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Colour Theory & Psychology

Colour psychology is the idea that colours can have different impacts and meaning to all people, with most people deriving the same meaning and feeling from most colours such as associating red with anger, green with happiness and success and blue with calmness and sadness. This naturally can have an extremely important impact on media and especially games, most games either consider or outright use colour psychology to assist with making their games and choosing colour. Take superhot for an example where all the enemies are red, this however is not always the case as sometimes characters will use colours that don't match their usual expectation, for example, Mario is a bubbly excitable and eccentric plumber whos colours are primarily.. red and blue? colours that would usually signify anger and sadness, whereas his arch nemesis Bowser is mainly green and yellow. While almost more interestingly in gaming colour psychology almost has its own branch, with almost all colours in usual colour psychology being completely swapped in gaming, such as red meaning health and or blue being to indicate magic in most games. So while colour psychology can have an impact it doesn't always have to and bending this could make your game more interesting. A more relevant example for me would be how the potion in my game is purple which usually is associated with magic and spells, and with my game being about potion making that is thankfully very fitting. With all this i certainty think that colour psychology is very interesting and intend t us it when making my games and especially other potion where I will attempt to match their colour to their expected colour.

Colour theory is just as intersting as it mainly focuses on how colour combinations work on the human brain, with different combinations being more or less appealing to look at bases on certaint random parameters. A big example of this is that colours that are close to eachother on the colour wheel often tend to work well togther, I thankfully have an example of this in my own game which my ingredients conforming to being closer on the colour wheel working well together. Here is an example from my own game where you can see the ingredients are made up of the colours purple red and blue, while not initially seeming to have a common causality besides being lightsaber colours they are infact analogous colours meaning that they are close to each other on the colour wheel.

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Similar Games To Mine

Hogwarts legacy is a 2023 Open world RPG set in the world of Harry Potter, Although I'm sure most (as in everyone) has at least heard of Harry Potter at one point or another, I should explain that harry potter is set in a world of wizards witches and magic. Naturally then it follows that there is potion making in keeping with usual witch folklore tradition. Harry Potters take on potion making is actually what inspired my and by that I mean that I basically copied it as its intriguing and also very very good for a game in my opinion, This is because it includes small and stupid steps to perfect potions such as stirring it clockwise twice then counter clockwise once to complete the potion. Hogwarts Legacy is in my opinion an incredible game and it is one of my favorites of all time, likely a top 5, and i even got 100% completion on the game within 4 days of its release as well as all Xbox achievements as well as proceeding to do that all over again on 2 different characters, I even pre ordered the game and got the deluxe edition because i was so excited for it. This being said I can very easily say that I have experienced everything the game has to offer to its fullest, including the potion making. The games potion making is extremely simplistic but also kind of awesome, as the way you make potions is by collection a ton of different types of ingredients from all around the world and you must brew the potion is different cauldron sizes which you can create inside of your own personal safe house (the room of requirement) where you also have to actually wait for the potion to brew, I must say that the depth of the potion making system is rather disappointing only to the extent of what it could've been based on what we know about the process however this didn't stop me taking heavy inspiration from the game with my own cauldron design being inspired from my memory of the cauldrons in the game as well and the sparks and colour changes from using ingredients being a feature i ended up using in my own game.

Another game that I took inspiration from especially from timeline and themality is potion craft. Potion craft is interesting as it is a very unique indie game with a gameplay style and especially when it comes to how they implemented their potion making system it also has a feature where you can plant grow and gather your own ingredients which I would've loved to implement into my own game if given the time. Much like my own game in potion craft your must place ingredients into the cauldron and then stir with a ladle to craft your potions. One thing I especially love about potion craft is its art style. while not being an art style that I would personally use I still think it looks amazing and I would love to implement it as an art style for a UI as I think its paper medieval book style would just go great especially if implemented as some form or ingredients or recipe menu.

Here is a video that shows off all of the features and more as well as showing the art style that I am referring to.

