happening again when tomorrow rolls around.

Thus we come to the Values section. Once you've found your values, stick to your guns and keep those values in your sights. Ben Bradlee said, "I think history is a great teacher of values; there's a wonderful textbook every day in your newspaper in how not to behave."

But what do all of these have to do with Haiman's section titled "Newspapers are unfair when: they won't name names"? Well, most everything has to do with this section, because it covers the public's response to anonymous sources being used in newspapers and other publications. Primarily, the public sees these hidden sources as standing on shaky ground to begin with, and poor journalism on the part of the paper. So the rules on using anonymous sources came into being. Most editors of today's publications will only use an anonymous source if the story is pivotal, if the source is certifiably reliable, and with the recognition that the reporter takes full responsibility for what is printed.

So it is that editors need to be disciplined in what standards they are setting and for the possibility of having to bring about consequences upon a reporter. They need management skills to put the right people where those people are needed, and they need to stick to their values.

If you're interested in what some of my fellow classmates had to write on these life-lessons, check out our blog.

In order to better prepare myself for creating an interactive fiction game, I chose to play a few interactive fictions games made by experienced coders. The first game that I played was Ka by Dan Efran. In this game you are a newly awoken Egyptian mummy beginning your journey in the underworld. The spells in this game really intrigued me, because I would like to code something similar in my game so that it really seems like my PC is casting spells. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my mummy out of the coffin. Sad and lame yes, but it's a puzzle that I haven't found the key to yet.

The next game that I tried was Moon-Shaped by Jason Ermer. Moon-Shaped is the re-telling of "Little Red Riding Hood" with a twist of horror and mystery thrown in. I really enjoyed playing this game, and I would like to incorporate how this game's PC was able to experience flashbacks or "visions" into my own game.

The third game that I played was Dreamhold by Andrew Plotkin. Dreamhold gave me several ideas that would be a good thing to incorporate into my game. Dreamhold's PC can increase their "score" for finding various masks throughout the game. But perhaps the most helpful feature within this game was the "Help" feature that can give players hints when they are stuck in the game. Also, Plotkin included a "Tutorial Voice" that is extremely helpful to gamers new to interactive fiction games.

My game will be set in the small village of Arlo, Maine in the 1600s. As of now, I think that my story will reside in the mixed genre of Horror and Adventure. I haven't come up with a name for my character, but I do have a few details. The Player Character (PC) is a young girl. When you examine the PC, you will receive a short description of the girl as being clothed in a dirty, tattered dress and severely disoriented. Throughout the course of the game the PC will discover who she is, what happened to her family, and what she can do to bring peace to her deceased family members (but she doesn't find out that they are dead until later on in the game play.

I have also already planned some actions or puzzles that my PC will have to accomplish in order to advance the game's storyline. Near the beginning of the game, the PC will have to search for a key in order to unlock the gate as well as a separate key to unlock an old trunk in a cottage that holds more clues as to what happened to her family.

Some other tasks that I plan to have the PC do include finding a wooden flute and at least two different series of notes. These notes may then be played to unlock a mausoleum. The PC might have to collect the notes from several different locations, but I'm not sure yet. In addition to these, the PC will need to find incantations throughout the world in order to trigger hidden events.

Here are a few opening lines of code that I have written thus far:

When play begins, say "This is a game that is more than a game, a dream that is more than a dream, a you that is more than you."

The Field is a room. "You awake in a field of wildflowers. A small breeze drifts through the field, transforming the field into a riot of natural colors. To the south you can see the ground begins to slope toward the top of a dark brown building."

The Stable is a room. The Stable is southwest from the Field.

As I am coding the game, I plan to leave hints within the text concerning what the PC should be doing next so as to progress through the game. I would also like to figure out how to leave hints within the game's responses to the PC's actions. For example, after trying to enter the mausoleum without all of the notes at least three times, the game will prompt the PC with a more obvious hint as to where to get the notes.

I'm still debating about what I can do to make the game more challenging as the PC travels through the game. I may try something along the lines of making the objects more hidden the farther through the game the PC goes, rather than obviously telling the PC where an item is in a room. However, I hope that my gradual escalation of things to find will be enough of a reward to continue a player's participation, because I plan for both an intricate story and several items to be found and/or puzzles to be solved.

When it comes to the end of my game, I hope to have two different endings, though this will depend entirely upon my time and coding ability. My original plan for the game's ending includes the PC having a choice to make. She can either summon the Fey (Faerie folk) and leave with them forever, or she can cast a spell that leaves the entire town suspended in time until the townspeople turn on each other.

However, if I run short on time coding the game, I will only go with one ending. Although, I can't accurately write which one I prefer because I like them both. And both a much more haunting in my mind than they seem on this blog. Another area that I can cut in order to meet my deadline is to condense the map.Then again, if I find myself with extra time, then I would like to expand the map, spells, and general puzzles that the PC can find and use.

If you'd like to see what coding recipes some of my classmates are cooking up, then check them out.

It would be incorrect to say that I learned my slight ability to code using Scratch from any one source because I learned the basics of Pong from several projects. The first and least complicated game that I learned was Pong by SampleProjectsTeam. Another project that provided me a basis for my code was Pong 4.0 by jamie. These two games gave me the most instruction for beginning my code.

As of right now, my attempt at making a Batman Pong game does have an opening screen that features instructions. However, the code that drives this screen is currently not working in sync with the rest of the game.

The first level of my game is pretty simple. The Batman logo is proportionate to the manhole cover that acts as the bar for the Batman logo to bounce off of. There are 6 icons featuring the pictures of either Batman's enemies or allies. When the player knocks the Batman logo into one of these pictures, they become hidden.

After all of the icons are hidden, the player advances to the next level. The second level features a significantly smaller Batman logo that also moves faster than it did on level 1. Level 3 challenges the player to finally win the game by keeping track of the Batman logo that now only shows itself intermittently because of the ghost effect. At the moment I am having trouble linking level 3 to level 2, but I figure I just need to calmly sit down and look at the code. Nevertheless, each successive level increases in difficulty by adding a time limit for the icons to be hit in order to progress to the next level.

However, as an added incentive to play my game, I have included a Win screen for players once they follow through the game. And I have also included a Lose screen that displays the Joker standing over a defeated Batman, thus enticing the player to play again in order to re-capture all of Batman's enemies and return them to Arkham Asylum. As of yet, I still need to figure out the correct coding for making a credits screen so as to give credit for the Gotham City-scapes that are the stage backgrounds for my game levels.

Even though I have not completely finished my pong game, I was able to conduct a usability report. Three individuals tested my game and provided significant feedback. The first problem that my testers encountered was that I needed an opening screen with instructions. Another facet of the game that my testers pointed out was that the game was not challenging enough, other than the game being entirely based on chance. This prompted me to then to increase the speed at which the Batman logo hurtled across the screen and in level 3, when the logo became semi-transparent. Although these were the two main points to improve (and I am currently in the process of doing that), there were some small glitches that appeared in my game while my testers played it. These were annoying to be sure, but easily fixed when I restarted the game or exited the program.

I've included below some screen captions of each level and background change of my game. But you should zip over to my classmates' blogs to read about what cool games they designed and how their usability reports gave them ideas on how to improve their games.

Level 1:

Level 2:

Level 3:

Win screen:

Lose screen: