RICE FLOWER

This week, we completed the final testing of this game prototype in the playtest party. During this process, we not only received a great deal of helpful feedback but also reflected on and identified several game issues.

Referring to the V-shape diagram in Chapter 13 of the reading material, I realised that we did not address certain design or decision-making issues in the early stages. This led to the prototype not progressing as originally planned. If we had the opportunity to refine the design process of this prototype, I believe we should focus on developing the gameplay factor and content diversity to create a rich prototype version, followed by further refinement of the art and other elements. This would also allow us to continuously experiment and iterate with different content in the early stages of the project, preventing issues that cannot be changed later on.

Additionally, if we were to redesign this prototype, I might alter its art direction. I believe our game prototype should first attract players through gameplay rather than visuals, so I would aim to simplify all elements into line icons as much as possible. This would enable players and testers to more intuitively experience our emphasis on gameplay and provide more feedback on the game's content.

References:

In this week, we had a meeting to discussed about the feedback we got from the first playtest and also started the further development.

This week, I'm doing the job of upgrade visual design. I first discussed all the ideas from our team to understand what kind of upgrade abilities they want and what they should look like. Then I used procreate to develop specific upgrade icons for different upgrades and tried to speak them visually. When all the icons are done and everyone can understand them easily. I started the second process to create the upgrade card. I chose yellow as the main colour to fir our game UI theme. Also used three different styles to show powerful upgrade, additional upgrade and secondary upgrade.

Upgrade cards design

Playtester 1 Notes: 

Game rules and tutorials

How enemies working and attacking?

Health systerm

No rewards

Game design looks interesting

Playtester 2 Notes:

Positive comments:

Likes the background movement follows mouse action

Likes the colour selection and simple clean main menu

Likes the buttons highlight effect

Likes the lighting effect in the game

Enjoyable sound effect follow the ingame actions

Likes the blackhole design

Questions:

What should player aim for? (alive or destroy)

The main menu changed when failed a game, its based on previous game?

Feedbacks:

Restore health by picking blocks? 

Hitbox of asteroid is little bit lagging after a movement

Maybe add connections to other keyset?

Different enemy type, like one only shooting but cant moving

Background movement

Other types plantes

Playtester 3 Notes:

Positive comments:

Enjoy the sound effects when destroying

Questions:

How to destroy? (Tutorial needed)

Main goals? Rewards?

Feedbacks: 

Different type of enemies and get harder with upgrades

Based on the prototype we have now, our team member added some new ideas into the game and prepare for the first round of playtest.

We chose the Esports Arena at QUT and invited three players to help us test the game and give feedback.

Before the playtest start, I used the questionnaire and survey template given on Canvas and also edited some questions to fit our game.

In the questionnaire, I searched and tried several games that have similarities with our game on Steam and mentioned them to give a briefly introduce to our testers so they can specificly understand our game genre and concept.

After the group discussion, we chose to keep the game prototype from Lachlan. This is an unusual asteroid theme game that makes players control the black hole and use the attraction force to throw an asteroid out and smash other planets. From the Task Allocation, I will mainly focusing on the One page and One sheet design. Since I'm an architectural student, I might have more experience in designing a presentation sheet and following the style of an architecture blueprint. By combining the original concepts that we want to keep and adding additional content we discussed. The new version of one page and one sheet of ENTROPIC COLLAPSE was produced.

One page

One sheet

Game title: Entropic Collapse

Group Name: Gravity Gigglers 

Genre: Asteroids

Setting/Style: Space

Game control: Control the black hole directly with your  mouse- the asteroid will follow. Hold and release left key to launch the asteroid in the  direction of your mouse.

3 Unique selling points:

Dynamic Enemy Waves Enemies constantly appearing

Upgrade System to upgrade the black hole and asteroid

Escalating Challenge Enemy difficulty increases with wave

Elevator pitch: This is not a typical space shooter - you are a BLACK HOLE attracting an asteroid to crush planetary and ship defenses. Collect the rubble. Become SUPERMASSIVE - collect or collapse. 

After the team formation we had set a series of group documents, such as a discord channel for discussion, a google doc for writing key information and a timetable for group meeting, after the first group meeting, we came up the following content showing in the images below which mainly mentioned the playtest timeline, task allocation and work check list.

