Week 4: Critical Reflection

Despite many different activities going on this week, I continued on with my pursuit of game design completing some more concept art as well as the game design document. 

Coloured concept of the main menu screen

Coloured concept of the intro cutscene

Currently, the quality of the art is okay for the concept art but will need to improve for the final project in my opinion. The water, in particular, is something that I will need to work on as well as improving the shading, colouring and texturing of rock. 

Preview of GDD

Game journal: BIT TRIP Present Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien

For this week's game mechanic review I decided to look at one of my old favorite's, BIT TRIP RUNNER 2 a rhythm based game built around a continuous runner obstacle course.
The mechanic I found the most interesting in this game would have to be fundamental base of audio. It is interesting as everything within the obstacle course appears and happens in relation with the music thus affecting the player's response. On top of this, the music forces the player to remember the order of obstacles as well as enemy behavior. This mechanic can be tricky as sometimes music can work unexpectedly, such evidence of unexpected can be found in real life orchestral pieces where melodies can end and change much to our surprise causing us to believe that the orchestra have completed the piece. 

But the idea of music within the game is not so simple, it is interesting how the pieces of music can stay the same for every level but as the difficulty level is changed the game adds in more obstacles, sometimes occurring in off beats throwing off the player. What also makes this harder is that each obstacle is beaten different in respect to different controls.

Week 3: Critical Reflection

For this week, I added more to my mood board for my sword inspirations:
I realised before I drew the swords in pencil that I had not updated my mood boards hence their appearance now. While looking at the player's weapon, I focused in particular on the handle as well as blade design. The charts I found were a good reference for this.

As well as updating my mood boards this week, I also finished digitalising the rest of the pencil sketches among everything else happening. By drawing these out I am able to get a better feel of the sword choices with the colours. 

On top of creating the swords, I have been making more progress on my Game design document. As I am doing a game focusing more on the art rather than the mechanic side it was a bit hard to find a starting point though I figure what better way to start than to touch upon my layering concept. In the coming week, I will collect together and digitise my game document. 

Game Journal: Trine 2

For this week's mechanic review I have chosen to look at one of my all time favourite game series, in particular, Trine 2: Complete Story. Besides its beautiful character and environment design, the Trine trilogy includes a very interesting base mechanic which the whole game revolves around: the ability for the player to change between three different characters. This is an interesting aspect as you are faced with playing through the game, solving puzzles and defeating enemies along with way with essentially three different classes of character types. The catch with this is that each character has each their own set of exclusive skills which are needed with different types of obstacles. Alongside with their own skills, each character also has their own health bar which depletes with damage as guessed. Upon the health bar running out, the player is unable to change into that character anymore, forcing them to either restart the level, reach a checkpoint or deal with the level with their remaining characters which provide a bit of a challenge. Often in games players are given the choice to play solely as one character so it is very interesting to see a game embrace the ability to change characters mid-game to play. This ability also makes multiplayer games all the more challenging as players have to take turns to change into the free character (if there are only two players) or work together with each player set of abilities to proceed. It is not until playing multiplayer do you really appreciate the ability to change into all 3 characters by yourself, especially when playing with others that are uncooperative or simply not as good at the gameplay. 

Amadeus the wizard: activated by pressing (1)
Abilities: Creating boxes, levitation of objects 

Zoya the thief: activated by pressing (2)
Abilities: Archery, grappling hook 

Pontius the knight: activated by pressing (3)
Abilities: Sword/Melee combat, Shield (can be used to glide and block), Charging, Hammer (can be thrown)  

Week 2: Critical Reflection

For this week, I began conceptualising my art. It was a bit frustrating wrestling with programs to find what was comfortable to use. Hence a rather poorly drawn environment concept as the first piece.

I took a breather with this and thought I had better conceptualise a few weapons to choose from to decide what to actually use in the first scene of the game/ the weapon that the player would use. These were first sketched in pencil. 

