Gameplay Journal Entry #2: Mitchell Dreifuerst

For this week, I brought myself back to a poker game I played during my high school days created by Telltale Games; Poker Night 2. It essentially acts as a computer-based poker simulation between an unseen participant (the player) and four characters. While the player is able to play randomly drawn cards in a game of Texas Hold’em, while also accumulating tokens from games for drinks and environmental cosmetics, the other four NPC’s (Sam & Max, Brock Samson, Ash Williams, and Claptrap) as well as the dealer (GLaDOS), provide humorous commentary which can be influenced by the games current state as well as the environmental cosmetics. The game also provides three special objectives to accomplish upon one or multiple games which, when completed, give the player a chance to win a special trophy from one of the characters by winning the tournament. For a game like this, Telltale used their own engine for this game, the Telltale Tool.

Before 2018, Telltale Tool was a game engine used for multiple compatibility with other gaming systems and better graphics quality improved throughout the years and was used for nearly every Telltale developed game. However, since it did not possess a physics engine, it also became known for many visual and game breaking bugs, which can also be viewed in Poker Night 2 in the given walkthrough, such as character animations moving rapidly and some character dialogue not matching their facial expressions. However, none of the present bugs seems to make the game unplayable. As quoted by Henry Lowood “At its heart, the game engine is also a particular way of organizing the structure of computer game software; this structure separates execution of core functionality by the game engine from the creative assets that define the play space or “content” of a specific c game title” (Pg. 2 / 204). Regardless of the bugs presented, it still allows itself the capacity to render graphic quality and animation speed to a manageable level without it affecting the core gameplay, thus allowing the play to act withing the game itself. As such, I believe Telltale Tool is a reusable game engine.

Walkthrough footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9XczEHTSxk