Reflections on: Smash-o-Saurus

A "reflections on" post without an "in development" post indicates a short period of production. Which is very true for this first DADIU-production in this semester.
The premise is basically that we had one week (16-person team) to develop a game with a set of conditions handed to us, where the most limiting one was that the target audience had to be tweens.
The game we ended up developing was a monster smashing game for boys in that age group. You play as a boy in a monster suit smashing stuff, the more stuff you smashed the bigger you grew and at the end you would be an actual HUGE monster going around smashing whole cities.
The challenge was to keep smashing stuff as your chaosmeter would go down unless you caused chaos. So the game was meant as katamari, except smashing stuff rather than collecting stuff.

Postitives: 

• Limits reached. This game was MASSIVE! I think that during this one week the team showed how effective we could work. Considering that we are 16 people working together for the first time, the fact that we attempted to do something of this scale and to a certain extent actually managed something of this size (even though cut down in size, it's still a big game). The game is of course deeply flawed, but the process showed us what the art team is capable of (being only 4 vs. 8 programmers). It also showed us what the programmers can do within UNITY. We were pushing UNITY quite a lot with the massive amounts of destructable buildings in the game.
• Target audience, check! During production we managed to test the game on our target audience (midway through production). The test, although small and containing a very crude version of the game showed us that we were on the right direction. The boys that tested the game were all fairly excited about the premise of being a monster smashing stuff and growing into an even cooler monster. Of course a lot of times kids just get excited about new stuff, however considering the crude nature of our build, it was positive that they still enjoyed running around smashing random stuff.
• My designerly ways. I'm glad I managed not to lose myself as a designer during this production. This is by far the biggest team, I've ever worked in and I'm happy that I managed to design the way that I prefer to design even within a bigger team. Basically I like to design the play before the game and I feel like this game showcases that. It is of course deeply flawed, but I hope the team kind of understands how I work and design now.

Negatives:

• Scope is key! Again it seems like I'm involved in a project going way out of scope. Thinking back on the conceptualisation is a big question mark. How could we ever think that this game would be feasible within the one-week time limit? The ridiculuos amount of props that the art team had to do, the three different character models, each with their sets of animations, massive destructable buildings (that Unity can't quite handle), levels built within each other? What were we thinking? Completely out of scope. So although the whole team was onboard with the concept and excited about it, it could not make up for the fact that this project was just out of scope.
• Design for the format. The game had a condition that said that is had to run in a browser with the keyboard and mouse controls. Even though I knew about this way before conceptualisation I still ended up designing a control scheme (and game) that would have been better suited for a console. One of the main mechanics of swiping in different directions (in order to smash) would have been much better suited to a double analog stick control scheme. This was meant as a PC browser but was designed as a console executable. This is completely on my shoulders as a designer and for next time I will definately keep in mind to design for the format and use the affordances and constraints that come along with it.
• Where is plan B? This again links very closely to the out-of-scope problem. First of all, we should have seen that it was out of scope sooner than we did. Second of all we should have had a plan b (or a cut-down plan) so that we could scale the game down if needed. Instead we saw the problem and kept on going. This is a team reflection however personally I know that I have problems killing my darlings, which I should probably try to deal with, e.g. the console controls of this game was something I should have dealt with instead of just leaving it there, because I thought "this would be good on a console". Well we weren't designing a console game, so I should have dealt with it.

All in all, this game was more of a learning experience than a make a great game experience. However it was a HUGE learning experience and although the game that came out at the other end wasn't good, I think it had/have potential to be really good. I think we managed to do a lot during a one week production and can only imagine that whatever we make for the big production later in the semester will be awe-inspiring. In the meantime you can go play Smash-o-Saurus.

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.

Reflections on: Neno

Neno is the first game project I have worked on at Mediatechnology and Games (apparently just recently redubbed to Games). The game was made by team consisting of four people with a development phase of around two months, starting from mid-october 2010 and ending in mid-december 2010. My role in this team was designer, writer and artist.

Our vision was to create a browser game that was relaxing and explorative. The game is about a boy from space who has been accidently been left behind on earth by his parents and now he must, with the help of a balloon, make his way back to space. On his journey upwards, he must upgrade his balloon to a better one in order to be able to move all the way. Meeting all kinds of weird people with balloons, he helps them do whatever they needed to have done and they in return give him a new balloon.

The player is in charge of the wind and blows the boy around by mouse clicks. The main mechanic of the game is to collect objects, where objects that fly by their own power contribute towards updrift and objects that fall from the sky contribute to the opposite.

