Game Design

A few weeks have passed since the scene was first built, and the game is finally playable, with all of the prefab objects in a fully working condition. As well as this, tutorial/ side-puzzle zones have been added before and after each of the main puzzles. An additional object added to the scene was a dividing line between each puzzle, that cleared the player’s frozen objects. We added this as we thought going back to puzzles in order to unfreeze objects was not adding to the ludic experience, rather creating annoying and repetitive gameplay. The puzzles were finished, and the game was winnable, yet it was quite clear that the mechanics of the gameplay were still not fully expressed throughout UI elements, and this was the last stage to add before playtesting would happen. ...

After Finalizing our designs for the puzzles, we took them from the whiteboard to the scene. With a range of prefab objects, including bridges, boxes and buttons , we assembled the first layout in Unity, for Project Red. For now, not all of the levels are playable, as the prefab objects do not have all of their functionality, i.e. being able to be frozen in time. From here scripts will be added, and variables will be tweaked in order to make the levels playable. In the meantime, tutorial-style and inbetween puzzles will be added in mid-sections, in order to assist with player learning, but also to fill the scene. ...

This is a presentation that the both of created to better express the mechanics of our game to our lecturers as well as how all of the puzzles will connect together in a way that doesn’t feel disconnected from the aesthetic of the game, we were happy with the response when it came to the mechanics storyboard and how it cleared up and confusion in terms of how the game will work ...

Finally some use for the whiteboard I've been hoarding Pre-Process: After deciding on the mechanics, it was time to start designing the puzzles in the game. Although the game is obviously digital, it is much quicker to design something with a pen and paper, or in our case a big whiteboard. With multiple colours of pens in our hand, we set an evening aside to design a finite set of puzzles that we could use to represent the extent of the mechanics, whilst also presenting a range of challenges to the player. From this design session we came away with 3 things project name ...

Decided on time game concept Decided on freeze “gun” and “scrolling” through time Prototyped in more depth the “freeze gun” Why this was a challenge 1 & 2 Once we had got an animation team, we needed to tell them what game we wanted to make for sure. We had shown them both of our prototypes, and they liked both of them a lot. They were most excited about the time-changing game, and so were we. So we decided that would be the game that we would be working on with them for the rest of the project. The 2 main mechanics, other than standard platformer mechanics, i.e. running, jumping, pushing blocks would be using the scroll to travel through time, a total of 3 periods (past, present and future). As well as this the player would be equipped with a tool that would allow them to freeze objects in time (i.e. a “Freeze Gun”). This would allow the player to take objects through time/ keep them in their current state in time. The player would be able to freeze a maximum of 2 objects (left click and right click). To unfreeze objects, the player must left click with the mouse over that object again. This would hopefully add a catch that objects could block the player so they cannot unfreeze an object that needs to be unfrozen. ...

One part of the brief for this game project was that all assets were to be created by an animation team. To do this, we needed an animation team. The format for finding our team was in 2 parts: a one minute presentation by us presenting who we are and what we wanted to do, which was viewed by all of the animation teams, and then a “speed dating” session where animators interested in us and our ideas came to us to speak one-on-one in more detail about our ideas. ...

Game Idea: This post is regarding a prototyping of one of the original concepts that we came up with given the brief.Click here to see the premise for this idea: Plan: For this prototype the both of us worked on the of the mechanics with intention for it to make it to our final build or at the very least be able to salvage parts of the code that was well written ...

Game Idea: This post is regarding a prototyping of one of the original concepts that we came up with given the brief. Click here to see the premise for this idea: Initial Roadblock : Our first concern was: is this even possible? It is not a standard mechanic, so will not be provided by the Unity Engine, so we would have to build our own system that enables us to create 2 dimensional light that can we traversed (collided with). ...

We deliberated for a few days to decide on which game ideas would be the most suited to the project, and would be representing of what we wanted to make in a game. The action game, although exciting, was going to be to narrow of a scope to be able to display our skills and ideas. The physics game, although very interesting, and potentially unique, it didn’t fit the brief very well, as it would be not very well suited for the animators, as much of the animation would have to be done by us in the Unity engine. This idea can be kept for a later project. ...

For our physics game we wanted to create really different mechanics that would interact with the physics engine but also felt natural and intuitive to the player After we had designed a few different puzzles games and an action game we wanted to branch out into a different type of game something that we usually wouldn’t think to create so we decided that it would be an interesting to produce a physics based game where the player would have to navigate through the would using the physics system but with a twist ...