Before the holiday break began, my lecturer, Vanissa, gave me some con-crits in the form of post-it notes on how my blog was and what I could do to improve it.
The points included:
Side level ideas
Stealth mechanic
Maps & Skill tree
Context of Rats in London (Cost of Living & Gentrification)
These were interesting points, especially the last one, and so I considered these points when continuing to do up my blog. One thing that really struck me with confusion was the Map. While I love environments in games, the environment and world-building aspect has always been the hardest as I can never agree on one thing entirely. This is a weakness for me as a Game Designer, but I included the reasoning behind the town’s name and other historical contexts. As for a map, I will have to consider how spaced out everything is. Since this is based on a suburban greater London town, the map would be quite huge.
However, aside from the maps, I’ve looked into a stealth mechanic and Rats in London, which you can see on my blog. Making these posts definitely gave me more confidence about my setting and the implications of Rats on humans and vice versa. Rats as a species are something that humans have lived with since the dawn of time, you could say our pests. Wherever humans go, rats will follow as long as there’s food and warmth. Right now, I’m happy with the pacing of my blog and while I still have much more to do, it would be great to get as much done as possible before the event.
Week 12. . .
The interesting thing about overthinking and procrastination is sometimes they can actually evolve into innovation and creativity in the short term. Letting an idea grow in your mind in the short term with a deadline and a plan can actually lead to innovation and creativity.
Jay Shetty
So we didn’t end up having the Nutshell exhibit.. but it has given me some extra time to polish my game. I think I needed that extra time anyway, as I have a few things (including this post) to finish up on. This week has been one of catching up, I was never really “behind” but like the quote above states, I was procrastinating a bit on my work. Stuck in a loop of motivation and demotivation that cancelled each other out, I felt like the blog’s work wasn’t good enough. Did I do too little? Was I doing it right? Too many questions with too little time to fully reason with them.
The #1 thing a creative can do is to keep going even when you “don’t want to do it”. Pushing myself to do a task anyway ends up in me enjoying it, and the fear of failure is what makes me stuck in those restless cycles. I polished up the blog, using the Rat model I made to pose them in different ways, including an adorable heart-shaped pose that emphasises the “cuteness” of the game. I have to tell myself that whatever I did was done to the best of my ability and I think I’ve poured a lot into my blog. This post is sort of a pseudo-reflection, the real one will be in the next post, but I’m really proud of the journey that has come full circle and I will adding the finishing touches to this blog!