Week 1: Introduction
We were introduced new targets of the first term of year 2 Game design and art. Our out comes will be a portfolio, a site about our game, a weekly log and a GDD of our game, while GDD is a new term to year 2 Game design and art students.
What is a GDD?
GDD, as known as Game Design Document, is a clear and detailed comprehensive document includes concepts, story, characters, level design, mechanics, sound and music, market development and all other technical specifications of a game. A good GDD can be used as a blueprint for group of game developers to execute a game base on it.
A GDD should includes
Gameplay
Narrative (Story)
World building
Characters
Mechanics
Visual art style
Sound and Music
Control Mapping
Market
And more…
GDD class activity ( 1 )
To have a further understanding for a GDD, we had a class activity to fill in key concepts of a GDD. Me and my classmates worked as a group to completed questions provided.
We first did the world building section. We selected the essential experience, genre and setting randomly based on our personal information. After generating our ideas, they turned out as a hectic puzzle game based in the Victorian era of London in a zombie dominated world…?
GDD class activity ( 2 )
After the first section, we were provided a one page GDD to complete in order to present our concept more formally.
Week 1’s section introduced me to a new important concept that Game design students should learn. GDD is a long and detailed document, which is a time consuming task. I am going to spend the whole term completing the GDD bit by bit.
Week 2: Game spaces
and world
building
Remember the class activity I did in week 1, we need to have a simple idea of our game before making a GDD. And the section we did before completing a GDD was world building. We learned that World building is the essential element to start off a whole game project.
Class activity : Mind map
For the class activity, We spent 12 mins drawing a mind map to elaborate our game ideas. Those game ideas built up concepts for our game world. Below is the mind map I completed
I came up with a concept of Halloween, and I developed it into a world of horror and sweets. In order to not overlap the weekly log too much with my research, the details about the inspirations will be in my research section that can be found on the home page!
The mind map were some basic ideas of my game and I am tented to develop them into a complete game world by doing research and drawing throughout the project.
Class activity : World building
After having ideas of our own world, we experienced world building with a world profile. Me and my classmates worked in groups and filled in the questions the world building worksheet provided. About the basic facts of our world, it was a place where magic was common, danger was oppressive and which made daily life a walking nightmare.
I think it was a really good activity as most of us tended to build a horror theme for my project, and it inspired us for the further development of my game.
After the class activity, I was given a worksheet that introduced different types of narrative framework for architectures in games. It presented the structures, mechanics, interactivity, functionality and more of what our game world should consider about from the players’ perspective.
The worksheet includes different functions of machines in gameplay, it would definitely help me with the mechanic section of GDD
Week 3: Concept art
Concept art is a visual support for players to understand the ideal game world in developers’ mind. I am going to put so much effort into concept art as my game was intended to make connections with people who are interested in egl fashion and visual culture, so that I need to demonstrate good game art to increase the chance of players appreciating my game
Class activity: Mapping out
We thought about the essential experience we would like to bring to players, we need to have two core emotions, after that, we write them down on a post-it and mapped out the area our emotion belonged to. My essential experience was “Oddly funny”, as what I would like to bring to players is horror while amusement comes afterwards, so I mapped my post-it to a space between anxiety and pleasant.
After lunch, we explored different art styles, we learnt pixel art, anime, cartoon, cel shading and more. I decided to have a 2D cartoon for my game, as it is a horror and amusing game, I believe a cute cartoon art style plus the horrible results of death gives a good visual contrast.
About my understanding of concept art, I have been doing art subject portfolios for more than 3 years. After relistening to teachers’ suggestions plus my personal experience, I have the confidence to demonstrate my concept art well in my work.
Week 4: Character designs
After world building, we start thinking about the characters living inside our worlds. Teachers introduced an idea, call forms allow functions, which basic forms are essential before developing an accomplished character. We are suggested to
use simple figures to shape out characters, a way for us to brainstorm about the appearance of our characters.
Class activity: Focalizing character
We were given a worksheet to fill in basic information of our character,it helped us to shape our character better. Below is the worksheet I completed. I was satisfied with the design of it and so I made her as the main character of my game. The details about the inspirations of this character will be in my research section that can be found on the homepage!
Class activity: Collage
Recalling back to forms of characters, our next activity is to make a collage with magazine pages that represents a character as an experiment of creating a figure
Recalling back to forms of characters, our next activity was to make a collage with magazine pages that represents a character as an experiment of creating a figure. I tried to make a funny character, I cut elements that represented human beings such as clothes, human body, and furniture. It turned out to be a man with back pain wearing a scarf, a skirt, and a pair of boots standing on the sofa.
The importance of character designs is the same as concept art, the development of plot is based on different characters’ decisions. I will be focusing on developing characters for my game this week.
