WEEK 7/8 Fishing game Dev post
At the start of the week, I learnt how to create a racing sim game, and by using these elements I created my fishing game. Using what I learnt from previous dev productions, I decided to take a different approach and think of what mechanics I would like to implement before starting development. I then came to the conclusion to add different types of fish that swim across, in schools or alone depending on the type as well as a shark that one hits the player. I also had ideas to implement a scene where you can choose to catch what fish u wanted which would change the size of the fish, essentially becoming a difficulty setting.
With these ideas in mind so far in development I have successfully added the fish that swim horizontally across the screen, damaging the player if they get hit. I also was able to implement the shark mechanic which would one hit the player.
Something I did learn from this process was the importance of clarity. This week I got to do some playtesting on the game, and one issue that kept reoccurring was that players didn’t know what features did what, and what the objective of the game was. For example, I had bubbles that would fall from the top and would boost the player upwards slightly, however some players thought this was food and had to be collected. From this I understood the importance of making clear features that did obvious things, or by using common mechanics shared between games.
One part of the reading that inspired my design of this game was from Chapter 4 on page 106. Where it described the game space invaders having a simple and effectiveness that made the game premise strong without a proper story. I then tried to follow this, creating a scenario where the player is instantly spawned into the world as a fish on a hook with the fisherman having to dodge and other fish as he/she tries to land their catch. My thoughts on the readings so far have been useful for this project, as they have helped previous dev phases, and have allowed me to get the experience for this one. The readings on playtesting were the most useful for me (Chapter 9, Page 292), and I adopted the one-on-one testing, asking question before and after as well as observing the playthrough.
Sources
Fullerton, T. (2018). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. ProQuest Ebook. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/reader.action?docID=5477698