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Submission & GG

As a group we have finalised our playtesting findings and submitted our final assessment for IGB120. Over the course of this unit I have learned a lot about creative design, game theory and iteration in game development. I have enjoyed experimenting with Gdevelop5 and finding ways to create interesting, unique and fun games. I strongly believe that my time in this unit will form a solid foundation for my future creative endeavors in game design.

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Assignment 3 Postmortem

After completing most of our playtesting document for assignment 3 I now have the time to reflect on the development and playtesting process.

What Went Well

Prototype: We successfully developed our playable prototype and made several key iterations to improve the design and enjoyment of the game.

Playtesting: We followed a structured and consistent playtesting process which allowed us to gather valid insights from various naïve players.

Team Coordination: We successfully worked collaboratively on tasks in order to complete each stage of the assignment efficiently.

Challenges

Time Constraints: The Balance between prototype development and playtesting was a considerable hurdle as not all play testers were available when needed. This made it clear that scheduling in the future should take priority.

Data Interpretation: While all feedback was valuable interpreting subjective responses was difficult and meant carefully considering which core changes should be made to the future game.

Overall, this project highlighted the importance of both iteration in game design and user feedback. These insights will be useful for future prototypes such as refining Cosmos Custodian or new creative designs.

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Week 12: Assignment 3 Iteration and Changes

Over the course of our development for Assignment 3 we have made several iterations upon our game project. In order to maximize the enjoyment of the game at this stage we have focused on key areas. For instance, we have increased the difficulty by adding enemy attacks on wave 3 and above while remaining aware that the difficulty naturally increases each progressive wave. Furthermore, to improve the overall artistic design and appeal of the game we have changed the key sprite models and background of the game. Furthermore, we have modified the projects animations notably the player ship thus adding to the polish of the final build.

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Another interesting Game discussion

In between working on Assignment 3 I have been following some youtubers covering Expedition 33 that released recently and wanted to have a quick discussion about it. One of the main things I have found interesting about the game is its take on turn-based gameplay. Its like a mix between real-time and classic turn-based with its inclusion of its parry mechanic. Furthermore, the sound track of the game composed by Lorien Testard stood out to me due to its both classical and rock style. I'm glad an indie game has performed so well and am looking forward to more games from this company.

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Week 11: Assignment 3 playtesting

Moving into week 11 my group has begun developing and finalising our changes to the prototype game. Wherein, we have now transitioned to writing up our playtesting questionnaire, Script and survey.

I have subsequently completed my first play test with an initial "Core demographic" naive user. I have recorded the notes for this playtest and detailed the actions the user took during the test.

I aim to complete an additional naive/deep user playtest next week to gain further insights as well as work on the playtesting document.

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Week 10: Group Formation and Assignment 3 Team Discussion

Upon formation of our group we discussed in our tutorial our planning for Part A and the overall assignment. We decided that we will use my "Asteroids" like game as a basis for the assingment and begin work on Part A. We have also established communication channels and a GitHub that we will use to collaborate on the game ready for Part B and C playestesting.

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Week 10: Assignment 3 Development Progress

Upon finishing Assingment 2 we quickly begin planning and prepartion for assingment 3. This assingment involves working in a group to playtest one of our games from assingment 2. Initially, we wil form groups, decide on a group game project, establish collaboration platforms and discuss our plans for Part A.

I have formed my group with 3 other classmates and joined group 13 on canvas. I aim to discuss with my team and finalise Part A in order to begin work on Part B as soon as possible.

Additionally, I have made some more development progress on the prototype game. In which, I have added the enemy attacks upon increasing waves to meet the MVP.

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Week 9: Assignment 2 Final Design

Concluding week 9 was the submission of my Assingment 2 One-sheet and One-page. While my first iteration remained largerly the same I made some final design and text tweaks to improve my work. I am happy with how my assingment 2 turned out and believe it accurately demonstrated the overall imagery, vision and gameplay that could be used for assingment 3.

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Week 9 Racer Post Mortem Discussion

With the completion of the "racer" game we have completed our final of the 3 elevator pitch projects. This last development period was very useful for consolidating my Gdevelop skills in preparation for assignment 3. However, there were still areas for improvement identified by the playtesting below:

Play tester 1:

Play tester 2:

It is clear from the feedback from the playtesting that a main area for improvement is both the player controls and models. Wherein, to rectify these weaknesses I should aim to both re-design the sprites so they align better with the overall game theme as well as ensure the player model is easy and predictable to control. However, the powerups were a commonly liked feature which I can apply in future projects.

