Quasar Rush

Prompt 1: Describe the central uncertainty in the game.

This game is designed to avoid a quasar in the middle. The player controls the arrows to reorient the ship. Because the suction of the quasar was so strong, I had a hard time controlling the spaceship, which made me unsure about winning. I need to control according to the real-time position of the ship because the suction is continuous. And the change of the ship's position at one point may require successive clicks of different arrows. I often got frustrated because the clicks weren't fast enough, and I didn't have time to react to the sudden change of direction of the ship. After playing for a while, my strategy was not to be hasty but to control the direction little by little. I started to observe and think that the ship would automatically move to the middle, so I needed to know which direction I should control quickly. The enemy in this game is the quasar. It doesn't move but has the strong pull power to the center. I need to keep clicking the arrows to control the direction instead of holding to control the movement, making the game more challenging. One of the randomnesses of the game comes from the random appearance of planets. After the ship reaches a planet, the player does not know where the next planet will appear. Two planets may be close to each other, or they may appear at diagonal positions on the screen, which is the farthest distance. The farther away the two planets are, the more complex the game will become for the player. At the beginning of the play, because the ship's own movement is too fast, resulting in my inability to know its movement trajectory.

Prompt 2: Describe the challenge of the game as if the designer was working to thwart you.

Appl2000's game "Quasar Rush" is designed to make the player fail. It is up to the player when they will fail. It is clear that the player will fail because there is no mechanism to "beat" the game. The game's description reads "Try to land on as many planets as you can and avoid the quasar in the center!". Quasars are essentially black holes. The more times your spaceship lands on the planet, the more points you get. But there is no end point goal. It's just "get as many as you can". The game is played by mashing the arrow keys to get away from the center quasar and in turn land on a planet. When the player lands on the planet, the planet moves to a different area and the player has to start all over. This makes the game even more difficult becomes sometimes the planet is close to the quasar and having to land there and then move to a completely different area (which is sometimes across the screen) is quite difficult. There are no bonuses or things to help you other than your own arrow keys. The game ends when either you give up or the quasar takes you. This game reminds me of the realities of life. There are black holes which are slowly sucking up the entire universe. There is also death which is the one certainty of life. Try as you may to get as many "points" or as much money or whatever it may be, it doesn't matter in the end. There will reach a point where death comes for you. "Quasar Rush" points towards this reality with its game design and idea. It is designed to thwart the player and force them to lose at some point.