2. In Frog Land, the challenge of the game is to avoid the dinosaurs as you maneuver around the screen, attempting to get the lily pad and deliver it to the bottom of the screen. The game wants the dinosaurs to hit me, because without the dinosaurs the game would be no fun. The horizontally moving dinosaurs fill the screen so that the player is never safe where they are, and they start moving immediately so if the player is not prepared as soon as they start, they will surely die. The dinosaurs do not anticipate the player’s movements themselves, but there is a particularly speedy dinosaur that crosses the lily pad, which was likely a design choice to increase difficulty because the designer knew that all players would have to go to that area of the screen. The enemies do indeed want to kill you; any time spent in contact with a dinosaur rapidly decreases your health. This being said, as I mentioned before they do not actively move towards you. Their movement is fixed, but it is in the spacing and quantity of enemies that makes it so at any given moment the player will always be actively avoiding an enemy. No forces in the game are there to aid you, you must simply avoid the dinosaurs until you complete the task. There is no solid path, the easiest path depends on where the dinosaurs are so it will always be different. I have found that a more patient path allows for an easier passage to the bottom of the screen.
With Frog Land, the player is trust right into the challenge of the game from the moment they hit play. There is no time when start is pressed for the player to anticipate where the frog will be in relation to the fast dinosaurs moving across the screen; Because of this, it can feel as though the game wants you to lose. Even though the game starts in this way, the stakes for winning the game are not as high as they appear. The player, playing as the frog has a certain amount of health that they are allotted from the start that will gradually go down when they run into the various dinosaurs. The game and its enemies, the dinosaurs, to not anticipate the players moves but this does not make it any less difficult. The game is easily won if the player does not care if their health decreases by the time that they get the lily pad to the end. Though, if the player sets out to win the game with full health intact, like I did, this is much more difficult and impossible to accomplish. Anticipating the movement of the dinosaurs is difficult because of the speed at which they are going, where the lily pad is that needs to be collected and the areas where the dinosaurs overlap in their movement. These factors, though they make winning with full health, and in my mind score, difficult this does not mean that they make the game any less interesting to play and attempt to learn the best path forward.
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2. In Frog Land, the challenge of the game is to avoid the dinosaurs as you maneuver around the screen, attempting to get the lily pad and deliver it to the bottom of the screen. The game wants the dinosaurs to hit me, because without the dinosaurs the game would be no fun. The horizontally moving dinosaurs fill the screen so that the player is never safe where they are, and they start moving immediately so if the player is not prepared as soon as they start, they will surely die. The dinosaurs do not anticipate the player’s movements themselves, but there is a particularly speedy dinosaur that crosses the lily pad, which was likely a design choice to increase difficulty because the designer knew that all players would have to go to that area of the screen. The enemies do indeed want to kill you; any time spent in contact with a dinosaur rapidly decreases your health. This being said, as I mentioned before they do not actively move towards you. Their movement is fixed, but it is in the spacing and quantity of enemies that makes it so at any given moment the player will always be actively avoiding an enemy. No forces in the game are there to aid you, you must simply avoid the dinosaurs until you complete the task. There is no solid path, the easiest path depends on where the dinosaurs are so it will always be different. I have found that a more patient path allows for an easier passage to the bottom of the screen.
With Frog Land, the player is trust right into the challenge of the game from the moment they hit play. There is no time when start is pressed for the player to anticipate where the frog will be in relation to the fast dinosaurs moving across the screen; Because of this, it can feel as though the game wants you to lose. Even though the game starts in this way, the stakes for winning the game are not as high as they appear. The player, playing as the frog has a certain amount of health that they are allotted from the start that will gradually go down when they run into the various dinosaurs. The game and its enemies, the dinosaurs, to not anticipate the players moves but this does not make it any less difficult. The game is easily won if the player does not care if their health decreases by the time that they get the lily pad to the end. Though, if the player sets out to win the game with full health intact, like I did, this is much more difficult and impossible to accomplish. Anticipating the movement of the dinosaurs is difficult because of the speed at which they are going, where the lily pad is that needs to be collected and the areas where the dinosaurs overlap in their movement. These factors, though they make winning with full health, and in my mind score, difficult this does not mean that they make the game any less interesting to play and attempt to learn the best path forward.