Following this, I started to colourise a few of these swords before having to complete other tasks for the week. I am planning to finish the rest of these in the upcoming week. So far I am already liking the first 3 that I have done. These were all done in Paint tool SAI - an art program I am more accustomed to. All these swords are based on real sword types with a touch of fantasy thrown into them.  

Game Journal: Crypt of the Necrodancer

Game Journal review of this week's game:

Plague Inc: Evolved

Chosen design element focus: Music, the games fundamental mechanic

For many games, music/soundtrack is what brings the games to life- often when we play games with no audio it feels almost wrong. This game is no different but utilises this simple concept and makes it its own. When you play the game you are already introduced to this fact from the heartbeat on the screen as pictured above. This heart is synced with the game's soundtrack and only allows the player to move on the beat, dungeon crawling as they go collecting items, to defeat mobs.
To play this game without audio would be very difficult despite the visual guide on screen as the player is forced to really pay attention.
The music also forces the player to complete/leave stages as when the music finishes the player will be forced to go to the next stage costing them their coin multiplier. 
Different mobs have their own movement patterns and without paying attention to this the player will suffer for it, and in fact, ignoring the music as a whole will cause extreme failure.

To add onto this mechanic the game rewards the player for keeping beat streaks. 

- Effects multiplier weapons/torches which will give you higher attack damage or area of sight

- Keeping a continuous streak keeps the coin multiplier high as well, rewarding the player with more loot to spend to buy items at the store on each level. 

The change of soundtrack of each zone/level creates a sense of difficulty as the tempo becomes faster/shorter, introducing new harder mobs unique to each zone. 

Week 1:

For this week, to start off this project smoothly I have taken the time to think about what my game will actually look like. I know that for the end goal that it will be crucial to give my scene a foreground, background and midground (where the player will actually run and interact) but before doing so I have to work out first what my game will be about. What setting will it be in?
I thought about it and after a bit, I remembered my travels in England, more specifically my visit to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, England. This castle although left in ruins is the supposed and rumoured birthplace of King Arthur. Why not set my game around this theme. Perhaps the player could stumble upon a mysterious sword amongst the castle's ruined space. Below for this week, I have included my WIP mood boards which have a collation of images I took in the person of Castle Tintagel as well as both the exterior and interior of Brentor Church. I have also been looking at two games which are both of the 2.5D nature - Trine and Ori and the Blind Forest. 

Game Journal: Plague Inc: Evolved

Game Journal review of this week's game:

Plague Inc: Evolved

Chosen design element focus: The ability tree

Plague Inc: Evolved is a strategy based game where you the player, play as a plague type with the goal of taking over and killing everyone in the world.

Hence strategy, the fundamental core of the game is the complex ability tree that controls your plague. The particular ability tree system in Plague Inc is an interesting design element as the system is so sensitive that the outcome of your game can well depend on the sequences you select. At first, you will start with nothing plain and simple but this ability tree levels in chaos the harder the difficulty setting you to choose to play as like a real plague/disease the ability tree can "mutate" and force development of the plague which can get the player noticed and eradicated. While letting the player seemingly control the direction of infectivity which reduces the ability tree to any other- Collect, evolve, add a new action, pick the skillset you want. The fact that plague inc's ability tree can mutate by itself adds more challenge for the player which makes it an interesting system. Of course, when playing an easy level, players can choose to devolve mutations to prevent discovery, but the harder levels stop them from doing so. The players do not own the ability tree. On top of this, the visuals that the developers have chosen to display this make the system more interesting, you can gain knowledge on what abilities do to the body itself as well as view a model of the plague as it grows in seriousness and infectiousness. 

DIGD701 Game a week: WEEK 8 Duo mashup

Final week!! We made it :D
For this week's theme, we had to find and work with someone we hadn't done so with before. On top of this, within our partners, we had to pick our favourite game from our previously made ones and mash them up together. This week I worked with Ayaka Takayama, and between us, we chose to mashup my hidden gallery game with her 10-sec clicking styled game. At first, we thought about making a game about an art thief stealing from a gallery but ended up with a Terraria style game hidden object game.

