Contents
- My art form and new skill
- My Strengths and the skills I would like to develop
- My Project Plan
- Evidence of progress
- New Learning
- Working with a practitioner and getting feedback
- Overcoming Challenges
- The Final Game
- Feedback and Evaluation
- Skills Review
My art form: Game Design
Last year, I made a philosophy esque escape room game which isn’t too challenging but nice to play for the comedic aspect and other philosophers having intel on where Descartes (the missing philosopher) is and who might have kidnapped him.
Here is a link to that game: https://treasuremedia.co.uk/philosophy-escape-room/
Here are some screenshots from the game:
From the intro page
From a riddle, players read the riddle and then press the button of the right answer to move on.
I enjoy creating the narrative because looking at the visual aspects of a game does not paint the full picture and it can be unlocked through intricate storytelling and creating a memorable story. This text-based game was published on a website and mostly used hyperlinks and passwords to move forward.
Although in the digital age video games are the most popular, board games and escape room games are very prevalent and relevant still. They bring together a sense of togetherness, competitiveness and the challenge of winning. Games have a unique ability to combine community and rivalry into one.
My New Skill: 2D Platforming
I personally really enjoy video games, they have been a part of my life growing up and create an interesting dynamic when you play them and “grind” for virtual objects on a video game. For example, Call of Duty has camo challenges and the reward isn’t that great sometimes but the dopamine hit of completing a challenge spurs me on to complete them. However, playing video games for hours is not for everyone and some would prefer a short story in video game format.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is by far the best story in a game that I have played, where we already knew the fate of certain characters from the previous game but still shocked all the player base; the characters are loved and the story writers kept the first game “canon” (meaning still true to the story) and done it exceptionally well.
I am interested in 2D Platformers especially because they feel nostalgic but also can be exceptionally good around the right idea for a game paired with a good story narrative. I feel like 2D platformers are becoming a rarer form of game. With advanced technology in the modern day, companies want to make a huge game which requires years of work.
My Strengths before starting this project
- Writing Skill
- Creativity
- Logical thinking
- Vivid Imagination
- Time Keeping
The skills I would like to develop with this project
- Plot Development
- Problem-Solving
- Design
- Attention to detail
- Planning Skills
My project plan
To collect research I will:
- Research games and game designers
- Play 2D platformers made on Gdevelop
- Interview a game designer if one is available
To plan, practise, and prepare for my project I will:
- Create a mood board of ideas
- Work on creating smaller game elements for the game
- Practice using GDevelop game software
- Watch GDevelop tutorials on Youtube
To create my project I will:
- Create artwork for sprites and backgrounds for the game using Pixel art and photoshop
- Create music for the game in beep box
- Create play layout scenes in GDevelop
- Code events in Gdevelop using conditions and actions
To evaluate the success of my project I will:
- Use GDevelop to generate a play test link that I can send to people
- Create a questionnaire to send to players
- Get feedback from my arts award supervisor
- Respond to feedback and improve the game
Evidence of Progress
The plan for my game
| My game concept: | ||||
| Knight called upon by an ancient forest to fight the evil hoardes of enemies that slaughter his village and it’s protectors. The knight fights through waves of enemies in a forest, desert and an utopian environment where he gets wisdom off this mysterious entity, upon reaching the utopia we find the deified being and get given a choice of what to do. | ||||
| Game Type | ||||
| 2D Side Scrolling platform game with combat | ||||
| Setting of the Game | ||||
| Pixelated but also ‘real’ backgrounds and platforms in the game to create the metaphor for the character being misplaced. | ||||
| Intro to game | ||||
| Speech bubbles when interacting with NPCs. The opening sequence would be left quite vague but with enough happening to attract interest from the player regarding the story line. | ||||
| Main game Goal | ||||
| Survive, fill in the missing pieces of the story. And to get to the next level | ||||
| Level goal / gameplay goal | ||||
| Get to the next level (distance wise) will enemies spawning frequently to prevent this | ||||
| Character appearance | ||||
| Pixelated and is a knight | ||||
| Levels | ||||
| Level 1: Forest level to find the ‘mysterious entity’. Giving vague warnings to the player which hinting about possible plot twists and being deceptive about the nature of our character Level 2: Desert we eventually find the portal leading to the ‘deity’ Level 3: Utopia. We reach Utopia where we meet a deified figure and gives us the answers to the questions we have Completing challenges as we go through the levels | ||||
| Level 1 Game Play | ||||
