Midterm Project: SAVE BRAN STARK

Concept

HBO’s Game of Thrones has countless iconic scenes that have been forever ingrained in the memory of 21st century pop culture, but arguably one of the most iconic and significant is the fall that crippled Bran Stark and set off the ripple of scandals that made the series’s plot as complicated as it is. While I obviously do not condone acts of violence against minors, I found the scene quite funny because of how absurd everything was: a 10 year old child who somehow managed to climb up the exterior of a tower accidentally witnesses an incestuous affair and then gets thrown out of a window.

I figured that I would eternalize this scene in a more lighthearted way by creating a simple game in which multiple Brans will fall and the player, with their mouse, has to catch the boy by moving a pile of hay as a cushion for him to fall on. At the same time, players will also have to avoid catching the severed head of Bran’s father Ned Stark. Each game lasts 45 seconds; for every Bran saved, the score increases by one, and for every Ned head caught, the score decreases by one.

Highlights:

I illustrated most of the visual assets for the game in Procreate on iPad, employing a more cartoonish art style that I felt was fitting for the simplicity of the game despite the gritty aesthetic of Game of Thrones.

– Background: I tried to keep the whole image simple and not too crowded with details as to not affect the visibility of the falling Brans and Ned heads.
– Bran Stark

– Hay cushion

• Ned Stark’s severed head

In terms of gameplay, Ned’s falling heads were not part of the initial concept. However, after a few play-throughs it became apparent that having saving bran as the sole objective proved to be quite dull, so I decided to introduce obstacles in the form of Ned’s heads. While the mechanisms for Ned’s heads were almost identical to the falling Brans’, I think it’s an important addition as it adds to the stakes and makes the gameplay a bit more interesting.

As for the code, there wasn’t anything particularly challenging, but I am proud of having incorporated a countdown timer that resets with every new game; I used this video by flanniganable as a reference for the timer and added additional parameters to have it reset automatically.

let startTime; //track when the game starts
let timeLimit = 45; //countdown timer duration
let countdown;
let gameState = "start";

function drawGame() {
  //start 45 second countdown
  let currentTime = int((millis() - startTime) / 1000);
  countdown = timeLimit - currentTime;
  
  //end game after time is up 
  if (countdown < 0) {
    gameState = "end";
  }

  //display score and countdown in real time
  fill(0);
  textFont("times new roman");
  text("Score:" + score, 500, 60);
  text("Time:" + countdown, 500, 80);
}

function restartGame() {
  //reset countdown and Brans and Neds
  score = 0;
  startTime = millis();
  timeLimit = 45;
  countdown = timeLimit;
  gameState = "start";
}

function keyPressed() {
  if (gameState == "start") {
    // Start the game
    startTime = millis();
    gameState = "playing";
  } else if (gameState == "end") {
    restartGame();
  }
  // preventing the key press from being counted again
  return false;
}

Finished Game:

Areas for Improvement:

• The gameplay becomes repetitive and there is very little replay value as of now; expanding on the game with increasingly difficult levels and power-ups as incentives would greatly add to the replay value.
• I was not able to add fullscreen display for the game, as I had already illustrated the background image before we learned about fullscreen in class. Enabling fullscreen would allow players to see the falling Brans more clearly.