Brewess is an upcoming indie game from the studio Fairer Games. I have talked about this game in a previous post but I think that it is especially relevant to my own game as i have spoken to the lead developer personally who told me that the game is going to be similar to mine and I know I will include selecting new ingredients to brew different types of alcohol and and also includes a stirring system, from what I have seen of the art style it also has a similar to that of Potion Craft of which I have already written my thoughts about that art style. And I personally will be following its development closely as I am very interested "You are an alewife in Norwich in the 1500s, brewing her way to financial independence and societal power at a time where working women are shrouded in suspicion and scrutiny. 

It is a narrative adventure game with a core loop of crafting, narrative and management - it's a blend of our team's great love of games where you can't get enough of the characters and the challenge of building up a business from humble beginnings." This is a quote taken directly from brewess's website which i have referenced below.

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Dream Job Role

My true ambition would be to move onto working in an indie studio, that biggest reason for this is that I simply would feel that the stuff I do would have a greater impact and I would have a greater level of input which is what I want. I want to feel as though whatever job or role I take on in the future I feel that what I'm doing is having an impact or is something that I can be proud of. During the summer I plan to search far and wide for ANY type of industry experience I can get, weather that is through a part time job an unpaid internship whatever and I hope to use this as a springboard as I believe that getting any experience will look good on a job application or portfolio. Another reason id like to work in indie is the potential ability to do a few different things such as designing as well as deving at points.

I also at some point intent to learn how to code in C# so that I have experience in multiple different engines as the likelihood that wherever I end up working will end up needing experience in multiple engines is very high.

A great example of this is one of my favorite indie studios, Monomi Park, best known for their Slime Rancher series, with slime rancher 1 being one of my favorite games. Monomi park is an interesting studio mainly for their approach to games, they prioritize art and player customization primarily which to me is very important in a game as its probably my favorite aspect of most games that I play or at least a very important aspect to me. The stylized art style of slime rancher is one of my favorites and id love to implement it into one of my game effectively in the future. They also maintain a very interesting take on the addition of accessibility into their games "Currently, right now, we do have a few things in place–we do have key binding. And so you know, that's the ability to remap some of the keys and buttons when you're controlling stuff in the game. We also have a few different things that are just to aid like movement and action. We have the ability to toggle on and off the sprint action, or using the vac in the game. So there are some things revolving around movement that we have already put in place. As far future accessibility". its clear from this quote that while accessibility is far from being one of their priorities they do put in effort to try and make the game more accessible and consider is an important aspect of their games.

Another interesting practitioner especially to me is Fairer games and more specifically Robin Milton the founder of Fairer games who i recently had the pleasure of talking to at a recent games event, Games Anglia, through speaking to her I learnt about a game that her and her team are working on called Brewess, This game is still in its earlier stages of development so theres not much to know yet but I had discussed my own game with Robin where I was informed that our games had a lot of similarities and very similar gameplay styles. Robin is very interesting to me personally as she has the job that I would one day like to have and she was a great person to talk to as she is very knowledgeable and has an admirable take on creating games which is that she's wants her game to be as unique diverse and accessible to everyone who might want to play them. I will certainty be following Brewess and Fairer games as I am very interested in the game and also their game development style. If you would like to learn more about robin and fairer games here is a link to a lot more information and I would recommend giving them a look as they truly are an interesting studio

One of my favorite games of all time is Spelunky, I absolutely love the game Spelunky and was interested it from the moment I saw it when I was a small child and I remember when it came out for free with Xbox gold on my 360 many years and I remember freaking out with excitement realizing I could actually play the game as buying it outright would've never been an option. It is just now after all these years of playing and loving the game that i have found out that it was actually solo deved by Derek Yu. I had heard much about the development of spelunky and had heard the name Derek Yu many times but had somehow never discovered this, Derek Yu also founded Mossmouth, a small indie studio in 2009 shortly after the release and success of Spelunky Derek Yu is currently writing a book about the process of creating Spelunky which i will be very interested to read when that is released as I'm sure the insight and experience is invaluable. I also find his approach to creating games intruiging "I don’t think my approach to game development has changed too much. When I’m doing programming, I try to get creative with simple solutions so that I’m not getting stuck on the technical side. That’s what led me to Spelunky’s level generation and enemy AI, for example. So the features I appreciate the most in GameMaker are the ones that improve the basic experience or make it easier to get a game release-ready." Its clear that Derek's main focus when creating game is a level of simplicity on the creation side as well and a huge emphasis on the style, And I think this take of not overwhelming your self, taking each step slow and trying to make each stage of development 1 step at a time is likely the best way to go especially if your doing it solo. As he said "Complete the games by any means" meaning that no matter how long it takes or how many bumps you find in the road you should just keep focused keep calm and take it 1 step at a time no matter how long it takes which i respect.