| Level 1: Character runs left and right and can climb ladders in trees. If a spider touches the player they die (or lose HP) and a bad noise plays, If the player presses attack they fire lightning at the spider which dies. Spiders drop from above. The treasure is at the top of the furthest tree and when they player touches it they go to a cut scene with a happy noise. There are coins along the way, when they player touches a coin a money score goes up and it makes a twinkly noise.) Level 1: Our character and player grasp the basics, cut through enemy waves and start to learn the abilities of our character meeting the mysterious entity and putting together some form of narrative | ||||
| Game Story | ||||
| Fight to get to this entity who calls him the greatest warrior and offers you to serve him and bid his evil but the killing and corruption of the ancient voices tells you to kill this deity and take his place doing exactly the same thing and allow this ancient power god like powers… what do you choose? You are in a suspended animation where you have to choose option 1,2 or maybe 3 and get a different end scene everytime. | ||||
| NPC (non-player character) | ||||
| Mysterious entity speaking in riddles |
Learning
I took parts of this game design course on Udemy:
https://www.udemy.com/course/become-a-game-designer/?couponCode=ACCAGE0923
This course was about creating 3D elements for games, but in the end I decided that 2D gaming would allow me to do more in the time that I had as 3D gaming is very time consuming. Here is a screenshots of my 3D work, I was using a cylinder to make a spinning carousel of objects that a player could choose in a menu:
Working on the Game
Mood Board
The mood board is where I stored images that inspired my game
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ph-EEanagb3IBMYWEuH75dz6qXMvnbLlAfD-oybcLS0/edit?usp=sharing
Making Sprites
Sprites are small pixelated images that appear in the game. They can be animated or still. Here are the sprites developed for my game.
Main Character – Animated – Created in Piskel
I had to make a different set of sprites for each animation, run, idle, and attack.
Idle – For when the player stands on the spot
Run – For when the player moves left or right
Attack – For when the player uses their sword
Enemy – Animated – Created in Piskel
NPC – Not Animated – Created in Piskel
The NPC slides from side to side but doesn’t move in the same way as the other sprites so it looks like it is just gliding.
End of level portal – animated
Pickups and other objects – Found on Google, backgrounds removed in Photoshop
Backgrounds for the main three scenes
These were originally photos found on Google but were Photoshopped to have an artistic look and to be repeating images so that they could be used as repeating tile sprites over a whole level:
Level 1 Tiled Sprite – Forest:
Level 2 tiled sprite – desert:
Level 3 tiled sprite – utopia:
Working with a practitioner and responding to feedback about the new skill: 2D platform gaming
Owen completed his Arts Award online with me on Zoom and in his independent study time. During the lessons, we have often used the Zoom chat to make to do lists and record progress. Owen has added all our chats to his portfolio.
Melanie Jones – Supervisor
Chat Folder – All of the Zoom chats I had with Melanie can be found here
Here are some screenshots of key moments from the chats:
25th January 2024
22nd February 2024
28th February 2024
29th February 2024
13th March 2024
14th March 2024
1st May 2024
23rd May 2024
16th June 2024
Music
I made the music for the game using Beepbox which is a website where you can sketch out music. I sent each bit of music to Melanie and she sent comments.
Level one music
Level two music
Narrative intro scene music
Death scene music
These sound good, they match the tone of the game and are quite ominous. I like that the music for the second level is both a little more upbeat and a little more dangerous sounding, as if the player has moved up to a new challenge level.
Feedback on level one and two music from Melanie
These are great! The death scene sounds melancholy but the narrative one is quite fitting for the start of the games, I can imagine it playing as the text scrolls and it won’t be too distracting from the story. Well done!
Feedback from Melanie on narrative and death scene music
Screenshots of me working on the game
Overcoming Challenges
Bugs – A lot of bugs came up while creating the game. Here are some of the main issues and how I resolved them
| Bug | How this was resolved |
| The UI layer with scores and hearts was duplicated so that it appeared twice on each level. | I had made an external layer for UI which I loaded into each scene, but I hadn’t deleted the individual UI layers for each scene |
| The score didn’t update when the player picked up gold or on the death and ending scenes | There was a typo in the variable name for the score |
| The player died instantly in contact with the enemy instead of losing hearts | There was a collision trigger to lose health, so if the player collided with the enemy they lost a fraction of health. But this kept triggering all the time they were touching the enemy. Adding a ‘trigger once while true’ condition to the collision fixed this bug. |
| There seemed to be hidden platforms in the desert scene | |
| There was a floating mummy in the desert scene | |
| The knight didn’t animate when running | There was a conflict with button presses so that one button was making the knight run and walk which cancelled each other out. Changing this fixed the problem. |
| The tumbleweed enemy wasn’t spinning | The animation for the tumbleweed wasn’t set to loop. |
| The player kept falling off the bottom of the screen | The platforms did not have the platform behaviour assigned. |
Technology
I have a lot of my Arts Award Lessons online and I also used online software to create my game. This did create some issues as the internet is not always brilliant at school.
