Collarblind's Game a Week!

[collarblindgames]

Week #1 - Fly

Idea: I think this came to me when I was taking a shower last week. The door to the box has this pattern of falling leaves, so for some reason I imagined a fly trying to dodge its way through this endless shower of leaves. I wanted to prove dodging is fun, cause everybody loves to feel like a ninja from time to time!

Design Sketches:

What Went Well: Well, I actually managed to come up with a game that really resembles my sketches of the concept, so I guess that's a good thing! All of the fly mechanics worked just fine as so did the different kinds of leave behaviors (though I had to change the behavior of the third one, as it was too similar to the second). The scaling difficulty is also a nice touch IMHO and I even managed to implement a rise in water level that wasn't planned at first! Yay!

What Went Wrong: Lots of stuff. First of all, this game is not about fun, quick, ninja-like dodging. Not at all. It's more about struggling to get through a crowd without that much risk of touching the water at the bottom. The dash and the slash worked fine but they're not really that necessary. It seems like one would use them out of boredom or annoyance; not danger or awesomeness as I first envisioned. Didn't have the time to place enviromental hazzards like the famished frog, the biting bud or the dumb dragonflies (as you can see in the sketches above). The game also doesn't have a victory condition, or at least a clear one; I wanted to work more on visual feedback but couldn't; also, the bullet time/zoom mechanic didn't have its chance, but to be fair that didn't really go wrong cause I knew it would be impossible for me to achieve that in a satisfactory way in just a week. Gonna leave it on paper by now!

What I Learned: That I really don't know a thing about game design! Great, huh! It's ok cause even aknowledging that; I still managed to come up with this interactive thing, with rules, mechanics and dynamics of its own. I learned that visual feedback is something that will make even the most dull, boring game stand out some way. Also learned how to spawn random objects at random locations! Hooray! Stop laughing Mr. Professional Game Designer!

Now Play It!

September 1 - 7

[collarblindgames]

That's it! Game a Week!

Hey there! I’m Collarblind and inspired by Adriel Wallick I decided to tackle the particular challenge of designing a game every week for as long as I possibly can! This blog will be my personal diary, backlog and well… portfolio, who knows!

Just so you know (if there’s actually anyone reading this) I’m a Composer/Sound Designer for games by trade. So bear in mind that designing games is not my primary activity and they may come out horrifyingly broken and/or incomplete.

I think I’m gonna shamelessly copy the pattern Adriel has been using to write about her experience, since it seems to be very effective in documenting the whole thing. So, every sunday (or monday depending on lots of stuff) I’ll be making a post like so:

Idea: I’ll talk briefly about the concept that originated the game; how the idea came to me; some kind of statement I intended to prove with the design; etc.

Design Sketches: Aha! Here’s a twist! I’ll also be posting some pictures of my sketchbook with early drafts about the concept in question so as to be more accurate about how well the first idea translated from paper to digital. This should be fun!

What Went Well: Basically what parts of the design proved themselves to be fun or effective; any predictions I got right based on my design sketches; lucky strikes and so on.

What Went Wrong: Expect this session to be the biggest of them all! Everything I assumed would work but didn’t will be documented here; be it bugs, stuff that I didn’t have time to implement, stuff that I implemented but had to cut out, or simply stuff that I wasn’t able to see coming and made the game worse.

What I Learned: Well, final conclusions and considerations about the week, the project itself, my workflow; new game design techniques or notions I might stumble upon in the process, etc.

Play It! There will be a link to the final game at the end of each post so anyone can see for themselves how bad I actually suck at game design! Isn’t that just great? I’ll be using dropbox’s public file to host them as long as I can, but will be looking into alternatives for later on. Let’s see how many weeks I can get in a row first!

That’s it! I hope this project will be as teaching and fun as I expect it to be! Judging by the first week (which actually took place September 1-7) I think I’ll have a great time!

Let’s do this!