For the one page and one sheet design, I chose the asteroids genre.

During the prototyping process of Mad Taxi, I firstly experienced technical difficulties, which led me to spend too much time on the basic running of the prototype, thus neglecting the design of the game's fun and gameplay. If I had the opportunity to enhance this development process, I would have focused on developing the content of the game, such as having an interesting backstory or rich visual content.

In addition, during the development of the prototype, due to my lack of personal skills, the variety of driving routes in my original game concept could not be fully implemented, so if I could redevelop the prototype design, I would change the variety of driving routes into richer dialogues, thus enriching the gameplay and departing from the traditional Racing genre, which the author often mentions in his readings that the design of a game should not be entirely dependent on the game genre.

References:

In the development process, I firstly changed the colour of the car try to make it looks like Taxi and added lights effect animation.

To make the game LOOKS like a game, the main menu and fail menu have also been added

Since my screen is 1920x1080, and the original codes doesn't work well, so I changed the values into the one that fit the resolution.

Reward system

Title: MAD TAXI

Elevator pitch:

Mad Taxi is a racing game which is set in the hustle and bustle of the city. In the urban context, various intricate routes and busy traffic become a block to complete your mission on time, all you need to do is to complete the mission through various extreme manoeuvres under the premise of safety, so as to increase the reputation to accept orders for more routes.

Genre: Racing

Game control:

Left to moving to left, right to moving to right

Unique Selling Points:

Only one chance

Multiple routes to choose from

In the first few weeks of studying and reading I've had a primer on the factors that need to be considered in the game design section, which has helped me to develop this Asteroids in a way that saves me a lot of time compared to the previous platformer in terms of conceptualising how my game should be designed. While reading chapter 10 I realised that game testing is not only about providing feedback to the designer from the players, but also about actively observing and reflecting on the purpose of the test, i.e. what aspects of the test the designer would like to see the players commenting on and giving feedback on. During the design process I also invited a few of my roommates to play the beta game I made, and invited them as players to ask questions rather than rate the game.

If I had the chance to go back to the initial period of developing the prototype, perhaps I would have changed the game content to more interesting themes, such as combining the genre of Asteroids with things I don't like and dispatching them by shooting them. I think in the initial concept my ideas were still limited by the type of game, which led to me only being able to think of this combination of spaceships and asteroids in this type of game design. This is what was mentioned in the reading a few weeks ago about not looking to the same industry for inspiration, but looking more to life for things to use as inspiration.

If I could change some of the design then I would change the switching modes to picking up items and only selecting them before the start of a different level. This would not only give the player the opportunity to develop the game from the basics to deeper, but it would also stimulate exploration of the game such as the use of different equipment to deal with different enemies.

References:

Changing the drawing and animation of the ship.

Added an active skill to the default mode that uses Lshift to speed up the ship. A cooldown mechanism and speed up duration will be added in a future update.

Added brightness to the default weapon and set it to a medium attack speed to differentiate it from other weapons.

Added drop bombs and set them to slow attack speed, with different damage and range to be added in a future update.

Added laser attack, which provides higher attack speed and a larger area, will reduce damage in a future update.

Added different damage values for different sized stars, and will add different life values for different stars in a future update.

Weapon attacks on stars will destroy them, while only large stars have a certain probability of dropping healing packs.

Each healing pack only restores one life point.

Play music while entering the failure screen after the player's life is running out.

Title: STAR WOAH

Elevator pitch:

This is an Asteroids game that offers players a variety of ways to play, and they need to use different skills to survive the asteroid storm for as long as possible. There is only one chance to survive this storm and if you fail, you have to start all over again!

Genre: Asteroids

Game control:

The ship follows the player's mouse, left click to fire, Lshift to boostup, Z to drop bombs, and X to fire lasers, Num1 and Num2 to switch mode.

Unique Selling Points:

Click to play

Variety of attacks and skills

One of the first things I realized in these weeks of readings was the professionalism required in the game design industry. Designing and making a game is not simply a combination of graphics and codes. As a designer, I not only need to think about whether or not the game will work, but I also need to think about the market and players associated with it. Through the reading of《Game Design Workshop》by Tracy Fullerton (particularly chapters 1-5), I learned that making a game is not a one-way trip, but a repetitive process that requires constant exploration, discovery, and iteration. This knowledge has also helped me in the design process to constantly reflect on whether the game fits the original concept, engages the player and is playable. Reading also helps me in the design process, as I keep some of the earlier design elements, such as graphics and code, and update them as I develop, such as more detailed graphics and code that makes the graphics more logical and fluid.