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Week 8: Assignment 2 progress

Upon nearing the end of our game elevator pitch's we are moving into assignment 2. This assignment involves creating a One-page and One-sheet for one of our elevator pitch's to potentially be used in assignment 3. I chose my "Asteroids"-like game as I believe I was able to achieve my vison the closest during development. I have made substantial progress on both my One-sheet and One-page as seen below and will be finalizing them next week.

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Week 8 Elevator pitch development update: Typhoon Racer: Hovercraft

Hi and welcome to my final development update on Typhoo Racer: Hovercraft! I believe after completing several projects over the semester I have improved both my speed and proficiency in developing Gdevelop games. Now I will discuss my final development notes and thoughts on my "Racer" game.

🎮 Progress

Game Mechanics

Upon following the tutorial and creating the basic "Racer" game, I began thinking of new ideas and features I would like to add for my project.

Similarly to the previous games I quickly modifed the game models, hitboxes and background in order to give my game a unique design. As seen below I chose to use sprites and imagery that reflects the "Hovercraft" motiff of the my elevator pitch:

After this I also engaged in the week 8 reading of Game design workshop by Tracy Fullerton. Particualrly of note was in chapter 11 when Fullterton elborated on the concept of "fun" in games and the elements that facilitate this. One such of these that stood out to me was difficulty/challenge and the effect this had on the player experience. Fullerton stated that "Some of the elements of challenge, including the state of “flow” that players can reach when the challenge the game offers is perfectly tuned to the participants’ skill levels.". I wanted to express this feeling in my "racer" game as I felt this was a key area of weakness.

Towards this goal I decided that increasing the spawning frequency and speed of the other crafts would create greater challege in the game. However, to balence this and improve the gameplay loop I wanted to include "powerups". These powerups would spawn occasionally and aid the player by providing either a "speed" boost or "shield". While I encounted some difficulties with implementing this functionality, my previous experience with variables and objects in my "Asteroids" game aided me in achieveing this. As seen below the"powerups" added both complexity to the gameplay and allowed for an increased challenge in the game.

🎮 Challenges

Certain challeges were present however that inhibited me adding all the features I would of liked. Namely, I encountered difficulties with adding the ability to choose different hovercrafts/player ships. Wherein, I originally wanted to add diverse feeling ships and movement types however, due to time constraints I was unable to flesh out this idea and implement it fully. Wherein, If I was to update this project I would like to include this in a future version.

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Week 7 Racer Elevator Pitch

For our final elevator pitch we are creating a "Racer" like game. The following is my project idea:

Title: Typhoon Racer: Hovercraft

Description: Race the typhoon! Using the hovercraft and pickups found along way avoid obstacles and other competitors to gain the highest score possible! 

Genre: Top down Racer

Audience: PG13+

Game controls:

W,A,S,D for directional movement

Shift key to use powerup

Unique selling points:

Score points based on player survival 

Powerups that aid players  

Hovercraft selection

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Week 7 Asteroids post mortem discussion

After completing week 6 and completing playtesting for my asteroids game, I can look back and review the strengths and areas for improvement in my development.

I believe my understanding and proficiency using Gdevelop has increased considerably since experimenting with my first "Platformer" game. Particularly, I wanted to branch out more into better gameplay mechanics and variable usage to get as close as possible in achieving my elevator pitch goals. While, I wasn't able to implement all the features in this iteration I believe if I pursue this game in the future I will be able to improve upon this.

Speaking of improvement, the playtesting conducted allowed me to clearly see areas where I did well and areas which required work. I have adapted the provided playtesting template with my specific game in mind to give myself relevant feedback as seen from the extract below:

Play tester 1:

Play tester 2:

Taking both of these play tester surveys into account its clear the strengths of the game are the player and enemy mechanics. However, the enemy spawning, gameplay features and UI could be notably improved to enhance the game in the future. I would like to consider these in my next elevator pitch project.

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Interesting Book Chapter

While reading the Game design workshop by Tracy Fullerton earlier this week for my development update I encountered some interesting discussions that I thought I'd mention.