Positives:

• Consistent artstyle. I pretty much had my way with the art, as I was the artist, which caused a lot of work, but at the same time I made sure I was happy with it. The artstyle is obviously consistent throughout due to the fact that only I had a hand in it. However I do realise at the same time that especially the later levels lacked a polish that was there at the first couple of levels. This was due to the fact that a) time was an issue and so the later levels were slightly rushed. b) the time issue also manifested itself in the programming department which made me lose motivation as I could tell my graphics weren't implemented the way I wanted it to. But despite this, I'm still satisfied with the graphics and I think they tell the story well enough.
• Massive learning experience. I have learned a lot of do's and don't's during the development of this game. As this is the first game I've actually made with a team, I have obviously learned alot about team dynamics and how to communicate to a team consisting of people with very different backgrounds and tastes. Apart communication, one of the main things I have taken from this project is also an estimate of scale and project managing, which I feel is one of the main reasons why this game fell through (but more about that in the negatives section).
• A very different game. Neno is a game that is fairly difficult to pin into a genre, which was what we were going for. One of the things we discussed in the group at the beginnning of the process was, that we did not want to make a platformer or a similar very tested genre, as it was perhaps the easy way out. So we instead went out to do something that wasn't seen very often, and although the game completely fell through, I am still happy about our choice. Rather do something new and fail, than doing something old and do it ok (not great, as I believe it is not in our capabilities to do an outstanding platformer, or at least not in my capabilities as a designer(I generally have a problem with sidescrolling platformers, playing them and designing them)).

Negatives

• Disjointed design. The design of Neno is completely disjointed and renders the game slightly unplayable actually. Our first thoughts with the game was to make something that relied heavily on mechanic, but as we redesigned the game somehow we felt the need to insert a bit of narrative to explain goals and assert motivations. Another reason why narrative suddenly grew so big in our game was because the original plan was to not have a "level"-based progression but rather a fluid experience throughout the game without any "clear" goals, like a sandbox. However there were disagreements in the group whether this approach would be a good game or not and we ended up putting in levelling points and so on. This in turn sparked a lot of narrative and we suddenly had to explain why and what the player had to do in the game, which turned it into a fairly adventure-esque kind of game. But still the game had a very strange controlscheme where the player has limited control which works against the adventure-feel the game ended up having. All in all, a very disjointed game in many ways.
• Out of scope and nowhere near polished. This game started within scope, but suddenly exploded in all kind of directions very quickly. The narrative grew gigantic which caused the scripting to grow which in turn made our programmer very busy. The levels also grew from being one screensize wide and only scrolling vertically to several screen sizes wide and with wrapping, this is something that was felt in the programming department, and the wrapping didn't properly until the last week, which is not good enough. I'm probably most unhappy about this, as I feel we probably still could be in scope and provided a tighter experience if the level sizes were kept smaller, but our keyword of exploration and a narrow level structure didn't sit well with the other members. I think it also grew out of scale due to the fact that we weren't sure who we were designing this game for, which leads to the next point.
• In-team communication wasn't clear enough. This is quite possibly the culprit for our shortcomings in the game. We had not formulated our goals clear enough from the beginning which caused us to design for ourselves. Big mistake, as we had very different tastes as regards to what makes a good game. I like a sandbox experience and have a more toylike approach towards games compared to some of the other members who preferred a very competitive and challenge based experience. This caused the game to go from casual browser (which was very me) to a game that grew too big and heavy for a browser, although with time and redesign the concept would probably still have worked in some way. What we should have done was to formulate very clear goals, such as audience, technology, platform and our personal intentions. This would have focalized our game and contributed towards tighter design as we would be working towards the same goal.

Massive post, but the game itself is pretty massive compared to other stuff I have made.
The game is close to unplayable due to many factors. However I will treat this mainly as a learning experience and I am happy that we chose to do something difficult and try to think of completely new mechanics rather than relying on a set of used and tested one and modifying those. (Although I have absolutely no problem with people who do this as long as they do it well)

Reflections on: Hello Neighbor!

Hello Neighbor! was my second fully developed game and was made for an assignment in my class. The assignment was basically just to fully create (involving) coding a game by yourself. The development time of this game was less than a month, starting about end of september and releasing in mid-october 2010.

The game was made in the AGS-engine, as it was the only programming experience I had and I didn't feel like I wanted (or could) learn a new programming language in the short amount of time, I had to make this game.

It's a very short puzzle-exploration game about making the residents of a small apartment block interact with each other.