What we have in the end:

- An intractable home screen, displaying the controls in pixel font. The player can control the on-screen character and navigate it to the starting initialiser.
- An animated player walking cycle
- Start game function with buttons that you click with a mouse YES/NO
- A speech bubble with a (!) in it that appears when the player comes across something hidden in the level.
- A sound that plays when in the game - this sound gets louder/quieter depending on the player's closeness to hidden spots
- A timer that counts down, upon finishing it freezes all movement and displays how many hidden places you found before taking you back to the home screen
-  Text that displays the number of spots left to find, this goes up when you click the spot.
-  A pickaxe that comes out of the player when the mouse is clicked.
- Custom application icon

What fell through:

- "I was thinking of making 10-sec mini-game (like clicking as much as the player can in 10 sec, and get the score) when the player finds the spot. But I found that makes too complicated for coding timer and score system"
- "I wanted to change the cursor picture and make it visible/invisible in the particular situation. But somehow, the cursor picture didn't show up on built game"
- " I wanted to make the digging spot randomly in each play, and also time refuel item (like the item that can increase the time left?). But both of them, I couldn't make cus I took too long to make basic timer and count system this week"

The process of making:

Major coding was done by Ayaka this week.

The tile art including the character were all made by me. The character is from an old game I made back in the first year that we reused here. It was a slower process for me this week as the style of tiles wasn't what I am used to doing. The tiles we have are inspired by Terarria and are quite simplistic in design. 

Exercise: do in pairs for homework

"Choose a multiplayer game that you both have access to.


Play the game four times, each time modelling one of Bartle's four player types.

How does the game and play experience change? "



Chosen game: BattleBlock Theatre

The four player types:


Killers are players who like to impose their will on other players.

When playing as a killer player type within the game, players will delay completion of the tasks that will get them to the end of the level/ final goal. With BattleBlock being already such an obstacle-filled level setting, killer players will be tempted to hoodwink and betray their player companions. This often causes mistrust and further delays actions. Unlocking new weapons excites killer players as it provides further depth to their deceit. 

Fun for them comes in the form of deceit and finding ways to screw over their companions even if the main aim of the game is not acknowledged. 


Achievers are interested in setting and attaining goals in a game.

When playing as an achiever player type, the players will be tempted to restart the game/levels in order to get a perfect score. This is the ultimate goal and for them, they may even dip into the explorer category as their completionist streak drives them to find efficiency in order to get everything. Leaving levels incomplete achievement wise causes them to be unsatisfied. 

If the other player is not an achiever too, their stubbornness for performance may enable them to take it upon themselves to get everything.

Fun for them comes in the form of their performance and completing all the achievements to the fullest. In this game example, this would be the collection of all the gems, the golden yarn, timer and the completion of the level. Achieving that A++ mark


Socializers are less interested in the actions and objects unto themselves than they are 

the other players.

When playing as a socializer player type, the players will care more about the fundamental basis of the levels. Teaming up and working together - In a way, they care about finishing the level the most but put the enjoyment of playing with their company first. These player types may often chat a lot and even talk about things that have nothing to do with the gameplay while in game. They don't really care about things such as scores and exploring, any explorations are found by happy chance. 

Fun for them comes in the form of the people they play with. If their company is on the more boring side to them enjoyment will go down. Their casualness may frustrate achiever and explorer types. 


Explorers like to understand the full breadth of a game’s space of possibility.

When playing as an explorer player type, players will spend most of the gameplay exploring every nook and cranny. These player types often have a keen eye for detail and may question the purpose of things within levels. This questioning often delays completion as they may seek ways to reach areas that are designed to be impossible. Finding nothing in these areas disappoints and confuses them. This player type dips into the achiever type as they like to make sure every part of the map/level is explored and would most likely be the first player type to break the game. Playing with explorer types may teach other players new things about the game/level that the player did not know prior. 

Fun for them comes in the form of exploration and seeing everything the game has in store for them. Missing areas can frustrate them while discovering new places often missed by others fills them with joy.