Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Color Theory is an abstract strategy game, a genre that emphasizes decision-making and strategic thinking without elements of luck or hidden information. This game utilizes primary and secondary colors to represent players' pieces, with the objective to move each player's pawns to the opposite same-colored spaces on the board. Developed through rigorous playtesting, Color Theory introduces a color ranking track that dictates the synergy between the move and jump actions. Players must strategically maneuver their pawns, while also taking into account the position of their colors on the ranking track. It strikes a balance between clever movement and player interaction, providing an accessible and enjoyable gaming experience. In the end, the first player to successfully move three of their six pawns to their opposite spaces wins the game.

The Greek myths are foundational to Western culture. To this day, school curriculums dedicate portions of their time to teaching the names of the Greek gods and studying Homer’s The Odyssey and Iliad. Outside of an academic setting, countless retellings of the Greek myths have been created for pure enjoyment purposes. Such stories have been marketed to a large range of audiences and have successfully gained world-wide recognition. This project aims to evaluate the mass appeal of the Greek myths as they are retold through Sigmund Freud’s theory of the death and life instincts. These theories manifest in a few different ways, each of which is evident in the genre of Greek myths retold. Utilizing six examples of Greek myth retellings, this project will demonstrate how the theories of the life and death instincts are active in the process of retellings an age-old story as well as how the retellings of the ancient Greek myths, specifically, demonstrate the manifestations of those instincts.