My bachelor project tried to examine how different degrees of punishment for failure evok different emotion in the player, and to conduct a study of that I made The Adventures of Squircle, a mildly challenging 2D platformer. The game assigns you with one of three letters which correspont to a degree of punishment:

• A) Game Over upon death. As in you start the whole game over.
• B) Upon death you respawn at the start of the current floor/level.
• C) Upon death you respawn at the last safe tile your character stood on.

In the original study the player was supposed to be assigned one mode and be stuck with it, but now you can simply press ESC to do a “hard reset” of the game, which will assign you a random letter once more.

The game only allows keyboard controls, no gamepads (we wouldn’t want to make things too convenient, would we?) and word of warning: The last level is nigh impossible on some keyboards. Enjoy.