Cookie Games Design Blog

Andrew Cook — n11052708

[cookie2351]

About Me :)

Hi, my name is Andrew and I am a first year student, studying a Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments, at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). I have been passionate about video games and the fantasy genre as long as I can remember. Some of my favourite games are casual simulator games, like Factorio, Stardew Valley and Satisfactory.

Originally I was studying an Architecture degree but transferred out to Games Design to be closer to my passions of computer related design and video games. Through my studies I plan to turn my passions into my career! I plan to either join an indie games studio or start my own!

This blog will share my creations throughout my studies.

[katherine-ellen-mellors]

The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow

Post Mortem...

1/2

The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow is a pixel-art platformer based in a haunted hotel where a murder has just taken place. The aim of the game was to create a puzzle platformer that incorporates the use of clues, equipable items, moving platforms and several types of ghosts.

The game would finish if one of two conditions were met;

The player got too scared and ran away;

this is visualized and programmed through the use of a "Spook Meter" that increased depending on what ghost type the player came in contact with.

2. The player found all clues to solve the murder mystery

Clues were scattered in between the rooms and pertained to different NPCs that inhabited the rooms of the hotel.

The scope of The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow, was a dream and a half. It was a lengthy endeavor to meet half of our scope in the allotted time, and it has come so far in it's development.

There is still plenty of work to be done on this project, but we are happy to announce that it is in a workable and playable state!

Some roadblocks ...

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” ― Norman Vincent Peale

There were some roadblocks we have encountered along the way - as you do with many things of great proportion.

One such roadblock was the scope of the game. We had 5 weeks to create a viable project and to bring The Curious Case to life, however with our scope, it was unable to be perfected in time for release.

Never the less, we are happy with the progress made and are keen to continue developing it in the future to bring it to its full potential.

From assets, to level design - we held grand ideas and great progress. unfortunately, implementing them takes a great deal of time when creating a prefect integration.

Here is a list of what we could implement on my aspect (Sprites and animation)

List of Items in order:

Player character walking sprite

Scared Ghost (Enemy type)

Sad Ghost (Enemy Type)

[katherine-ellen-mellors]

Part 2/2

The game was successfully able to implement the light features used to scare off ghosts, however the level design was not able to be fleshed out to its entirety and so far solving the murder condition cannot be met.

But do not fear as you are still able to be so scared you run away!

the remaining clues and weapons that were mentioned in the one-page were not able to be implemented in time, and the dialogue could not be implemented.

In conclusion,

we acknowledge that the scope of our game was risky with the time allocation, but to see how far we have come for our first game development is an exciting journey that I am happy to have shared with my team.

[cookie2351]

Assignment 3 Post Mortem

"The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow"

Mystery game we created for assignment 3. Group members include: Andrew C, Katherine M, Denniel K, Cong B.

Gameplay showcase:

The gameplay showcases the core elements of our game.

The spook bar (health system) that if filled fails the game

enemy ghosts to spook the player and fill the spook bar

hotel rooms to explore and find the clues for the mystery

a tutorial page to show the players what the controls are

Torch for scaring away the ghosts, which includes a battery to stop excessive use.

Lightswitch to save you from using the torch battery and protecting you from the ghosts.

Art Assets:

Through our assignment process our group created many art assets to be implemented into our game a lot of which we were unable to find a way to implement in time. Our game had a big initial scope and was refined down as we went due to time limitations.

The final outcome of our game remained quite simple and was missing a lot of the decoration assets that were created for the game.

Lobby and room level designs:

Lobby:

Room 1:

Room 2:

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Assignment 3 Playtesting and Early Post Mortem

"The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow" gameplay testing:

We went into this game project with a large scope. The aim of the game was to solve the mystery by finding clues throughout the game while fighting off ghosts and navigating the puzzles of the hotel rooms. The players aim was to collect all the clues to reveal and then fight off the cause of the mystery. Or if they failed along the way and got too scared, they would run away.

As can be seen in the gameplay footage, the game incorporates a scare meter in the top left that fills up when ghost come into contact with the player. The player also has a torch battery that if it runs out leaves the player very vunerable to the ghosts, so they have to be careful with usage. There are light switches in the rooms that once turned on scares the ghosts away and allows the player to save their precious torch battery.

As the scope of our game was so big, there were some cuts made that we aimed to implement.

At this stage though the game is in a playable state!

To be added are the art assets as furniture decorations and objects. Also, the wooden and stone tile sprites to fit more with a hotel aesthetic.

