Phase 4

The structure for this phase will be:

Idea
Create
Enrich
Consolidate
Play
Present
Hand-in

Plan

The course of plan is to consolidate our game ideas. For me, the game idea I have is:

"Player experiences a day in a life of a normal working person, but their hand are chopsticks"

This mean going deeper into what my game is going to be:

What is the narrative? What scenarios would the player experience?
What is the gameplay?
What are the controls? Are their any unique controls we could possible use?
How is my game going to look?

Through improving my game ideas, I will conduct research on different topics to determine what is needed, as well as peer reviews from classmates. As I moved into phase 4, I have created a team with Dylan Hughes and Edward Lam, who are both are interested in my game idea and want to develop the idea further as well as developing the game. This will enable us to discuss about ideas through meetings or make feedbacks.

Controls seemed to be the most important element, since it makes up the gameplay and the experience of the game. Especially with our game, which is heavily reliant on mechanics, we think that it would be best to take research into what controls is best for our game, in terms of physical hardware, or what we have in terms of affordability.

Prototyping is recommended when coming up different scenarios, and since our game is based from chopsticks, we can play around and see what scenarios will come out best. So, my team will create and play prototypes in this phase.

Along with prototyping, experience is key to know how the game will feel, so we will have people, who are inexperienced with chopsticks, to pick things up and record what happen.

I believe that visuals are key since it evokes different feelings from the player. For this, I will create a Mood Board to list down how the game would look. The things to look out for are:

Colour
Art-Style
Graphics

What is required is the Project Proposal. This is a brief list of what to include:

What the game is/ about
Timetabling/ Management
What we will use for the production of the game
Our Goals

This is needed before we go into production of the game. I will discuss with my teammates about what the game is going to be and how we are to achieve it.

Group Discussion

We, as the whole class, talked about our game ideas and what things we could improve/ add/ change to make the idea sellable. For me, the only thing which needs improving is the narrative - what sort of things the player encounters.

(Click here for notes)

In the notes, there was this idea that the narrative should be Over-Exaggerated towards the end of the game - that you start off as using chopsticks as they should be, but then using it for other things. There were other things that others would like to see as well, such as Ragdoll/ Over-the-top physics, or a moment where the character (that the player is controlling) loses control and destroys everything - to really hammer in the comedy of this game. There were games which I should look at so that I could take more inspirations from them, such as Surgeon Simulator, and "Say No! More".

The group discussion really helped in what I was lacking in the game idea, so going into semester 2 (when we will produce the game), I will continually ask support in what ideas should be included in the game. Having feedback is good too, from the surveys that I will conduct.