If I were to change a part of my development process, I would prioritize simplifying the design of the visual content. Because I was so focused on seeing the prototype look better visually, I spent too much time investigating and drawing gameplay images during the design process, which resulted in a prototype that was not very playable during the fourth week of playtesting.

If I had to change my prototype design, I would modify the design focus from the feature of multi-directional movement to a richer game map and background story. As a beginner to Gdevelop, I was not able to achieve the more directional platformer mentioned in the original concept, and for this shortcoming, I hope to make up for it by increasing the size and variety of the maps to achieve the theme of infinite adventure. I would also like to add more dialogue scenes and stories, as in the original setting, the player takes on the role of a robot that has a independent mind and desires to explore the meaning of life. I think this setting could be used to develop a very engaging worldview that would allow the platformer to be more than just a side-scrolling game and would engage the player's empathy for the content of the game.

References:

Since the second week of learning to use Gdevelop, I have been experimenting with the software to create content that I think fits the theme of my game and the elements that a game should have.

In this Platformer development, I first added the main interface of the game, although it is simple, this layout also provides a good framework for future updates.

Secondly, I added respawn points to the game characters and have two different ways of working, one is in an inactive state when the player first sees the respawn point (red) and the other is in an activated state after the player touches the respawn point (blue). Once the respawn point is activated, then every time the player dies they respawn immediately at this point. A respawn delay or a limit on the number of respawns may be added in a future update.

The key controls have also been changed from the default arrow keys to the more familiar WASD and Space, with the possibility of adding more customized key bindings and a settings option in the main interface.

Attacks and kills When the players touch an enemy horizontally they will be killed, when the players step on an enemy they will attack, and more attacks will be added in future updates.

A soundtrack!

Initial enemy settings

Initial box settings

This week's game genre is Platformer, a genre that I have not had much exposure to before, which has limited my understanding of platformer games to the fact that they are 2D and horizontal. Before starting the design, I read the 《Game Design Workshop 》 written by Tracy Fullerton, which helped me to clarify the factors that need to be considered in designing a game and the need for iteration in game design. It also suggested that the early stages of game development should not make too many references to existing games, which made it clear that the game I was going to design should be a break from the traditional platformer games. My initial concept for this game is to break the 2D constraints and allow the character to move in a more three-dimensional way on the map, and this concept should be iterated upon as I learn and explore.

Title: Infinite Adventure

Elevator pitch: A 2D game where the player takes on the role of a thoughtful robot and explores the “meaning of life” in a cyberpunk city. The player will upgrade by meeting new NPC and facing new enemies. As the player explores the game world, more varied missions will appear and more movement directions will be unlocked.

Genre: Platformer

Game control: WASD for movement; space for jump; E for interact; Left click for attack; Right click for aim.

Unique Selling Points:

1) Map design is no longer limited to 2D movement, providing players with more directions to adventure.

2) As the game progresses, players will unlock more mission modes.

3) As you level up, you will gain the ability to change the way you play the game.

References:

Hello there!

My name is Bowen Wei. I am currently studying for a Bachelor's Degree in Architectural Design at QUT.

Although my major is not directly related to games, I am a huge gaming addict in my spare time. In my free time, I usually play a variety of shooting games such as CS2, Valorant, Rainbow 6, etc. I am also very interested in all kinds of electronic accessories, such as customized keyboards, customized PCs, gaming consoles, and so on.

Personally, I think that although it sounds unhealthy to be addicted to gaming, the virtual worlds provided by gaming not only serve as a vehicle for detachment from reality, but also provide an opportunity for people to immerse themselves in something, which makes me not think that being addicted to gaming is a completely negative thing to do.

As an architecture student, the reason I want to take a course in game design is because I want the professional knowledge to help me understand the games I'm addicted to daily from a new perspective. In the longer term, I hope to find out if the professions of architecture and game design can be applied to each other in a way that will allow me to balance my hobby with my profession.