With such a short time to create a viable project and such a large scope we are happy with our ability to produce a working game, although far from its original aim. We had grand ideas for the level design and decorations and player obstacles but just didn't get to the stage of development to implement them.

[cookie2351]

The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow - Assignment 3 Update & Development

For the group assignment Katherine's game was chosen to be developed. The game is called "The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow" and is a murder mystery game.

The game:

"The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow" is a pixel-art style platformer game that brings a good mix of light heartedness and strategy to a murder mystery.

Navigate through the platforms to find the clues to the mystery while utilising your flashlight, newspaper and broom to swat off the ghosts that try to stop you in your tracks.

Be careful though, the more you encounter ghosts, the more spooked you get.

Can you solve the murder before you get too scared?

Group one page assignment submission:

The clues will be located in different rooms in the hotel and the player must avoid the ghosts or scare them away with their torch. Find the clues to solve the mystery and survive.

Assets I created to be implemented into the game:

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Assignment Part 2 - Platformer Game - Spy Astray

While catching up on blog posts I realised I hadn't posted my platformer game sell sheet and one page from assignment 2.

Spy Astray Sell Sheet:

Spy Astray One Page:

Spy Astray Level Gameplay:

Game incorporates a dash, wall jump and quick fall as player abilities. The enemies also increase their path movement speed when the player gets close to lower their predictability. Their are also map hazards like deadly spikes and missleading paths.

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Racer's Day Off - Racer Game Postmortem

In further development of "Racer's Day Off" I added more detail to the environment to make the scenery more interesting. I also incorporated the new car designs which can now spawn.

I also added to the control scene so the player can now choose whether to play using the WASD keys or the arrow keys (maybe could make it two player sometime?).

I really liked how the score was working however after some gameplay testing I found out the multiplier was not altering the score. So much for that :(

An issue I ran into was the cars would sometimes spawn basically together, sometimes leaving the player without a path to survive.

Developed Game:

Multiple levels!

I even managed to add a second level so the player can choose between the two. The second level has more lanes and I tried to increase the spawn rate to increase the level difficulty.

Harder level with added lanes and car spawns:

However....

As you can possibly see (in the image below) I had some difficulties with the car spawning.

Game Issue:

With the amount of different cars I had added, often one of the cars would spawn ontop of one another. It didn't affect gameplay but the visual aspect of it was not appealing.

Overall, I found the game quite fun and put more development into the game than I was planning. The F1 driver had a pretty fun day off... until he crashed of course, then not so much.

Bugs and Aspects I didn't get to implement or wish I had:

I didn't implement a start menu or a level failed aspect the game just paused when the player hit a car.

No start menu so you had to manually launch one of the two levels

There was no scoreboard so the players don't get to save their scores

Proper car spawning (cars spawned on top of each other)

Although there was the multiplier it didn't affect the score

similar to my asteroids game the car spawns would leave the player with an unwinnable/survivable sitution

Thanks again to looneybits on Itch.IO for the car assets.

[cookie2351]

Racer's Day Off - Development Post #2

After some more development and a lot of trial and error I managed to add a functioning score counter. And after even more working and a headache I got the score multiplier working.

The camera was also zoomed out so the player had more warning and space to move. The player can only move about halfway up the screen (x2 multiplier) as any closer deemed to little time for the player to react.

Images of the game with score counter and multiplier incorporated:

Still want to implement more detail to the side environment and new car designs.

New car assets to implement:

Credit to looneybits on Itch.IO for the car assets.

looneybits on Itch.IO

2D Race Cars by looneybits

2D Urban Cars by looneybits

2DUrbanCars

looneybits

[cookie2351]

Racer's Day Off - Development Post #1

I found the game relatively simple to setup. However, the way cars were spawning the player would end up with some very difficult situations to dodge (as can be seen in the image below). With more development I plan to add more details to the environment and maybe some different levels with varying car spawn rates for difficulty.

The camera also needs to be zoomed out so the player can have more warning.

Crash effect for when the play fails:

[cookie2351]

Racing Game Elevator Pitch

Game name: Racer's Day Off

Genre: Car / Racer / 2D / Topdown

The aim of "Racer's Day Off" is to create a relatively simple racer game where the player has to dodge cars and survive as long as possible.

The game is appropriate for all ages and has very simple controls.

The game is based off of a F1 car driver who is bored on his day off a decides to race down the street. DANGEROUS! Better drive well or it will be a fast and expensive crash.