After reading all of this and researching into these practioners especially Derek Yu has made me realize one simple thing which is that games take time and trying to bite off more than you can chew simply wont work, so take it at a pace that will work for you, And I will remember this and take this forward with me into my future careers.

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Creating Some Assets

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Current Point Of Progress

So far I have managed to successfully include both the potion stirring and the ingredient adding system as well as a menu that allows you to select the ingredient that you would like to use.

Here is a video displaying the room and the current potion making system that I am up to.

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Room Layout

I managed to get the room layout that I desired from my initial drawing as well as the visual style that I was looking for

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Games Anglia

Games Anglia is a game development event that took place in Ipswich on 6th of February 2025 which I attended. It was an extremely inciteful event and was truly diverse in the games and development teams that attended, there was game being funded and made by and from large studios such as Disney, Games made by indie teams, solo devs and also games made by college students that were displayed, such as mine and my partners Joshua Bowden's game Objective, Objective is a relaxing clean up games set inside of a house where the you have to fix up the house. Unfortunately the wrong build of our game was brought to the event meaning it was in an incomplete state and was unbeatable as well as having a few bugs and issues such as features that were not implemented and or removed from the game, in the future i will ensure to bring a copy of the project on a USB, However during the event our game was displayed during a half an hour time slot where we had a few people play our game which included a person who makes music who was interested in us and our game and we connected via Linkdln which may be a very useful and important contact later on. During the event I had the privilege to try a few different games including Task Time, which is a chaos party game made by a small indie studio lead by an established game developer. I think that task time is very interesting and I will be keeping track of the game for its release. I also enjoyed listening to some of the speakers especially the speaker who currently works at EA, Her talks on her starting out in the industry was insightful and really gave me a strong idea on what to expect and what to do when I myself am trying to start out in the industry. Overall it was a great event, there's were so many experienced people and games to check out all of which where great to see and interact with, the only change I would make would be venue size, as it was extremely compact and overcrowded but I suppose that is to be expected.

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VR Game Research

VR has had a massive impact on the world and not just in gaming, VR has been able to be used across a plethora of different genres and jobs and all other forms with it being used in surgery and for accessibility uses. A lot of games these days are getting a VR version or VR compatibility, a great example of this is Skyrim. Skyrim is one of the most beloved played and well known games of all time and has had many, many... many re releases and upgrades since its 2011 release, so its only natural that it would get another version in VR. The VR version of Skyrim brought a wave of players back to the game as well as new players experiencing it for the first time through a new medium with this version also getting great love and acclaim as it allowed players to get a new perspective. The greatest part of VR is more than likely is accessibility features, in VR the player doesn't need to be able to move any part of their body other than their had and VR also in most cases has controllers allowing the use for waist up gaming as well, This is an amazing achievement and evolution of gaming for the core reason that it allows people who previously couldn't play games, not only play them but experience them in a unique and interesting way.

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UI Modification

I have added a reference image next the ingredient button to show what it looks like, I think this makes the parchment look less bland and gives a cool little visual reference. I plan to do this for all ingredients I add (which will likely only be 3, lavender, capperlis stone & beetle) and have so far added one for the lavender and the stone as I have not made the beetle yet.

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Capperlis Stone 3d Model & Addition

I just took an old 3d model of a rock i made at some point and grabbed parts of it to pull them out and make it look sharper and more pointy as well as creating a quick material that is a slightly metallic red and applied it and bang, Capperlis stone

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Menu & Ingredients Selection Screen

I have created a working menu that allows you to open up a selection menu and choose the ingredient you want to you use, clicking on the ingredient will spawn it in and make it drop into the potion

I may change the parchment into some other visual background but my thought process is I want it to look like something you'd see used for writing back in this time period, I may change it to some book at some point or other form of writing media.

