Category: Uncategorized

Games Development

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Game Design

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In this semester, I will be creating a GDD for a game. Here, I have documented everything leading up to the final product, from weekly lectures to sketches and development. In this section of my portfolio, you’ll see me struggle and persevere as a concept artist, character designer, and a story teller.

Brief

Now that the deadline is less than 24 hours away, I want to close this project by reflecting what I have accomplished over the course of 13 weeks.

One thing I want to mention is that my goal for this project was space out work evenly throughout my week so I don’t get burned out easily. I found out the way I can efficiently work on this project was to allocate enough time for me. Self care is also very important to me as it boosts my motivation to work on a certain task and it gets it done efficiently. Unfortunately, I am someone who finds it hard to work under the wrong circumstances, so maximising and planning my day in advance really helped me out. In this project, I pushed my boundaries in terms of how much a single person could produce, creating 7 characters in a month served to be a difficult task, but pulled through in the end.

However, as a personal goal, I feel like there were aspects in my art development I could’ve had the chance to hone, but was too intimidated by the scale of the task to even begin trying. For example, I could’ve drawn out some of the environments in greater detail. Although the art style I have chosen for this project allowed me to do things in a more simplified manner, there are plenty of games out there that can have simple art styles and environments but still make the it look cluttered- in a good way. Even though looking at what other people can produce can sometimes be daunting, it also serves as motivation for me that if indie developers can make games of a vast scale, surely I can. If given the opportunity to conduct my own project again, I want to be given the chance to explore environment design and further hone my character designs in a way where they catch a player’s eye.

Regarding my major and minor foci which can be found here, I feel like I have covered them completely. I have further developed my skills as a character designer, doing research for a character’s background and made multiple iterations on a single costume. In regards for mechanics, I was a bit nervous choosing this as my minor focus. Admittedly, I don’t like being “bad” at something, which is quite a silly statement considering that starting from square 1 is the only way you can go up. I have talked about mechanics briefly on my game reviews and expanded on what stealth and sanity does to a player. Additionally, I have come up with the idea that the player must play minigames at the end of each day to get currency. These minigames vary in what keyboard buttons to use.

In conclusion, this project was very beneficial to me and my personal growth, I have also learned that although some tasks can be daunting, it’s imperative that I do them, or else how else can I grow?

After listening to the advice I was given, I made this map design more vague so it can be arranged in a way that makes the story flow better:

All the parts that look like clouds are meant to be forest area, this acts as a barrier for the players

In my first week, I already analysed other GDDs (which can be found here), but I felt like it didn’t grant me an in-depth understanding of what it is and what it’s used for. In this post, I will be conducting some research on what a GDD is and it’s contents.

A Games Design Document (GDD) is a document that serves as a blueprint from which a game is to be built. This is especially useful since there will be a variety of people in the team with different professions such as sound designers, concept designers, 3D artists and programmers. This helps to define the general direction of the project and helps keep the team on the same page. Not only that but it ensures that effort is spent efficiently to produce a quality product. (Nuclino, n.d.)

Sections in a GDD

• Overview
  • High concept
  • Genre
  • Purpose
  • Impact
• Gameplay
  • The experiences for the player
• Art Bible
  • Character
  • Objects
  • Environment
  • UI
• Mechanics
  • Win / Lose conditions
  • What the game has to offer
  • Combat systems
  • Rules
• Level Design
  • Skill trees
  • Maps
  • Puzzles
• Sound Design
  • Music
  • SFX
  • Voices
• Platform specification and control mapping
  • Player demographics
  • Buttons and keybinds
• Market
  • Player communities
  • Monetization strategies

One thing that I was stumped on was knowing how much my game should cost. As I have no prior knowledge on what goes into making a game and the effort, I went on some Reddit forums for games developers and came across how indie developers justified their price.

Some of the responses (some of these aren’t in response to the post above):

By using the above games as guidelines, I feel slightly more confident with what I want to price this game. As the game itself should have 12-16 hours of game play. With that in mind, I think it would be fair to price this game at £9.99. I have come up with this conclusion as although it wouldn’t have as much content as big companies would have in their games, there is still hard work that has been put into this game. I also think that £10 for a game is pretty standard and affordable, making it accessible to a majority of players. Additionally, I think that this price is justifiable as it offers value for the hours of entertainment whilst also ensuring that the game is a good investment.

Although the pricing really comes down to the person who views it, pricing it at 9.99 would encourage players to have a go and also look at the effort and time spent behind it.

Target Demographic

This game will only be available for PC as when I was browsing online for RPGs that have released their games on console, not many have stayed up for long before getting taken down in the end. As a creator, I want to give my players the best experience possible and I feel like releasing this game on console could potentially be unenjoyable.

Main Menu

The black background here can be replaced with art for the game

Pause Menu

The black background will be a blurred version of the current game that is playing

(This is before the player unlocks sanity and stealth)

(With the sanity bar)

UI – Low sanity

Key features: Noise, dark vignette, sides cracked (like glass/mirror)