So as promised in the last post I’m going to go through what I’ve done in the design specialism lectures a little more in detail.
Brief 1 – Newspaper website game
The first brief was to deliver a pitch for a game that would be presented on the side as readers scroll through the newspaper’s website. However, the game had to be related to an existing story within the newspaper. I designed a casual web game around the recent flooding crisis that hit the UK last month. A simple goal of getting flood victims from one side of a raging flooded river to the other before time runs out all the while dodging debris that is floating down river.
The image to the left shows a rudimentary but important part of design – a storyboard, or more appropriate for this type of game, a game board. Simplistic sketches of key moments presented within the game.
So to explain a little what is actually happening in the game board, it shows what would appear at the beginning of the game. A raging river with the player starting off on the right ahead of a bridge that looks ready to give up at a moments notice. The goal of the game is to get to the other side of the river before time runs out using only the ‘Horizontal’ keys (arrows and/or A/D keys).
To make the game challenging, hazards (such as floating logs) will float down river that the player will have to dodge. Coming into contact with a hazard will restart the game for the player to have another shot at saving the victims.
If the time should run out, then the bridge in the background finally gives way to a torrent of flood water that rushes down screen to restart the level.
Its a simple game but I think it fits the need for where the game would be positioned and could raise awareness for the real victims of the floods that hit the UK last month. As part of the pitch I had to talk about why this game would be an asset to the newspaper focusing on the financial and technological side of things to a board that might not be so caught up with the ideas of games and creating games.
Brief 2 – Specific level design
For this brief I had to create 10 levels for an existing puzzle game in which I introduce a new obstacle to spice up the game for its players. The image below shows how the original game actually works so you get an idea of the original game.
So essentially its a puzzle game in which the player has to reach an objective that allows them to proceed to the next level as long as they don’t run into any of the hazards also moving across the board. This brief was quite hard in the fact that the game had to remain basically the same in its self as too not change the fundamentals, but to produce another obstacle that was fun and interesting enough for the already loyal fans.
Many options came to mind for a potential new obstacle. The brief was vague enough to think of an obstacle as being a potential enemy, a new environmental factor or possibly even something that could affect the player in a good/interesting manner.
The idea i came up with is a twist on an actual hazard. How about an enemy that doesn’t focus on catching the player or cutting into their path every now and then what about an enemy that goes after the key that the player needs for the exit of the current level?
Now I know this was a little out there but I thought it would be interesting to mix things up. The way the enemy would essentially work to try and make it as fair as possible because this enemy wouldn’t have to really plan its moves around the other enemies like the player would, is that it would spawn the furthest space from the key possible. This is turn gives the player a fairer chance of reaching the key before the enemy does while planning around the other moving obstacles. The ‘Anti-key’, as I have so in-eloquently named this enemy, would follow the same movement patterns as the triangle enemy, in which it moves one square at a time either vertically or horizontally (choosing the one that has a greater distance to the key, and preferring horizontal in the case of ties). The ‘Anti-key’ cannot occupy the same space as any other obstacle and ceases to move anymore if the player reaches the key first, becoming a stationary obstacle from then on out.
I tried to create levels in which the player could feel like they are being challenged by someone/something else, to give the illusion of facing an opponent as if the game was multiplayer.
Brief 3 – End of the world card game
This brief is the one I am currently working on and has me design a prototype for a card game for multiple people while also documenting and records how the world came to an end in the first place, a kind of time capsule if you will for showing that humanity existed in the past.
Now there are many options I could take for deciding how the world ended. it could be the good old fashion nuclear war, global pandemic, alien invasion, zombie apocalypse or even natural disasters worldwide.
I also need to look into existing card games such as Legends of Runterra, Hearthstone and Pokemon as well as many others, to try and draw on inspiration for how the card game could play out, how to win and to determine the uses of different cards. Furthermore, I will need to create a physical prototype of the game as well as a detailed instruction manual of how the game should be played.
So quite a lot of information there but I’ve managed to catch you up on the work I’ve been doing over the passed few weeks, which I’m not going to lie, has been challenging with all that has happened recently but I am determined to get it all done, and done to a good standard.
