Pete's Lesson Review - 27/09/2012

Continuing from the week previous to the last one, we carried on with prototyping and got into new groups for a new concept to be built. This time around, my team-mates were Josh C, Nathan, Liam S, Becky & Rob.

With the new project, we got to create our own 3 constraints for the development. We started with these three at first:

• ·         3-4 Players
• ·         Specified Board
• ·         A Strategic Factor

We came up with a fantasy based strategy game similar to that of dungeons and dragons. The idea of the game was to defeat your human opponents on the board by out out-strategizing them. With class roles which have different abilities, statistics & specified units dependant on the class chosen. The objective is to defend your own base while attacking your enemy’s base, eventually knocking them out or being knocked out.

Every character would have their own individual board based to them.  When designing the board at the beginning of the game, you could then add different pieces to a middle board, changing the game every time.

After a while of development though, as a team we scrapped the idea because of how over-complicated we had made it. We all had different thoughts about where the project was and in the end, confused. Scrapping the idea, we created 3 different constraints from the original 3 that we had. These were:

• ·         Single Player
• ·         Puzzle Game
• ·         Facial Hair Implementation

With the last constraint, we got to go a bit crazy with idea development. From having some crazy levels that were concentrated about being a small being in facial hair to using a board as a vehicle; the final idea was to be a Flea living in a beard which has got lost from its owner. The task is to get back to the original owner. Facing ordeals and small obstacles through real world zones such as a Barbers, Pub and a Police Station, you have to complete a series of levels in every zone.

Up to now, we have designed the different types of mechanics to be used and obstacles you’ll face, a small achievement system which awards you at the end of zones & small mini games which you have to find in game (similar to Rayman Origins). We have assigned ourselves a zone each where we’ll develop individually a level based on the zone and then in next lesson, we’ll create unit measurements on graph paper and design them for real.