Unit One: Tricky Towers and Mental Rotation

    If you have ever played the game Tricky Towers, then you have experienced pure frustration at its finest. Tricky Towers is a game that combines physics and tetris in this fun(?) puzzle game. If you know anything about video games you know that some video games have "trophies". In the game you are given a list of things to do, and for each thing you complete in the game you get a trophy that corresponds with what was on the list. If you end up getting all the trophies you are awarded the platinum trophy. In the playstation 4 version of the game you are able to see how many other players who play that game have the trophy you are looking at. So why does a game that seems relatively simple have only 714 (1.27%) of the 56,153 total players have platinum?(Not every player tries to get a platinum, but typically a higher percentage of people have platinum for a given game). Well the answer may just be because our ability to mentally rotate an object isn't fast enough.

    The game is set like a tetris game, you are given a base while groups of 4 units "blocks" fall from the sky and you direct the block where you want it to go while you have the ability to rotate the block at anytime before it hits the base. In single player mode you can complete trials that will ask you to complete one of three objectives: stack the blocks as fast as you can within a time limit, stack the blocks without going over a line, or stack the blocks without any falling off. But, the player has to take into account the physics and make sure the tower doesn't tumble over because one side is too heavy, the blocks are hanging off the side, or the structure is unstable. But why is it so hard?

    Well the answer might be that we are unable to rotate the blocks in our minds fast enough. When we have a picture of something in our mind, say for example a cube, we have a mental picture in our mind of what that looks like. So for example you probably just pictured an object that has 6 sides, each of sides is in the shape of a square, and has 8 corners. You can see the specifics of the image in your mind and your mental image clearly resembles the real physical object. This is an example of analog code, a way we store information in our mind. What does this have to do with Tricky Towers?Take a look at the following experiment below.

    Shepard & Metzler (1971) conducted an experiment and asked participants if two pictures of abstract objects were the same object or different. Shepard and Metzler wanted to look at how long it took for the participants to determine if the objects were the same or different. Shepard and Metzler found that the greater the degree of rotation, the longer it took for the participants to determine if the objects were the same. But why? The participants had to mentally rotate the object in their minds to see if it was a match, the greater the object was rotated, the greater amount of time it took for them to rotate the block in their minds.

    So now that you understand analog code and Shepard and Metzler's experiment, what does this all have to do with a video game? In the game you have to mentally rotate the image to see where it can go on your tower before you put it there, although you do have the option to rotate the object, it is beneficial if you to think ahead about the next block you are about to get to help you work faster. Not only do you have to rotate the block, but you have to figure out where the block will go. This image rotation is the key to the game, the faster you can rotate the blocks in your mind, the faster you can play the game. But again, since physics is involved in the game, you have to mentally look at the object and determine where the weight of the object is located (Is it in the middle, towards the left/right) and if that will destroy your tower or not. So basically two steps are involved in the video game! If one side of the tower is too heavy, then the pieces will fall over. So although this game on the outside may look like an easy game, almost childish in appearance, is actually one of the hardest platinum trophies to get.

References:

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/5092-tricky-towers

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/mental-rotation.html

Author: Chelsea Monheim