In development: B'looning Away (mini-update)

My development frenzy for B'looning Away has kind of died down now after the initial 2-3 weeks of total excitement and now it's down to work. Although in that time I did manage to squeeze out backgrounds for 3 out of 5 levels, so it's been a very productive frenzy.

Here is a shoehouse for the game.

Reflections on: Octave

After a good months time and an exam out of the way, I believe it is time to take a critical look at Octave.

Octave started production in late february with a six person team (team Composerology!) and ended when we handed in the game late May. As already covered before I had the double role of lead designer (ensuring cohesion in the game) as well as 2D artist which are two roles I'm fairly happy with and feel like I have been succesful in fulfilling both roles.

When we started working on Octave we set out to build a unique universe with a creational musical tool to battle enemies and influence the environment. Furthermore narrative was quite important (however not really been implemented properly) so I will give a recap of it:
Octave Hertz Hobbman is a composer who, at the beginnning of the game, receives a letter from his estranged and dying father begging forgiveness for some unknown "sin" that he has committed. This "sin" should become clear throughout the game. (But unfortunately it doesn't really)

Positives:

• Hardworking team! I was extreemely lucky to be slotted in a very hardworking and ambitious team which really boosts your morale. Furthermore our PM (who chose the team) had chosen a very balanced team with people to fill every role needed very competently. Not much else to say on this topic, but it is worth mentioning.
• Dense universe. I had really worked overtime, especially in the beginning of the process to create a dense fictional universe for the game, which worked out as I believe it was key in creating cohesion in the game. There was a lot of fiction created for the game, which didn't make it in but that doesn't really matter because it was important that the team knows there is more behind and knows why characters are motivated by certain things. In that way, by creating this dense universe everyone else on the team would basically make decisions that would naturally slot seamlessly into the universe. (Which was almost 100% succesful)
• Communication. This production was different from last semester's production because it was both developed in a slightly larger team but more importantly that we were slotted into very defined roles. This has really prepped me towards how it is going to be when I am at one point "released into the wild" and also for DADIU next semester. Communication is key when everyone has their different areas to attend to and I really need to compliment our PM for his stand-up meetings everytime we got together. These little status checks gave us a good idea of what everyone had been doing and was going to do and in that way, we always knew where we had eachother and if anyone was starting to move slightly off course they could quickly be reeled back in. Furthermore I think I communicated the core ideas and universe of the game to the team fairly well through a very detailed and structured design wiki.

Negatives:

• Too much, too little space. The main reason why this game falls a bit short is due to the team collective high ambitions. The fact that we wanted to make a narrative driven game (with platforming/action mechanics) is in hindsight a mistake. Narrative takes subtlety and polish, something we didn't have time for (nor skills) and furthermore narrative, in cases where the actual game itself has action elements and fairly heavy mechanically, is pushed aside and left for the end. Completely understandable as gameplay HAS to work but it also means that we have a game that wanted to immerse and tell players a story, but ended up not even half-assed, but tenth of an ass in that regard.
• Live and let live. This is more of a personal reflection. As I was appointed lead designer/2D artist I should probably not have wandered into mechanics as much as I did. At the beginning of the process I was quite pushy in regards to what kind of a game I wanted to make and how I wanted the mechanics to be simple and intuitive. This point of view massively clashed with the level/gameplay designer's view and we had quite a lot of discussions on this and also started out with a very compromised main mechanic that was faulty. After we found out that our mechanic wasn't very good I finally was able to let go and give him his control and responsibility, and he got the solution that he wanted from the beginning. I am first and foremost a designer and therefore it's very natural for me to want control over a large part of the mechanics as it is so important for player experience. At the same time I am quite adventurous because these are student productions and therfore I'd like to push the envelope a bit. However I realise that sometimes I need to let go of control and trust the people around me.
• Difficulty level +10. This game is difficult and we completely missed the target audience that we had set up for ourselves. The target audience were gamers who were familiar with the WASD control scheme but weren't the kind who played religiously every day (basically me or someone with a little less experience than me). However we ended up with a game that only really hardcore gamers would be able to play, in fact the two least hardcore members of the team, our composer and myself even had some difficulty with the game. This is not necessarily a bad thing because our game just targets a very hardcore audience. But since we had set up a target audience I still find it a bit troublesome that we didn't hit it and I'm not sure if I should have done more to focus on the target, but it just happened to be natural progressing in our development.

I could probably go on writing pages on the reflection of Octave (which indeed I did, but that was more course related), however I will stop here. In general the production of Octave has been a very positive experience, I'm not elated with the end product but rather satisfied. I'll really miss the team and our awesome cake days especially also because I'm attending DADIU next semester, so won't really be seeing them in classes either. It's been a great team, great production period and a mixed end result, but never mind that.

John the Happy Man

The final chapter of John's story and pursuit of Dottie. Only a few more steps and they'll live happily ever after.

Use 1-8 to play simple musical harmonies to bring them closer to eachother. This sketch used a tone instrument with a oscillator sound which I actually thinks works pretty well, it has a innocent and slightly nostalgic sound to it. Works better than the sound of a "real" instrument for this sketch.

Go make John a happy man.

Sketches: John the Dancer

What's this? Could it be John, happy and in love?

Finally Dottie, the love of John's life, has seemed to respond positively to some of his advances. Completely drunk with love he starts a dancing frenzy!

Oh, did I mention, this sketch is in 3D! So go check out John the Dancer. (Might take a long time to load)

In development: B'looning Away

No rest for the wicked, I've started working on a game again almost right after finishing up all the mandatory semester projects.

The basic concept is the same as Neno from my first semester, however it will be completely redone and all the extra narrative and gameplay stuff that was piled onto the Neno will be stripped off, so it will end up being the concept initially pitched. The reason why it's important for me to remake and work with this concept again is that I feel it has potential to be an interesting experience (although not necessarily a game). There's something very innocent and nostalgic about blowing around a balloon.

The game will now be about a boy who has lost his balloon (so there is no longer a boy from space). The player will then be left to explore the universe and fly higher up or collect things to fly down and reunite the balloon with the boy. The balloon will always be moving upwards in a certain speed unless the player collect things which will weigh it down for a while, and then it starts moving up again. A very simple premise for what is a very simple game.

Although I initially thought I was going to reuse the art assets from Neno, I ended up redoing everything again and it looks much nicer now when there's no time constraint and absolute creative freedom. In fact I am enjoying creating assets for this game so much, that I ended up having made the background for the first level within one week, but there's still a long way to go.