media 180
Games design
Mobile games
Subway surfers
Playing this game involves swiping the screen to move your character as they run along virtual train tracks away from a guard whilst collecting coins and avoiding the trains coming towards you.
As you play more you earn more coins and keys which allow you to collect different characters and different outfits.
The game works very well and there are no bugs or glitches.
I find this app very entertaining as I felt that it was at a really good level of difficulty. I liked that it gave you goals to aim at but you were not forced to achieve these goals as the gameplay was enjoyable without it this made the game play really enjoyable for a beginner.
I would improve the app by making the characters you can play with more varied as I think if there were more characters with different races and different disabilities and body shapes people would be more set on collecting different characters as they would see characters that look like them. I also think they could add levels to the game so that longterm players would not get bored of the game.
Hayday
Playing this game involves keeping a virtual farm alive
As you play more you are able to build different things on the farm and you are therefore able to create different things.
The game works very well and there are no bugs or glitches.
I find this app entertaining as there is always a task to complete on the farm.
I would improve the app by making at a certain level you be able to employ people on the farm to complete the boring tasks for you as I found myself getting bored of some of the tasks and therefore losing interest in the game.
Sims
Playing this game involves designing virtual characters and houses to create a virtual village of your own design.
As you play more the game
The game works ok but there are some bugs and glitches like sometimes the characters don’t move properly and walk through walls and also due to the size of the game sometimes it closes randomly.
I find this app quite entertaining as it is visually pleasing and I enjoyed watching my characters develop relationships with each other.
I would improve the app by making the time for tasks shorter as I found myself getting bored between tasks and therefore losing interest in the game. For example, a task like going to work takes hours which by the time the task was finished I had moved on to something else and forgotten the game existed. Also I think some of the glitches could be fixed. Also I think they could add more outfits and allow you to edit the body and face of your sim more as I found that I had very little creative freedom when creating my avatar.
Walking simulator games
SOMA
Main genre: Adventure
Sub genre: Science fiction, horror
Age rating: PEGI 16
Art style: Retro futurism, dark lighting, blue and green
undertones.
Engaging features: The world of Soma is absolutely full of
detail. Each underwater base tells a different part of the story.
Interaction with some objects will trigger audio clips of past
conversations, a standard for exploratory games that’s actually given a reasonable explanation in this one. But you also get a lot of information just by looking around, from big scenes like a bloody corpse with a drill in its hand to smaller touches like a game of hangman with the answer “quantum mechanics”. The characters are also very well developed. Simon’s reactions are admirably authentic, sometimes overwhelmed but mostly determined and with a sense of humour that might sound inappropriate but seems a realistic survival mechanism. Catherine is rational, reassuring, but with her own interests beyond those of the player character. Their relationship threads through the story and holds it together in a way that pure environmental storytelling might not.
Ideas to steal: Objects triggering audio clips of past conversations.
Fire watch
Main genre: Adventure
Sub genre: Mystery, thriller
Age rating: PEGI 16
Art style: Minimal, block colours, nature scenery.
Engaging features: The game opens with an opening
prologue that is more like a multiple choice quiz allowing
you to pick between options as you play out the protagonist
Henry's life. The prologue bounces between being funny
and heart-wrenching and plausibly establishes just why
protagonist Henry ends up in the Wyoming woods as a
solitary fire lookout and echoes the multiple choice speech which is used in the main story. The main story then begins. The main story takes place over the course of an entire summer, with different “days” which are treated as chapters of the story, playing out at different hours of the day and night. The park is an open world, with tantalising views of distant peaks and valleys stretching much further than the game’s explorable area. It’s a world that delivers both variety – of colour, landscape, time of day and sophistication within a dense, well-plotted space, its modest map efficiently filled with items, pathways and objectives.
Ideas to steal: Days as chapters, bright block colours, nature to create mood.
Gone home
Main genre: Adventure
Sub genre: Mystery, family
Age rating: PEGI 16
Art style: Late 90s, looks like it was sketched, dim lighting.
Engaging features: The game is more like an interactive
museum with no xp bar, no puzzles to solve or platforms to
jump off and no enemies or dangers. The game has many
calls and references to the 1990s like VHS tapes, SNES
carts, used Playboy magazines, and more work alongside
the excellent writing and dialogue to make you feel like you’re experiencing something you should be remembering. Gone Home also lets you uncover its story for yourself, at your own pace.
Ideas to steal: Choosing a time period and making it obvious.
Brief
What I have been asked to do:
I have been asked to create a prototype for a walking simulator
game which helps people with spatial memory.
Why I have been asked to do it:
Games that make use of memory can help prevent memory loss
and other mental health problems.
What I am going to do about it (what I am going to make):
A garden to explore
Initial ideas and thoughts:
Bright colours, you can go at your own pace, an obvious ending point to the environment you can explore like pacing the garden in the sky.
Game design document
Story
You have been asked to look after your grandmother’s garden and her elderly ginger cat whilst she is on holiday in vegas living the life of her dreams. You must water the plants and harvest the vegetables in the vegetable patch.
Characters
Main characters: The cat who instructs you what to do in the garden. You are the only other character
Motivations: You must look after the garden well to get the cat to like you. He will begin
Level/environment design – sketch out roughly
Gameplay
Art
Low poly art style
Sound and Music
When the cat speaks: mimimi similar to animal crossing characters talking and subtitles appear on the screen.
Background music: peaceful classical music i.e nocturnes op.32 andante sostenuto
When an item is picked up: a pick up sound effect
User Interface, Game Controls
Use w,a,s,d letters on keyboard to move like arrow keys and mouse to select things, when an item is clicked it appears in you hand, click q to drop it again and click on the area/object you want to apply it to (e.g click on plants to water them if you are holding a watering can) to apply it to that area/object. You can only hold one time at a time. Doors are opened when clicked
shed containing seeds and plants and watering can
cat
vegetable patch
trees
edge of garden which can not be crossed
grass and flowers
Reflective journal
I really struggled at the begging of the process of making the assets which unfortunately ate into a lot of the time of my project. I think if I was to repeat the process again I would write out a schedule of work to complete at home and given myself large chunks of time to work on it so that I could catch up in time instead of just rushing the learning process at random times at home. However I utilised YouTube tutorials to help me with working Maya and I now feel much more confident about using the programme although it was a frustrating time consuming process at the beginning.
Adding them to Unreal was a lengthy process as I did not realise I had separate my objects into their colour co ordinated areas (for example detaching the tree leaves from the tree trunk) so the first time round I added them all in without seperating them
Unfortunately due to time constraints I couldn't build the level in unreal in as much detail as I imagined however
Testing that things work was a rushed process however although their was not as much interaction with the objects as I would have liked (i.e being able to plant and water vegetables) the player was still able to walk around the completed model of my world.
Evaluation
The prototype works, you can walk around the environment.
There are no bugs or glitches.
I like the look of my prototype although I wish I had more time to work on the finer details of my game design like giving my cat a face and adding more garden items to use.
Discuss any issues that you encountered during development
If I was to make this into a released video game, I would make the cat talk and explain what you needed to do. When you did things right make him purr and when you did thing wrong make him hiss so that the player could more easily understand the required tasks. Also I didn't have time to make the carrots have orange bodies or create the inside of the house so if I was to work on the game more I would edit these elements.