| Technology Issues | How this was resolved |
| A lot of GDevelop features didn’t seem to work on my laptop | Gdevelop was initially blocked by the school server. Melanie and I asked for this site to be unblocked and it was, but some subdomains were missed. We used the GDevelop forums to get a list of subdomains and asked for these to be unblocked as well. |
| Play links and previews didn’t work so it was hard to test the game | This seemed to happen when internet signal was low. I used my personal internet to generate links to send to Melanie so that we could review the changes I made in the game. I also waited to use these features for when internet was strong. |
| Laptop stopped working after the Easter break | For a few weeks my laptop didn’t work at all. I borrowed a Mac computer from school and was able to work on the game but I did lose a bit of motivation during this time. Once my laptop was fixed, I had to work extra hard to finish the game in time but I became more confident with GDevelop as I went along. |
Final Product: Voices Within
Click here to play my game!
Feedback Survey for the game
The game was sent to staff and students at school as a link via email. The game was also sent to people outside of school, some of whom work in coding. A feedback survey was sent along with the link.
The questions were:
- Do you have any experience with coding
- Do you usually enjoy platform games
- How would you rate my game out of 10
- Can you think of one thing I did well with my game
- Can you suggest one thing that I could have improved on with my game
Feedback gathered with my survey
My Evaluation of this project
The game is about a knight who wakes up confused, lost and abandoned in the forest; he slays enemies and reaches varied levels. He has dialogue with a Mysterious Entity and gets given subtle hints as to what may be going on and has to put the pieces of the puzzle together through inference as the game progresses
GDevleop is a free-to-use online platform for game development. There isn’t a necessity for knowledge of coding languages and instead uses an action and condition based event system. A lot of the ‘events’ used in the game are collision-based when the pixels of two different ‘sprites’ meet.
I had the goal of exploring different artistic aspects of game development. I wanted to create a cohesive game that used artistic aspects such as character design, level design and storytelling that felt natural to the player. I also had the goal of developing my skills around design but also just planning and being able to structure my work to a greater level.
I have definitely learned about the type of work indie game developers might do if they’re in a small team or by themselves. I have also learned the importance of organisation and structure when developing the game. Having organised event sheets and structured lists of things to do has helped my individual performance.
I worked with Melanie during our sessions. Usually I would have an idea, we would discuss how to implement it, I would work in Gdevelop and show Melanie, and then she would give me feedback and help with any bugs. We created a list of GDevelop instructions together as we went that could be used by other students who do a similar project in the future.
I had the challenges of bugs and events not going how I planned at times. Being online-based, internet could be unstable at points. Hardware problems with my laptop not connecting to the internet at all happen for a period of time. Mental fatigue was also weighing me down when trying to finish off big parts that were needed to progress development.
I think that staying calm helped me not lose motivation but also kept me in the same frame of mind. I also tried to optimise what I did outside of lessons so I could mainly focus on the game project inside of lessons and maximise what I could do each week in the presence of difficulties. I think I began to be more adaptable as the project went on as I started to anticipate what problems might arise each day and how I could counter them.
I feel that the responses regarding game feedback on the whole were very positive, what I take away from the feedback is that a lot of things were done well visibly, mechanically and audibly. I also noticed that some of the constructive feedback were subconscious thoughts I had already such as the visibly different style of gold, which I’m not sure I would change personally, but also the camera not following the knight on the vertical axis which could be changed to add extra depth to the game.
If I made the game again from the beginning I think the use of global objects, global events and global variables from the very start would have decreased the time required overall. And if I were to develop this game further, I definitely think I would like to expand the story narrative if given the opportunity.
I think the resilience I had, when facing adversity in the form of many technical problems, is what I’m most proud of.
Skills Review
| Plot Development | Thinking about how to develop a narrative over three levels whilst also focussing on gameplay. A cryptic narrative was used and clues were dropped by the NPCs. |
| Problem-Solving | Overcoming bugs in the game, trying out different things in GDevelop to get the desired effect. |
| Design | Collaborative design, coming up with ideas for backgrounds, sprites and music that all worked together. |
| Attention to detail | Noticing small bugs in the game and searching through events sheets to find where these bugs could be fixed. |
| Planning Skills | Collaborative design, coming up with ideas for backgrounds, sprites and music that all worked together. |