The game will incorporate a score to the players captivated. The score will be based off time survived (1 second survived = 1 point). The score will work this way rather than cars passed so certain player actions can increase the rate of scoring. The score rate can be increased by the player racing the car closer to the top of the screen giving them less time to react.

Game assets:

The game will incorporate random spawning of the cars. If the player fails to dodge a car and hits one there will be an explosion effect then the player will be sent to a end/fail scene displaying their score. The player after a few seconds will be sent back to the main menu screen where they can start another game.

Game concepts

score for time survived

score bonus for how daring the play is (further up screen more points)

multiple levels for different difficulty

randomly spawning cars of different types

Start and Death screen (with crash effect before death screen)

Game Controls / Key Mapping:

The game will use the arrow keys to control the racing cars movement. Left and right arrows will move the car left and right respectively. The Up arrow will speed the car up and move it up the screen and will speed the rate the score increases. Down arrow will slow the car down giving the player more warning to dodge and the score will increase at its normal rate.

[katherine-ellen-mellors]

~ GROUP POST ~

Hi!

Welcome to our group project!

The aim for our game is to create a haunted mystery game, where the player must navigate their way through the haunted hotel to find clues that solve the murder.

They must avoid or scare away the ghosts, find the correct rooms and interact with the resident NPCs to find the hidden clues.

When all clues are found, the murder mystery can be solved. But be careful, as the ghosts can scare you too...

Let's Introduce our team!

Katherine Mellors - Animation

"Hello! my name is Katherine and I will be focusing on the creation of the interactable sprites you will find in the game. This includes the player character, movable tiles, the murder victim, ghosts AND the NPCs you will talk to throughout your investigation! A little bit about me- I love to draw and listen to music far too loud for a normal person. I have a cat and I am addicted to drinking coca cola"

Denniel Ko - Programming

Andrew Cook - Level Design

"Hi I'm Andrew and I will be focusing on level design for the game, mainly the main room and the hotel suite rooms. I will be creating the tile sprites for the rooms and other small item sprites such as lights, stairs and doors. About me- I love doing computer based design projects. From buildings, interiors to general layout designs... so in other words... level design 🤣 Whenever I play a new game O often find myself focusing on the design rather than things like story or progression, and will spend hours aimlessly roaming the map (looks at Hogwarts Legacy hours tracked 🤡)"

Cong B - Level Design

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Assignment group post. Was meant to have a bio from all members but no response from some (hence the gifs)

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SPY ASTRAY - Platformer Post Mortem Part 2 and Gameplay

Spy Astray has been further developed but still omits some features that I didn’t get to. I was unable to finish all the animations for the character. The jump animation never looked right and would have absorbed too much time, so a simplistic cloud was added to the character design to signify what would normally be the jump animation.

Reflecting back on it though I enjoyed the time I spent trying to animate a character. Having never done it before it took a while to get used to the software and how body parts moved and avoiding the uncanny alley sort of vibe.

The head knocking of the character has been improved further. Other aspects have been added as well such as enemy vision. When the player is within a certain range of an enemy their speed will increase, giving less time to dodge if you're in its deadly path. They all speed up together as they are robots and therefore linked.

GAMEPLAY

(placeholder jump animation)

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SPY ASTRAY - Platformer Post Mortem Part 1 and Further Development

Spy Astray was the original platformer elevator pitch, which I have been developing through the weeks. From the skills I gained in my early workshopped platformer game I was able to develop a more thorough prototype which I am to use for my assessment piece.

I have created a number of assets including enemies! The tile set I was able to get from the generous creators on Itch.io

SPIDER BOT

The spider bot moves along the horizontal axis along floors and ceilings, which the player must avoid or perish to its spikes and spinning blade.

SPINNING BOT

The spinning bot moves along the vertical axis flying up and down getting in the path of the player with its deadly blades.

TILE SET

Source: https://free-game-assets.itch.io/free-swamp-2d-tileset-pixel-art

CONTROLS AND ABILITIES

The player character has the ability to wall jump and to dash horizontally. This will help the player to navigate the labyrinth of paths and dangers.

The wall jump ability is activated when the player is in contact with a wall and pressed jump (SPACE). The dash ability is activated by the mouse 1 button and has a short cooldown.

PROBLEMS AND DIFFICULTIES

As with the first platformer I developed I had trouble in creating the pathways with the right headspace. Place the ceiling or platform too low and the player will knock their head easily. Too high and the player is then unable or struggles to jump to the platform.

This was partially solved by implementing a hold to jump feature, where if the player held space for a short period they could do a slightly longer jump and gain extra height.

