The NYU Game Center Showcase 2024
˚✦★⋆. ࿐࿔ .˚ *✦ ˚.˚ .✶ -͟͟͞☆
⟢Thesis
⟢Capstone
⟢Studio II
⟢Major Studio
⟢Mosaic
Glass Mountain
⊹ ࣪.⋆~⊹₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆✩࿐
For Game Design 1
Toss rings, move pegs, and compete with your friends to climb the Glass Mountain!
Interview:
✧In one or two sentences, what is your game about?
The Glass Mountain is a toy, a platform, and a display piece. As it sits at the center of multiple social functions, it needs to be multiple things. Play games with it, make games with it, then put it on display and admire it.
✧What was the inspiration of the game? What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
Born out of the surrealist short story “The Glass Mountain” by Donald Barthelme, the game simulates the climbing narrative of the game using the carnival-game mechanics of ring toss. The game was initially designed around a core set of simple mechanics, which meant that when we were prototyping “the rules” for the game, we ended up with a lot of really fun rulesets, so we decided to reorient around the idea of the Glass Mountain as a platform for games.
✧Were there difficult moments when developing the game? What led to those difficult moments? What did you learn from it?
Finding balance between the base set of games to suggest to players and how to inspire them to create their own modifications and rulesets proved somewhat difficult. We can have our own idea of how people should interact with the Glass Mountain, but that sometimes falls apart in practice. A lot of playtests took place to maximize both fun and creativity.
✧Were there darlings that you had to kill? What were they? Why was the decision made to remove them from the project, and what were the reasons that you like the darling so much?
One of the initial goals for the project was to make a “party in a box” game, a set that you can carry around with you to parties and open up as a main centerpiece. Unfortunately, in order to achieve a playable prototype and hit all our design goals we had to make a solid, non collapsible object, but who knows, maybe one is coming soon!
✧Talk about your teammates! What was everyone’s role?
Sam was our lead designer, Han worked on the materials and building the prototype, Amanda wrote and finessed the rules, Guy was just here to have a good time.
play this game on itch.io