Darryl Long

This week we started another group project to create a new game, the title of the project is Twenty 20 there are only a few requirements for the game to follow:

• Must be on android tablet
• Levels loaded are either from ASCII map text files or CSV from a spreadsheet
• There must be at least 20 levelst
• The game should be fixed screen (unless you have a good reason to have it otherwise)

For this project, I am working with Nick who I have yet to work with but after the first week, I think we should be able to get a lot of work done on this project. During the brainstorming period, we created a MindMup and from there worked on our idea. We initially started with looking at the game Binding of Isaac and its use of fixed cameras but using multiple rooms as levels. We wanted to build something off of this idea and I thought to create something that is relevant to the project title, working off this idea I came to the conclusion of having a blind man as the main character. We then thought it would be a fun idea to have a blind man working in a factory that is filled with traps and that the movement could be that similar to Slayaway camp or a mini game in Skylanders where the player can only move in up, down, left and right directions and they have to move all the way in that direction until they hit something.

We like this idea of a grid based puzzle game and continued to develop it further, but this iterative process of brainstorming and deciding on ideas that we like was extremely helpful and quite effective. We created some traps for the game which are as listed:

• Bear trap – kills the player instantly
• Fire trap – turns on and off periodically and kills the player if touched
• TNT – player triggers the TNT if they come to close proximity and after a short period it explodes and kills everything close to it.
• Whirlpool trap – if the player runs into it they die, but if they walk alongside it their direction shifts.

During the pitching we received several negative feedback, especially considering that the fact the main character is a blind man, and the movement mechanics are based on the fact that he is a blind man. This can be considered insulting as the game pokes at the disabilities of blind people,  I never even considered it this way and it shows that I should be vigilant when thinking of ideas as they might be in poor taste. We then reconvened to change our idea, we were still sold on the game mechanics being moving in straight lines on a grid based puzzle but the narrative and motivations needed to change. We wrote down ideas and we finally came up with the idea of I Really Need This Job, an intern that is working for this company because he desperately needs this job. The player is an intern working for Villains Inc, in the traps distribution center and their boss has told them to fetch them some coffee. They also stated that “if the coffee is cold they are fired, literally”. We really liked the idea of this narrative and from there we came up with another mechanic for the game and that is the Hot-o-meter, it measures the hotness of the cup and is a turn counter for the player, this limits how many moves the player can make and works with the narrative. From here, we also created another trap being the rake trap, which stuns you and delays you for a turn to complete the puzzle.

After creating the changes we repitched the idea to the group and to a number of Audio students in the hope that they will be willing to work with us in creating the assets required for the project. This time the game was accepter with a better reception, it was a clear improvement from our original idea and I know that I am also quite happy with how it turned out. We recorded further feedback and began working on the appropriate documentation, high concept doc, feature spec doc and tech spec. This week of brainstorming ideas, creating concepts, pitching it to an audience, receiving and analysing feedback, adjusting the concept was extremely useful and it also has helped me be more adaptable when realising ideas and not get stuck down with a single idea.