GAME ASPECTS

Entrance and exit doorways -

These doorways signify the start of the level (mission location that the player spy is trying to successfully escape from) to the city doorway (leads back to the safe city a spy HQ)

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Stuck in the Asteroid Belt - Playtesting and Post Mortem part 2

The game is a nice simple asteroids game which given more development time could be developed into a more full scale game.

The game is not perfect and in my playtesting and a couple naïve user playtesting a couple of errors were found:

Error 1 -

One play tester noticed that the player would often loose health when no meteor collided with them.

This phantom damage, I found out when investigated later, was due to meteors spawning within close proximity or on top of the player. This wasn't a problem early on as the game had a condition to stop meteors from spawning close but ended up clashing with some of my other conditions for the ship shooting and point system so it was removed. BUT IT WAS NEVER ADDED BACK!

Error 2 -

Another small glitch or detail that was overlooked was that the meteors items spawned the furthest forward. So when they went near the HUD box for the health and score they would float over the top. Now this could be an aesthetic choice but it was just an oversight :|

After some more playtesting, and trying to get the highest score (no scoreboard has been implemented but we were keeping track), I went back to try and get a video of the gameplay of the issues. It didn't take that long as the meteors seemed to like spawning right on the spaceship.

Video of playtesting insight errors -

These should be relatively simple fixes if I'm to further develop the game. This also shows the value of playtesting as I feature I thought I had implemented (no meteors spawning close to the player ship) had been removed and not readded.

[cookie2351]

Asteroids Post Mortem

I introduce to you…

Stuck in the Asteroid Belt

The game is simplistic and is missing some nice changes I would wish to add with further development. Throughout the development I had a few problems which I was able to work through by changing my designs or further developing my GDevelop skills. I was able to complete the core basics of an asteroids game and some of the other aspects. I had trouble implementing the score tracker and was unable to incorporate a scoreboard so players will have to manually keep track of their highscores.

Aspects I wish to add with further development:

 a scoreboard that a player could add their initials or tag to

enemy ships that could shoot randomly at the player ship

health-regen or fire-rate boosts dropped rarely by destroyed meteors

Varying difficulty based off of the player score (e.g. over 100 points spawn 2x meteors)

Sound effects for shooting, meteor destruction, death and maybe background music

In the long run I could even add levels to the  game that would be unlocked by scoring certain amounts of points on each level.

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Vampire Survivors - Game Discussion

Vampire Survivors on steam

Vampire Survivors on Steam

Mow down thousands of night creatures and survive until dawn! Vampire Survivors is a gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements, whe

Vampire Survivors was one of my favourite games I played last year putting in many hours (that I won't give a number). The game at its' core is quite simple with the players having to survive till the end of the timer, not that they are told that is the aim of the game. The game has no tutorial with the player learning more about the game and improving with each run.

It is probably my favourite Rogue-Like game!

The player quickly learns that they must vanquish the enemies with their starting weapon to gain XP to level up and accrue more weapons and equipment or upgrades to current weapons/equipment.

Enemies come in waves determined by the survival timer, with waves varying in difficulty and enemy type and quantity. Every few minutes a mini-boss will spawn and when killed will drop a chest for the player to pick-up. This chest will give you an upgrade to one of the items you already have increasing its' strength, or if levelled fully with companion item evolve it.

Unlocks for the game are unlocked through playing. As the player gets further through the level timer, they will unlock new characters and levels to play. These new levels have different enemies, with each level having varying  difficulties. For example, when I started playing I couldn’t survive level 1 but had gotten far enough to unlock level 2, which I found easier and was able to complete first.

As you play more you develop strategies, learn which weapons or combinations you like best, and are able to get further through the timer to and start to win levels! I got really hooked on the game cause each run I would try a slightly new strategy and get a bit further, unlocking a new character or level to attempt next!

Enough yapping… here's some gameplay to show you!

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Assignment 2 / Platformer Development

Continuing with my development of my 2d platformer game I wanted to the game sprites to incorporate my art sprites and the tileset I had found on Itch.io.

Tileset and art credit.

Free and Premium Game Assets (GUI, Sprite, Tilesets) - Free Swamp 2D Tileset Pixel Art

Free Swamp 2D Tileset Pixel Art by Free Game Assets (GUI, Sprite, Tilesets)

Free Swamp 2D Tileset Pixel Art for your projects

Spy Roe Character that I have designed and animated

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Incorporating the tiles into my game and my character. This will be expanded upon further in later development of the game.

The core of the game is to get from the mission door to the city esape door. Doors example below.

The game also incorporates parkour and wall jumping sections.