Evaluation
Ellikaâs Watcher is a personality driven game, or so I wanted it to be, I say wanted it to be because It really isnât that much of a personality driven game but rather more of a pixel hack and slash. Starting my project, I tried to stay to time management, however I while progressing my project I found out that I was not good at this skill. Therefore, in my finally product I have changed a few things, from making a impossible to complete research schedule to making my production way too short and giving myself way too long to make pre-production. My final product is still the same has it was going to be but with less content. I acknowledge these flaws and I am glad I made them, it allowed me to grow as a developer and made me learn major lessons. Things also went well in my project such as my research and getting feedback from my own target audience helping me out on my decisions.
The original idea of Ellikaâs Watcher was kept and much research went into games that I wanted it to be like, a game that is most referenced is Titan Souls, I wanted it to be open environment, for retro style gamers to explore. Keeping it kid friendly but also appealing to the wider audience. The idea originally came from the first two mini games I created the theme of them was good, then I looked into the Final Fantasy games where the games are the same but with different characters with games slowly starting to change it up. Me just finishing my last game âEllika Flyersâ made me come up with an idea of making a sequel to the game, but changing up the actual game and making new characters just using the same world. This is done by keeping the âEllikaâ part but adding a new word to it that would have to do with the game. I later planned and made the narrative for the game by using Scott Rogers guide. It was important to get the narrative before I get the second part of the name because it would have to do with the main part of the game. So, when I decided that the main character Chester was a former Watchmen and an Eye monster killed his town and family it made sense to call it Ellikaâs Watcher referring to both the creature as that is what it is known by, and the main characterâs former guard position. This is smart and makes it a play on the word.
In my pre-production and planning stages I planned on 3 levels, a starting room, a cave room and a cave boss room. This would be major change in my game, I did not have enough time to be able to debug the game where you couldnât go into the last room due to a bug, I had to scrap the 3rd room and make it into the second room, this means the player only has 2 rooms to explore. Â This makes the content of the game lack in some ways and doesnât give the player a full experience. The player also doesnât have the ending I originally wanted, a ending where when you pick up a certain item you get to see some dialogue pop up and after that you return to the menu however now it just returns to the menu without the dialogue.
Somethings that did however go well was when I added mechanics like saving the game in and adding new enemies and making a boss. They all worked super good, the progression of the game also felt good. You never feel like you are at an unfair disadvantage, you also donât feel like you are too overpowered. The game progresses you by giving you XP by leveling up, this will give you damage, Hp and stamina. This helps you in the game especially if you decide to kill all the enemies you will feel the benefits with the game. The style of the game and the target audience I was going for was also a neat leash I could easily find and use. As many of these old lost types of retro gamers exist and only have recently been found again by games such as Titan Souls, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, etc. Games that make the concept of a game harder than it should be creating a sense of achievement for every little thing thy do. Another reason why games such as Titan Souls got so much recognition by these gamers was because of the of its style and I really tried to capitalise on that genre of 2D top down games with a challenge.
Time management was a problem as stating it earlier, this is good though, I knew it would be a problem as I took way too much on my hand and couldnât keep up. At times, I asked myself to do up to 3 different blogs at a week which I wasnât even thinking about all of the research and planning that goes into each one of my blog posts. I also underestimated the time I would take creating my game. It ended up with a lot of bugs and unfinished making it not a pleasant experience. You can tell that I definitely spent a lot more time on Room 1 than I did on Room 2. This is due to making my sprites and then coding the entire room and making the mechanics and Gameplay. This took me around 3 weeks to do, so when the last week of production came up, bearing in mind I still was doing research, had a social life and other life events going on I was not able to finish the game to my satisfactory level. This was all not considered when I made my Gant chart and I have learned that I should for the next project I do. I thought I would be able to do work all the time which turned out I couldnât.
The gripping tale of Chester White a man that has varies of talents making his way into the cavernous caves of the Watchers cave to get revenge for his family after the watcher unmercifully killed them all in an all scale battle. The monster attacked on a night where Chester was out of the village and he had to watch from a distance as his village got burnt to cinders. The whole story has a bigger meaning behind it such as donât do drugs or abuse subscription drugs and donât take your loved ones for granted as you donât know when your last moment is with them.
The Narrative theory I followed is a simple yet in-depth model, it makes you pity the main character and sympathize with him, this will help you relate with the character and but also make you angry at Chester because he lays and pitys himself drugged up on anti-depressants and alcohol. Abusing them. I made this so you go on a roller coaster ride, it is a similar narrative for to what the 2000 Gladiator movie used. However you never feel angry towards him. You also know. Gladiator was a huge inspiration during the writing of the narrative. I used the narrative Scott Rogers provided in his book Level up! I found this the easiest one to use but also made me think the most giving a challenge at the end where you have to make Chester have a bad streak 7 times in a row and justify why he does. I did it because we all feel like we have had everything go wrong in one day right? well this shows that but a bad luck strand over the past 15 years. Making the character relatable in someway to everyone.Â
Overall having to adapt to the time wasnât really my thing for this project and I will definitely try to follow my plan next time a lot better and make it a lot more humanly possible. This will stop me from having to sacrifice Gameplay, research time and make the overall final product a lot better. I am glad I was able to try this style, next time I will try to assure myself that I will follow the deadlines a lot more by doing more research into those weeks of planning and I will also try to make sure I have time for myself and not make 3-4 blog posts a week that are bad quality compared to 1 good quality post. The style of the game stayed the same at the end, with some minor tweaks in room 2 as there wasnât enough time making it look incomplete or like an early version of the game. I really liked out the narrative finally worked out, I got the story down how I wanted to make you root for the âunderdogâ which is Chester after the story shows how much bad luck he has had in the past. This adds to his personality and shows why he has such an abuse for drugs.Â
I have been heavily influenced by Titan Souls and Gladiator I liked the the atmosphere they create in emotional scenes but also make the an action pact experience. The Game and movie really made me think about design choices. Gameplay, and Storyline these are most important parts of the whole project because it influenced the final game for better or for worse.Â