Trash Dev Game Design

I can't find a good image for this post, its due in three hours cut me some slack. Ok, we know the format at this point. Assignment 3 Lethel Cuts, good and bad, Successes and Failures.   Successes Everyone had fun, this is a big one. I was really afraid of going into playtests with a buggy game that people just didn't want to play but for the most part our testers had a great time. I know that it being multiplayer really affects this because even a boring game played with friends can be a good time but its still a good thing.  The intensity bar. Turns out to be a great mechanic once the players understand it. people enjoyed how it worked in a competitive match but also would experiment with it on friendly terms with their opponent to see what they could do with it and how it effected the game. art and music, many people said our game looked and sounded great which was something I wasn't thinking about until it came up but I'm very happy about it. All credit goes to the ...

  Just because I had to work on assignments doesn't mean I'm missing Halloween. I'm working hard, the whole team is, its coming up to end of semester and everything is due. After much playtesting and many meetings with the team we have agreed that some things need to change in Lethal Cuts. Blocking is terrible, its not fun or effective. Infact most people couldn't figure out it was a block without it being explained. The Air attack is kind of useless because it only works against other characters in the air and as there isn't any other reason to be in the air its just not used. Worst of all and maybe this is a result of the other issues, every match becomes both players slamming the attack button as fast as possible while standing in front of each other. The silver lining is that apparently thats pretty fun as most of our feedback has been really positive.  I think, and play testers agree, that the game need more movement and more reasons to move. As such I want to ...

  looks like there having fun but we need paperwork to be sure. In the last post about Assignment 3 I talked about the changes I would make to the game before going into playtesting. Of those changes we decided to implement the split Intensity Meters. If you don't know what I'm talking about go read my post "Assignment 3: Development Progress".  Now on to the topic at hand. We have begun the process of play testing. We know the game is buggy going in and obviously there are things we would like to fix before going to play testers, but we don't have the time for that so let's put out of scope out of mind.  First lesson is feedback comes fast in a playtest for a two-player game. The players speak to each other and because the game is player V player when someone gets the upper hand there can be a lot of yelling about it on both sides.   Looking at the feedback over the four playtests that we have conducted there are some clear patterns when it comes to gameplay ...

Hot tip; bet on YouTube Its time for me to go back to Tracy Fullerton. But I have to be honest, I have tried to write this blog post a few times. I read chapters over and over trying to find something I wanted to talk about but I hate this text book. Its painfully boring, unimaginative and lacks the fun and soul that makes game design mean something. I could write an essay on how much I dislike this Textbook, but I'm not going to do that. Instead lets do something more fun and more nice. I'm going to highlight some YouTube channels and videos that are infinitely better resources and free. so, lets begin.  GDC - https://www.youtube.com/@Gdconf/featured GDC (Game Design Conference) is a legendary channel, honestly its a gold mine. According to its own description "GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more." In short they get professionals in the gam...

I swear its a logo officer, promise I didn't crop the Design Page Ok so, Lethal Cuts. Its a simple little fighting game but its got some interesting stuff going on. Lets start by going over the game as it was presented to the group and then ill talk about the changes I would (and hopefully will) implement as the lead designer.  lets look at the Design Page for Lethal Cuts. really this image should be all you need but ill explain anyway See that black controller? that's the most important information as far as I'm concerned. Move with the left stick, jump with A, attack with X, block with B. Ignore the Attack Direction stick, that's not implemented. The attack works basically how you expect and theirs a different animation if you attack in the air buts its pretty much the same attack. Block is a bit more complicated, your character turns to stone after a small pause becoming immune to hits for a short time. No health bars just if you take 3 hits you lose.  Now there'...

the new project We've made it to the final boss so to speak. The last assignment for the game design unit, and its a group project. Remember that Sell Sheet and Design Page I made for actual Driving? Well everyone in the class did one and we all went around the room showing off our designs. People had done some really cool stuff and honestly, I was blown away by some of it. Everyone that saw the Sell Sheet for Actual Driving was very impressed and I managed to find four people to make a group easily. But here's the hard part, and why Actual Driving had its development so quickly brought to a close.  Once I had a group we had to sit down and figure out which of the four games was going to be made, that's the final assignment, as a team finish one game.  The Meeting went down like this, we all loved Actual Driving and each of us agreed that if we were going to go to a vote on which game we wanted made it would be mine, but one of the other games that was pitched was a very cl...