Clean Up

prompt3:

The core verb of this game is moving in the map. Players need to move in the map to clear as much as possible to get a higher score in the limit time. When the player moves to a dirty place, they will slow down. When the player gets to the mop bucket they will get more time. After playing, clean up one area in the map, there will be other areas that pop up randomly on the screen. Although the blue puddles seem to pop up randomly, players still could improve the efficiency by finding a shortest route to them. However, the shortest route could instantly change after a new blue puddle pops up which can not be foreseen and predicted by the player. Their effort to find a better route might be useless. Besides, the mop bucket will disappear after a few seconds if players do not get them. It forces the player to change their route. The mop bucket has a higher priority than cleaning the blue area. So the player has to keep track of mop buckets after they appear on the screen. The game does not have other multiple layers of interplay except this. The simple interplay makes me as a player feel it emphasizes the daily repetitive work of cleaners.

Playing through “Clean Up,” I think much of the game and how to win comes from the uncertainty as to where the player can anticipate new puddles forming as well as the mop bucket. To win the game, it is not so much that the player requires extensive skill as it is quick reaction and chance. The puddles and mop bucket appear in areas and so quickly that is it impossible to anticipate where and when they will appear. If there is one skill that the player learns with this game it is to learn to avoid the larger dark puddles. The game depends on the speed in which the player collects/diffuses the other various puddles, and walking through these large puddles slows the player down when they are overlapping. Though, walking through these puddles is also unavoidable in some instances as the smaller puddles will appear overlapping, sometimes a large portion or entirely, with the dark puddles. This presents a problem because the number of puddles that appear on screen, three, are only as many that will spawn. Thus, if the player avoids collecting the overlapping ones to save time, the are now down by one how many they can collect. Similarly with the mob buckets that increase the amount of time the player has, sometimes they present themselves at inopportune times and areas for the player to collect them fast enough. The player must simply rely on their quick reactions to win the game.