Play Make Write Think

Since I used my iphone to download Gris, I incorporated some screenshots while I was playing.

The game begins with a fantastic animation of the main character falling from the sky. Different from other 2D side scrolling games, the introduction to the setting is extremely beautiful. It made me feel like I came into a fantasy world of drawings.

As the main character fell from the sky, she seems to be very heartbroken. Her eyes are looking towards the ground and even the surrounding displays the absence of color.

When I continues, I learnt that the character can go forwards or backwards by controlling the left-side of the screen and jump by controlling the right-side of the screen. As the plot progresses, I probed more options. For instance, I can collect the shining diamonds and it will follow me for the entire journey.

Then, the story develops into the next stage, Red. In this challenge, I would face red sandstorms and the character will fall backwards during the periodic sandstorms. To fight the sandstorms, I was introduced to a new movement, forming a heavy square and I later discovered that the heavy square can break things rather than simply used in battling the sandstorm. Even though I was stuck by the end of Red for three hours, I still got a sense of probing and telescoping in Gris. For me, Gris is definitely not a traditional 2D side scrolling games, it is more like a masterpiece of animation. It teaches me how to discover new functions. Moreover, the game does has any enemies, yet the biggest enemies are the environment and yourself. For me, this is more challenging than the traditional 2D side scrolling games like Super Mario. The five stages of grief is also displayed in this game. The shocking introduction and the resisting sandstorms displayed the first two stage of grief, Shock and denial. I think the most important point that the creator is trying to covey is the reality Gris feels to the players, and it teaches players step-by-steps to overcome grief.

I started this assignment by trying to find interesting things around my room. I looked at some participation trophies, but that wouldn’t work. I then looked at a Rubix cube, some pencils, and school supplies. Nothing really stood out to me until I saw my block puzzle. One of those puzzles where you have to make a block out of seemingly randomly shaped wooden figures. I did not know what I would make yet, but I decided to make some sort of figure with the blocks. After placing the blocks in different positions, all I thought of were using a few blocks as horns, or maybe legs for an animal. Admittedly, I am bad at drawing animals, so I tried to stray off that path. After a few more tries, I figured out how to make the number 1. Using the other blocks, I could only make the number 16, so I decided to work with that. I immediately thought of sweet 16 when I thought of things to make, so I made a birthday cake using the numbers as candles.

I was scrounging around my desk and through drawers when I saw my staple remover. The sharp teeth used to take out staples looked exactly like the teeth of an alligator snapping turtle. Then I started thinking of animals that could use some sharp teeth. The first thing I thought was birds because they don’t have teeth. How scary would it be if a soaring animal can take your head off with its sharp, menacing teeth? I then started brainstorming of birds that would look the most terrifying with sharp teeth. Obviously, the first bird that shot up to my brain was the bald eagle. Funny enough, I started drawing the shape of the bald eagle but it turned more into a seagull, so I just stuck with it, thus why the background is a blue ocean.

• MacBook Pro 15-inch (2019): I am one of the unfortunate 10% of people that has been cursed with what I would like to call the “left-handed syndrome”, because when it comes to writing in general, being left-handed sucks. If you’re writing in a spiral notebook, your handwriting will vary for every page. Your handwriting will be good on one page then turn to utter poop on the next. That’s because the left hand gets inhibited when you write on the right page from the cursed spiral. Also, whenever I write with an ink pen and even lead pencil, my left hand always touches the writing, smearing lines of words to a smeared glob. That’s why I try to do most of my schoolwork, especially notes, on my trusty MacBook. Also, I recommended the 15-inch over the 13-inch; you can just see more. The touch bar is optional though.
• Wallet: I try to carry my wallet in my backpack rather than my pocket to prevent losing it. There have been multiple times when I lost or was close to losing my wallet. Once, I left my wallet on an airplane and didn’t notice until I was at the baggage claim; I was able to fortunately find it later. Another time, I left my wallet on a bench, the same bench I always left it on, in my church and went somewhere. I had never got anything stolen in that church before; I was surprised to come back to the bench and not see the wallet. These events converted me to just enclose my wallet in my backpack front pouch so I never will lose it again.
• AirPods Pro: These bluetooth earbuds are a game changer. I used to carry the Bose SoundSport Wireless and the Beats Studio3 Wireless, the Bose earbuds for casual listening and the Beats over-ear headphones for studying as it had a noise-cancelling feature. The AirPods Pro has all the components that the aforementioned Bose and Beats have but better. The Airpods Pro are compact, easy to wear, extremely comfortable, and have extremely high quality audio. The Airpods Pro also has a really good noise-cancelling component, surprisingly similar to the Beats headphones. AirPods Pros are a must. I don’t think I can use anything else after wearing the Airpods Pros.
• Pencil case: I received this pencil case from a friend on my birthday after my friend saw that I lost my previous pencil case and I used a ziploc bag as my case for 2 straight weeks. It contains multiple mechanical pencils, pens, highlights, and white-out. I don’t know much about writing utensils, but I would recommend the Uni Jetstream ballpoint pens (0.5 mm). The sharp pen tip allows for responsive and accurate writing. Make sure it’s 0.5 mm! Anything wider is too thick…
• School stuff: Nothing special here. Just a couple notebooks and folders and for school things. Nothing more to talk about here other than the fact that I have been using the same folders/binders/notebooks since 9th grade because I am environmentally friendly, but mostly because I get too lazy to buy new school equipment.

*I carry my iPhone XS and, of course, mask in my pocket.

The things in my bag showcase what I would be carrying on the daily if I was attending on-campus. I usually don’t take a bag with me other than for academic-related purposes. The academic-purposed bag by no means represent me as person as I am not an academic intellectual. This assignment was easy because the backpack and the content inside I imagined to use in college is the exact same as the ones I used in high school. I consider this type of writing to be enjoyable because I am taking the everyday mundane objects I just blindly use but defining each thing with a purpose. 

For some background knowledge, the two blue smiles are magnets that were sold together, much like a salt and pepper shaker. When combined they make a sphere shape and this got me thinking about halves combining to make a whole. This led to my creation of the two smiles representing yin and yang. They are the two halves of the whole balance of good and bad, but we all know that we cant have good without some bad and vice versa. They smile upon us as we live our lives and serve as a reminder that we need to balance our lives to maintain a happy for ourselves and those around us.