Week 5: Narrative
Class activity: deck of stories
For this week’s class activity we spent a long period to complete the task. After having basic concepts of world building and characters, it is time to elaborate the ideas to form a plot. Me and my classmate worked as individuals for an hour to complete a narrative design for our GDDs. After completing the draft, we read each other’s stories, then we asked each other questions and gave suggestions.
The story:
“The story is based in Retro Candy Shop in Hollow hearts street in the UK during the late 30s.
Retro candy shop has designed its own mascot to attract young customers, it was made into a plush toy and was named Jazzie. Jazzie has seat in the glass-fronted showcase since the day it arrived the shop.
There was a secret that the shop owner didn’t know. A drop of human blood was accidentally dropped onto the plush toy, which made it have a soul and self consciousness from the day it was made.
The plush toy has been knowing that it was trapped in a man-made body, it spent countless days sitting motionless, watching kids come and go, longing to break free.
On the 31st of October, a mysterious fog covered Hollow heart streets, the fog awoke Jazzie and it was given a power to control its body. Jazzie jumped off from the showcase and escaped from the shop. When it was thinking it finally could start off a new journey, it went into a dangerous place with chocolate lava and sweets monsters, what difficulties would Jazzie be facing…?“
For the suggestions that I have given, I need to think if my game balances the “cute” and “horror” elements effectively, if the characters are believable and engaging in both the cute and horror aspects of the story? Or do some evil characters have their cute sides?
Class activity: deck of stories (guest section)
We were happy to have guest Miss Amber Boothe to introduce a more professional concept about game design. In this workshop, me and my classmates worked in groups and made up a murder game story including set up, characters and plot twists. After working on it, we present our plot to other groups and leave comments to each other.
Below was the story me and my classmates created after discussions. The story was about a victim called Kelly, she was non- stop burning after her death. Police officers tried to investigate who was the murderer, but it turned out Kelly was the murderer herself, she was affected by the curse of the house where she was living.
I had so much fun in this workshop, I think it was really relaxing to combine multiple ideas to make up a story and I also enjoy listening to others’ projects. Besides, I think the worksheet’s template could work as a guide for me to think of plot twists and solution solving plot lines for my game!
Week 6: Game loops and
game systems + feedback
Game loop is the core of the gameplay and players follow the flow of the game loop to complete tasks of the game. A good game loop should be able to let players have opportunities to ‘grow their skills’ and be better at playing the game.
Each game has its core game loop, our teacher showed some examples of different game loops. I was surprised that there are many types of game loop. There is no certain format for a game loop, while game loop was a new concept to me and I have never tried making a game loop before, it made me worried if I can write a good game loop.
Below is the core game loop of my game in level gameplay mode, hoping it is understandable.
Week 7: Formative feedback
We did not have lessons this week, instead, we had one-on-one feedback between student and teacher about our projects. Before the formative feedback, we needed to complete a one page GDD to start off our discussion with the information of our game so the teacher could leave better comments.
Below is the one page GDD and the plus a one page document I completed
After demonstrating the GDD, my teacher and I discussed the major and minor focus of our game. For me, concept art and character designs are equally important to me as my target of making this game is to present egl culture through my game art. The minor focus will be the platform specification and control mapping, because the game I would like to make is a mobile game, it does not require a game console or other cross-platform device to support the gameplay.
The picture below was the comment from my teacher. She suggested me to look into a cartoon called “Dumb ways to die”. There were loveable characters presenting gruesome death in an amusing way which is similar to the research I did with my game concept (Happy tree friends). Also, she suggested me to think of the goal for players, the motivation for them to continue my game.
The comments from my teacher were useful and guided me to rethink the target of my game from players’ perspectives
Week 8: Audio
We had a guest who was a professional on the sound and music for games. She introduced audios that she needed to conduct when she produced a game, such as UI, background music, dialogue voicing, foley and Walla. It was surprising to learn that the game includes so many different types of audio, also I understood it could be detailed when it came to sounds in game, as the game we made is also a world we build, it is possible for a world having different sounds.
It was lucky to have her introducing, I will take today’s sharing as reference and have different types of sound and music in my GDD
Week 10: Pitching game
ideas
We had a presentation between me and my classmates. We were all required to make a 5 slides presentation to introduce our game, before each other’s prestations, we were given note cards for us to leave comments to our peers about what they did well and things they could add more/ improve for their projects, we have a Q&A section after each presentation for better understanding towards each other’s concepts and ideas.
Below are the 5 slides I prepared for the presentation, (cover page excluded) it included the log line of my game, one page GDD, 3 game pillars, level design and a character design.
The note cards below were suggestions I received from my classmates, there were few comments inspired me to reflect on
1. I should be more detail about the concept of “cute” and horror” and I would definitely present this idea through character designs
2. How about the difficulty?
3. Keep up with the art style
I found my classmates’ work inspiring as they were all hard working and put so much effort into their game, I should keep up for the rest of the days I got and continue working hard on my project as well 🙂