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Lavender Model

I created a quick 3d model for the lavender that will be seen dropping into the cauldron

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Capperlis Stone Design

This is a rough sketch of the idea for the rock. The reason for its segmentation is due to a variety of minerals clumping together inside of the goats stomach. This is what I will base my model off of, the coloring will likely keep a usual rocks colour of grey but I may give it a slight red hue.

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Cauldron Design

I commissioned (without pay) a cauldron to be made by my friend josh, I gave him a few reference images as well as drawing the cauldron myself and being next to him while he made it which was able to produce the exact cauldron I had in mind thankfully

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The Starting Ingredients

I would like to focus on starting with 3 main ingredients. These will be a mix of real and fictional items that will have varied effects determined by real world or other media.

Lavender throughout history has been used by apothecary's and healer to treat a range of remedies and have been proven to help with headaches and to help with pain and inflammation. In my game it will be noted as a healing remedy.

The second is a custom (By me) rock that I am going to call a Capperis stone. This is mainly inspired by beazore's from harry potter in which they have a fictional magical item that is a rock taken from the stomach of a goat. This is inspired by a real life occurrence of goats eating stones which they actually often do, goats are known for eating a variety of inedible things such as mud sand and stones to help with digestion. I have come up with this name as it is a very loose translation of "goat stone" in Latin. It's effect will be that it increased durability.

And lastly I have decided to go with Beetles. In real life as all bugs beetles are incredibly nutritious as they are very high in protein being almost pure protein. While not commonly consumed they are still a viable product and are certainty beneficial. It is for those reason that I have chosen that it will give a boost in a persons stamina and general dexterity when used as an ingredient for a potion.

Weather or not I end up expanding these ingredients either by creating 3d models or by having different ingredients in the game I do not yet no but I'm sure that I want and intend to and for this reason I want to explore and gather more information on how to accurately and why I should implement these.

I would also like to add a feature where when looking at your ingredients you can see a small description that explains where the ingredient comes from and what it does. The main reason for this is that many people, will not know the benefits of certain ingredients such as the capperis stone as well... I made it up, so it would be very impressive for anyone to know what it does. This would also add a heavy aspect of world building and a nice story and visual aspect to the game.

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Small Tweaks

I've changed the angle of the ladle and the camera by swapping their rotation, instead of the camera being straight down and the ladle being at an angle. I decided to change it so that it looks better and more realistic. I also created a very simplified ingredient system. This done by spawning a ball with physics applied, so it falls into the cauldron, when pressing a button, in this case its applied to the A button on a controller. I intend to have the potion play a splash effect when the ingredient comes into contact with it, I've already set this up by having the potion it's self have a different collision to the cauldron which allows me to have the effect play when it collides with the potion and then destroy it's self when colliding with the bottom of the cauldron.

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Ladle Movement

I now have a system where the ladle moves by spinning around an axis that makes it looks as if its stirring the potion. This works with the controller analog stick too allowing it to track that it is being spun and move the ladle with it. I have also kept the ladle and the player separate with the player pressing a button to control, possess, the ladle to start using the cauldron. this is good as it allows me to keep the ladle mechanics separate from everything else, what I mean by this is that I am able to focus on all other features working around the ladle instead of having to work with the ladle which could've potentially caused issues for me. I intend to have a very simple menu system hopefully with 2 button which would be 1 button for menu and the other for yes/confirm/select/many other things.

Ultimately the way that my ladle works is you possess a new actor (Taking control over which is a cylinder that is connected to a scene in the center that when spun will spin the stick around it like an orbit

I watched a few videos to get the idea for my system, specifically I watched a video on mobile games for how they use movement to get my spinning system which ended up being extremely effective. As well as a video explaining how to switch what in the world I'm possessing (controlling):

Here is a link to a video I took displaying the system in action: