Week 13 | A3 Post Mortem
What aspects of the readings helped inspire your design process?
The development of TimeKnight was the first time this semester I was able to have the time to develop a game to the point of prototyping it. I was very much made aware to the point made in chapter 9 of Tracy Fullertonâs âGame design workshop: A playcentric approach to creating innovative gamesâ.: playtesting is key to a gameâs development as it makes you aware to how the perception and play of the game is, not what you wish it to be (p. 310). Developing a game is hard, so itâs easy to try and cut corners or justify things that donât go the way you want them to, and playtesting makes you face those shortcomings head on. Additionally, it can also help to inspire and motivate you to work on your game - it was incredible seeing how much people enjoyed their time with TimeKnightâs early prototypes. In future I think Iâll be more willing and prepared to prototype my games, regardless of what stage of development theyâre in.
Whatâs one thing youâd change about how you developed the prototype?
I believe we were too ambitious with TimeKnightâs scope for the duration of this project. I believe we were too focused on trying to thing of unique and interesting mechanics for TimeKnight that we neglected spending enough time defining what we wanted our Player Experience Goals to be. Our plan for TimeKnight was so ambitious that we spent a lot of time just developing a few versions of an early prototype. Player experience goals are used to consider what sort of experience you want the player to have and help understand what ways are best to make them achievable (Fullerton, 2018, p. 12). We received a lot of feedback on our prototype indicating that what we had was enjoyable, but lacking in interesting gameplay - it was a good early prototype, but did not offer any rewarding experiences at this stage. If we had spent more time thinking about what sort of experience we wanted our players to have, and what sort of experience would be achievable within our time frame, then we may have finished with a prototype that explore the mechanics we implemented in more interesting ways.
Whatâs one thing youâd change about the design of the prototype?
If I were to change anything about TimeKnight, it would likely be the implementation of the Dash mechanic. Though interesting, I believe it was too ambitious for the scope of our project. Additionally, most of our negative remarks in the playtesting was tied to this mechanic. If we were to continue development, I believe we should think about ditching the dash mechanic all together and working on creating some unique and interesting gameplay for the parry mechanic (i.e. thinking about those Player Experience Goasl!!)










