Summary

This assignment was all about giving us exposure and experience with making a GDD and all that it entails. We were supposed to describe a fairly simple game and write about all aspects of it. Then we were tasked with identifying what genres and environments work best with each other.  We played three games and had to report on various aspects of it’s gameplay. Then finally we talked about one of our game ideas and what it’s about and the mechanics, the story, and much more.

Task 1

Snake: you have a “snake” that is trying to eat the “apple” which it has been remade and reskinned to look different but the premise is the same. There will be “apples” that you have to eat, and when you eat “those” apples you will grow longer, further increasing the difficulty as you have to stay away from the walls and yourself. If you hit either of those you will die and have to restart.

Task 2

The goal of the game is to get as big as possible. I would classify the genre as a top down fast paced arcade survival game. The game mechanics are moving up, down, left, or right. The game is very easy to navigate, as all you have to do is press start. The only rules are get the red block and don’t touch yourself or the walls. The players motivation is to get as big as possible and to flex on your friends. There aren’t really any risks or rewards you just get bigger and bigger. I believe the game is well balanced because it is just pure skill.

Task 3

I’d say that the environment space like outer space, the genre science fiction would work best, as most of the sci-fi games are set in space. The genre for sci-fi gives you a lot of room to work with as you aren’t limited by the bounds of reality and you can be as creative as you want to be, be it crazy futuristic technology, or an exotic alien race.

The FPS shooter genre has multiple environments that could fit it, but I’d say that the modern world is the best, as it limits what you can make, so balancing issues would be very straight-forward. The modern setting would make players feel closer to home and would give more of a understanding feeling.

The genre of survival is one of the most flexible genres as it can be set anywhere, there has been very successful survival games, in the past, present, future, alien planets, underwater, and many more. They are so robust because the main focus of the game still stays the same, survive, and no matter the environment it is still the same.

Task 4

Shadow Hunt 3:

1. Fighting
2. Anyone that has a mobile device
3. To beat everyone and complete the story
4. Three fighting factions
5. The overall feel of the game is very smooth and looks very good

Dino Hunt 2:

1. Shooter
2. People with a PC
3. To kill all the Dinosaurs
4. No narrative
5. The overall feel of the game is very bad, bad graphics, bad textures, bad mechanics

Red Dead Redemption 2

1. Western-themed Action Adventure
2. Gamers that enjoyed the first RDR and GTA series
3. The goal is to make money and just to have fun
4. A gang had a heist go wrong and has lawmen after them and somehow need to make money and survive long enough to head out west
5. The overall feel of the game is amazing, it has amazing graphics, the mechanics all make sense and work, it plays very smoothly

Task 5

The overall “flavor” of my game idea would be Super Hexagon, as you have to maneuver around. The player’s role is not very important, as there is no real narrative, you aren’t really pretending to be anyone else, as you will just have premade geometric models. The game’s model is a square, just a four sided square that you could possibly change the color. The gameplay is just navigating a maze with a time limit, you move instantly to the next wall that you hit. The challenges that a player will face, are maze size and time limit. The player will have to think of whether to take time thinking about their approach or just go and run the risk of hitting a dead end. The game would fall into a escape puzzle genre, as mazes are puzzles and you have to get out of it. People would want to play this game because it gives the “escape” genre kind of a new fresh take of it. The target audience would be those who like the challenge of puzzles and the feeling after you beat them. The saturation of this genre is rather high and you can see this because the top puzzle games have ranging from thousands of downloads to over tens of millions. The games setting is some sort of testing chamber. This game will have a level system, each one getting harder and harder, that being bigger mazes and less time given. The conditions of victory are that you get to the end will the allotted time. The game’s narrative will be that people are being tested in the future for possible job placements.

What I Learned

I learned that it is very important to keep yourself organized and to put some quality into your work and make it into something that you can safely put your name on it.