In chapter 10 Fullerton talks about the intricate process of balancing a game and meeting the intended player experience. She outlines four areas central to game balance: variables, dynamics, starting conditions, and skill. Balancing these becomes difficult due to their independence. As I've experienced first hand how annoying poorly balanced games are, It made me think about my future projects and the importance of balance in the design of these games. I particularly want to consider this aspect in assignment 3.

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Week 6 Elevator pitch development update: Cosmos Custodian

Hi and welcome to my development update on Cosmos Custodian! Since starting our "Asteroids"-like game I have learnt a lot about both game design and Gdevelop, I will now discuss my experience over the past 2 weeks working on this new project.

🎮 Progress

Game Mechanics

I began my project utilizing the basic game fundamentals provided by the tutorial guide. This allowed my to understand the general feel and design of an "Asteroids" game.

However, I was eager to quickly begin expanding on the current game mechanics and design. I first decided to change the player/enemy models, collisions, player bullets and game background. This immediately improved the styling and feel of my project as seen below:

Before, proceeding I looked for some inspiration before further developing my game. Wherein, upon completing this weeks reading of Game design workshop by Tracy Fullerton I was interested by some core topics discussed in chapter 10 namely, foundations, structure, formal details and refinement. Fulleton went into detail about the playtesting process and the depth that is required to make an engaging game "Every game is intrinsically different, so the answers you found during one playtesting process are not the right answers next time. ... Experience will help you judge what decisions to make, what choices will make your game a clean, well-balanced system."

I decided to take this into consideration when I was working on how to create a more interactive experience and improving upon the current weaknesses of my game. Such, that my next step was to add both more player functionality and modify the gameplay. I did this by slightly changing how the player character moved relative to the players mouse movement. In which, instead of the model rotating I adjusted it to a static movement, this was to to give the game a more directional feel. In combination with this, I also restricting the spawn point for enemies in a set area at the top of the screen. I did this to make the enemies feel as if they were appearing against the player in an army instead of just floating onto the screen randomly.

🎮 Challenges

During development I did however encounter numerous challenges particularly when attempting to achieve some of my goals for this project. One of core aspects of the game I wanted to include is a "Enemy Wave functionality". I attempted many different ways of implementing this yet was finding it difficult to get the enemy spawning to increase progressively upon the player defeating all the on-screen entities. Eventually, I managed to get this functionality to work by implementing 3 scene variables: BaseEnemies. RemainingEnemies and Wave. I could then call and adjust these values to trigger when a new wave should occur and with how many enemies as seen below:

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Week 5 Asteroids elevator pitch

Moving into week 5 this is my elevator pitch for a "Asteroids" like game. I will be applying the skills gained from my first pitch in Gdevelop5 to develop this new project.

Title: Cosmos Custodian

Genre: Top down shooter, Asteroids-like

Audience: PG13+

Description:

As a lone star pilot, you must defend the home world against a swarm of enemy pilots and the Mothership. A range of both deadly weapons and support pickups will be available to defend your ship however, the enemy pilots may also gain new upgrades!

Game controls:

Mouse direction for movement

Left click to fire main weapon

F key to fire special weapon

Shift key for dash

Unique selling points:

Variety of weapons and pickups

Progressive difficulty as player survives

unique enemy types

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Week 5 platformer postmortem discussion

Upon finalizing my first platformer elevator pitch I have gained considerable experience in both game design and technical development in Gdevelop 5. Before moving onto my next pitch for an "asteroids" game I will discuss my experience with this first project.

As I have discussed previously the chapter 6 readings helped guide my core game elements. in which, I particularly wanted to focus on what the conflict, goal and win conditions of my game. While I realized I wouldn't have the time to fully address these, I wanted to set the foundation of future development. Such that I created my enemy characters with the intent for them to pose threats for the player to overcome along with the environmental design.

Based on playtesting with classmates in my tutorial sessions I gathered feedback to improve upon my project. One main criticism was the lack of progression/interaction with the world, this could be rectified by possibly adding a points system or adding more content such as enemy types or player abilities. Wherein, one thing I think I would change with how I developed my project is the features/elements of the player character. I believe a greater focus on the player variables such as health, abilities and interactions would enhance the gameplay significantly. This would also aid in the game scope of the games core concepts described in chapter 6.

I utilized a lot of the core development aspects that were discussed in the workshop such as the static platforms and player animations/movement. However, I attempted to expand on these with more diverse environment design and more dynamic enemy movement using variables instead of set zones.