Tag: game reviews

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Week 3 Game Thoughts

Dumb Ways To Die: I actually knew about the song ad well before the game. For me, this was a lighthearted reminder that focused more on the ways to die than the message of ‘be safe around trains’. I think it lost a lot of the seriousness of the message when it was turned into an app game. However, the song is damn catchy, so I guess if the point of the game is to remind you of the song (and the PSA at the end), then this game succeeds in doing that. Fun point to note – I had downloaded, played, and deleted this game before this class! I think I had deleted it because I got frustrated that I wasn’t very good at some of the tasks. Second time around downloading this game and I found that problem still existed.

Fake It To Make It: This was a fun little political game about the dangers of fake news. It’s literally so easy to spread fake news! I think this did a good job of showing just how easy it is to spread misinformation, and how many people will just willingly believe it without doing any further research or reading. Mechanic wise, I could see myself probably getting into if I played for more than five minutes. The different objectives and “not all terrible news all the time” would keep it interesting enough, at least until I got tired of the same fake news stories, to merit this game another play.

Cards Against Calamity: From the title, I would have thought this game would be closer to the hilarious fill-in-the-blank Cards Against Humanity. However, it was a fun resource collecting game to raise awareness bout marine life, town economics, and ecological disasters (caused almost entirely from corporate greed). This game was very difficult to win, even on easy mode. However, it did make it quite clear that each action has its consequences, whether you meant them to happen or not.

Cast Your Vote: My god this one was boring. It definitely seems like something they would make you try to play in a civics class. The pace, the debates, the everything was just so dull and slow. There are many other and better ways to learn how to be an informed voter and how to vote. This ain’t it, chief.

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Week 4 Game Thoughts

Mia, Ronan, and I played Crossing the Bridge by Francisco Ortega. The premise of this game was that you were trying to smuggle food, drugs, and people into the US, while bringing household items (and occasionally guns) back into Mexico while avoiding Customs. This is obviously supposed to be a serious game that shines light on immigrations issues. However, I found myself having fun and focusing more on the mechanics/winning than the message.

We as the smugglers were just trying to better our lives in Mexico. We did this by smuggling people/drugs/food into the US, collecting money, and using that money to pay for things like furniture and a dishwasher. This is a very real scenario that many people find themselves actually in. Some are trying to raise enough money to send their kids to school, but pretty much all people who smuggle things across the US-Mexico border are trying to make their lives better.

I felt this game trivialized those struggles. I got caught at Customs on one of the rounds with drugs, so I lost my passport. But I was able to buy another one at the mall almost immediately after for just $100. In real life, you have to spend the money to fill out the paperwork and then wait, sometimes up to six weeks, before your passport comes in. If I lost a car piece, I could just buy it back. Maybe if we started the game with less money overall, it would have felt like more of a struggle.

From a mechanics standpoint, the game was actually pretty fun. I enjoyed the ‘risk’ at Customs and seeing what I could get away with. Real people do not get the luxury of enjoying playing chicken with US Customs. It is a very real situation with very real consequences. While this game shone a light on immigration issues, I felt that overall, it lost its seriousness and therefore the punch/impact Ortega might have been going for.