Medea and Creusa

Jakob Medlin, budding Game Designer who is currently in his last semester at UAT, must be thanked for the idea behind Medea and Creusa. While we were both in a Mythology, Folktales, and Fairy Tales class last semester, he pitched the idea for us to use for our creative, no-holds-bar final project. Certainly, making a game for an English class was perhaps overkill when we could have just written a paper, but you can't stand out in this world if you don't occassionally go out of your way to challenge yourself in such ways. Besides, I had to make it up to Medlin after pitching a game idea the beginning of the semester for him to tweak a bit with his much better Designer-based mind, of which I failed to program for. But I'm not making this to talk about my forthcomings...

Right, Medea and Creusa. It is meant to simulate an argument between -- who else? -- Medea and Creusa, from Jason and the Argonaut's fame. Or perhaps 'fame' would be an overstatement on my part, since I hadn't -- or should I say "still haven't" -- read Jason and the Argonauts. Or watched the Ray Harryhausen film of the same name.

Not really having the time required to perform AI for a computer opponent, we went with creating a solely 2-player game. It plays as a very casual-esque game. Both players control a cursor and move it around a playing field -- in this case, a thought bubble -- to collect both positive and negative thoughts. After collecting a thought, the player has the choice of distributing that thought to either player's current emotional state, making Medea or Creusa more angered or peaceful, or not using that thought at all. Also note that the thoughts within the playing field move about constantly.

At the bottom of the screen can be seen the player's current emotional state. For player 1, Medea, the goal of the game is to get either character to become fully enraged. For player 2, Creusa, the goal of the game is to get either character to become fully compassionate. This is where the ability to not have to use a thought that you collect comes into play...

While there are only two different colors for thoughts -- red for anger and blue for compassion -- there are three different sizes for each thought which change the extremity by which the player's emotional state will change when that thought is used on them. However, if the player is to collect three thoughts in a row of the same color and size, that player will have acquired the power to use an ability.

The abilities are as follows:
- Fluster: Increases the speed of your opponent's thoughts, making them harder to capture
- Compose: Decreases the speed of your own thoughts, making them easier to capture
- Confuse: Temporarily prevents your opponent's Mind's Eye (the cursor) from being able to move
- Turn of Phrase: Swaps both player's current emotional states

Together, me and Medlin had a whole lot of fun working on this project. I managed to learn a lot about XNA, and I really hope to work more with it in the future. Despite not being done, it is as good now as it will be with his and our capabilities, as neither of us are artists. However, we do give special thanks to Nick Johnson for his assistance with the images of Medea, Creusa, and Jason.