Positives:

• Complete. By which I mean that I am happy with the completion level of this game. The artstyle was consistent (although again, not very pretty, and also kept in the same vein as The wife who wasn't there in order for me to save time and recycle some interface elements) and also every single action in the game had a unique feedback. This took me quite a lot of time to think of all the different reactions but I'm happy that I did, rather than just copy/pasting the reactions. I like to think the player will be more tempted towards playing again, knowing that all the reactions are different from each other.
• Within scope. This is the first game, I've developed with a deadline, so I am happy I managed to set up scope for the project that I allowed me to complete and polish the game. Instead of just barely managing.
• From scratch. This was also the first game I created from scratch (coding wise) as I used a template for The wife who wasn't there. This boosted my confidence slightly in the coding department and also makes me willing to try and learn other programming languages rather than being afraid of coding, as I was before.

Negatives:

• Lack of motivation. The game lacks a motivating factor. When I conceptualised the game I thought: "Of course, people will play and find this game interesting." However this was based on the fact that I thought the different reactions of the residents would be enough to entice player to explore the game. Originally there were also far more residents rather than just six, which of course makes the amount of unique solutions even bigger, but as I scaled the game down and tested it myself, I realised that reading the responses might not be that great. So I introduced the cheap solution of a trophy/achievement system, which actually did the trick and afforded multiple plays, which had been my goal.
• Lack of sound. There is not a lot of sound in this game, and sounds and music in general are not my strongest points. The lack of sound makes the game rather "empty", although the little sound I did have in the game, I was happy with, as it conveyed the theme and simplicity of the game, I was especially happy with the whistling my brother did for me in the main menu. However the lack of sound is still a bit disappointing, and I probably should invest a bit more time in this department in the future.
• Consistent (but yet slightly boring) artstyle. I was very happy with the consistency of the artstyle, but yet with such a simple game as Hello Neighbor! is, it comes off as a bit boring. But I stuck with this artstyle due to the fact that it is fast and also because it allowed me to recycle art from The wife who wasn't there. However I feel now that perhaps I should have tried a different artstyle for this game, as it is so simple and consists of not that many assets. A more exciting artstyle would probably have improved the experience of this game immensely.

Overall I'm happy with this game. It's not very big or very beautiful, but it is complete, simple and easy to get into and also it afforded some replayability (not much though) which I am happy with. Also I was within scope which is good and this also gives me some sort of insight into my ability in regards to the time I need to finish games.

Reflections on: The wife who wasn't there

The wife who wasn't there was my first fully developed game about a husband who came home from work only to find that his wife was gone.

The game is a fairly traditional point and click adventure game made in the Adventure Game Studio engine by Chris Jones. The development time of this game was about 8 months on/off, starting with concept development and puzzle planning from september 2009 (although the story idea was from 2008), actual production (writing/scripting/drawing) from january 2010 and published on bigbluecup.com in late April 2010.

Positives:

• An experience and proof to myself that I could actually make a game. This game definately boosted my confidence as designer.
• General good feedback on the puzzles. This was something I was very worried about, since I didn't have a lot of confidence in my puzzle-designing skills, so it meant a great deal to me that players could figure out how to solve the puzzles and that they were logical and apparently also easy. However easy is not a bad thing in my book, as I think there is nothing worse than being stuck at a puzzle in an adventure game.
• Consistent artstyle. This is something I spent a lot of time on, making every single item, button and cursor look consistent, so I was rather happy it was acknowledged. It might not be the prettiest game, but it looks like it all comes from the same universe, and communicates my ideas and also the simplicity of the story.

Negatives:

• Lack of visual distinction between interactive vs. non-interactive objects. This partly comes down to the artstyle which doesn't differentiate between different kinds of objects but also because I didn't think of adding a rollover function on the objects. So the player would actually have to click objects to know whether an object can be interacted with or not.
• Some weak puzzles. Even though I did get good feedback on the puzzles, there were still some weak ones around. Such as "non-existent puzzles" puzzles which are basically not puzzles but rather something the player randomly stumbles upon and solves without any involvement except clicking on an object.
• Lack of direction. This was something I noticed when watching my cousins play as they didn't really understand what they were supposed to do when the game started. I believe this is due to a lack of information at the beginnning and the motive to play the game might not be clear enough in the game itself. (The motive being, that the husband has to remember what his wife told him yesterday)
• Room design was slightly icky. By this I mean that not all rooms had apparent exit/entrance ways, so players didn't always know if walking to the edge of the screen would lead to another room or to nowhere. This would probably be improved with some sort of visual clue, for example doors or carpets leading off the screen.

Overall I was/am satisfied with this game despite it's many flaws, it was a good learning experience and I have learned both to keep a consistent artstyle but also how to use the AGS engine, which makes me more prepped towards doing more adventure games. I've also gained quite a lot of confidence in my puzzle-designing skills and quite a lot of do's and dont's for the games I'm working on now and for the future.