Prototype Work
I decided to include a simple main menu for my game, the menu consists of three buttons, Play, settings and Quit, I might leave out the setting as it's not necessary for the module.
The style of the game is relatively simple, so I thought I'd reflect that with the menu buttons. Above you see the first iteration of the menu.
After completing the UI pages of my pitch document I decided to go back and re-create the aesthetics of the menu. Below you can see the pitch page for UI and the final menu. I ensured to keep to a minimal amount of options to ensure simplicity, due to the fact the game is simple it makes sense that coherency would flow if the menu's also followed this rule.
End Level Menu -
It was necessary for the game to include an end level menu too for scoring purposes. I also created an alternative of an if/else statement in visual programming as a little test to see if I could figure it out, the purpose of the piece of code is to change a piece of text on the end screen depending on how many lights the character has collected.
After: I decided to clean up the page and make it simple, everyone already knows the meaning of the icons from previous pages so it was pointless to have al of that information there. Instead I opted for simple notations next to areas of interest on the level design map.
After completing the UI pages of my pitch document I decided to go back and re-create the aesthetics of the menu. Below you can see the pitch page for UI and the final menu. I ensured to keep to a minimal amount of options to ensure simplicity, due to the fact the game is simple it makes sense that coherency would flow if the menu's also followed this rule.
End Level Menu -
It was necessary for the game to include an end level menu too for scoring purposes. I also created an alternative of an if/else statement in visual programming as a little test to see if I could figure it out, the purpose of the piece of code is to change a piece of text on the end screen depending on how many lights the character has collected.
Testing
After getting my game ready to play I created a before and after survey using google forms, inspired by a recent game play testing experience. This will help me gauge who is playing my game and help me understand their personal responses.
Outcomes - Overall the testing phase has gone great. I got a lot of feedback from gamers and non-gamers that will help me clean up the game so that it's a lot more simple to understand. I was able to use google forms responses to visualise the responses, I will be creating a separate research post on the gathered information.
Seeing as flow is the theme of the project, I saw fit to include a question directly addressed to the flow of the game.
Seeing as flow is the theme of the project, I saw fit to include a question directly addressed to the flow of the game.
Interestingly, everyone that played the game had a unique emotional response, indicating the prowess in the game to actually evoke emotion in the player, except every single person said the felt a spike in curiosity after playing the game also interestingly everyone managed to address similar issues of the game when asked about what they think could be improved. Below are a list of the main issues that were talked about in the surveys.
Changes needed -
Make the lights change colour - A big critique was that it was difficult to tell if the lights had been collected, to make this more obvious the lights now start off being yellow with no glow and then shine really bright when collected. Below is how the lights look now before and after the player has collected it.
Make double jump more obvious - Most people were unable to figure out the double jump, to tackle this a visual way of showing the ability to jump must be thought about.
Make player faster - The character was found to walk too slow, resulting in boring areas of gameplay, to tackle this I have just made the player walk faster which sorted out the issue.
Character HUD - Multiple comments asked for a few HUD elements to show amount of lights collected and and a stamina bar to further helping people understand the double jump mechanic.
Keeping player interested -
Getting rid of word narrative and add more narrative imagery - I will do this by completely removing text and thinking of a way to represent concepts with imagery presented in the background.
Pitch Document
I prepared my pitch document for the mid-week group criticism. I ensured all 10 pages were ready to ensure I could get enough critique back as possible.
Criticism and changes: Most of the criticism I received was to do with the presentation of the information. The biggest thing was to condense text and ensure that all text was consistent, don't refer to self and don't use any programming terminology. With this in mind I reviewed my information and changed things.
Below are a few page examples before and after changes -
Before: This page was getting to a useable standard, although I was unsure about the structure of information.
After: Instead of adding more to the page I was suggested to use the information and just make it bigger, while also narrowing down the amount of text to allow prominence for the visual things. The page definitely looks a lot stronger now.
Before: This page was far too cluttered, too much information and too much overlapping visual information.
Criticism and changes: Most of the criticism I received was to do with the presentation of the information. The biggest thing was to condense text and ensure that all text was consistent, don't refer to self and don't use any programming terminology. With this in mind I reviewed my information and changed things.
Below are a few page examples before and after changes -
Before: This page was getting to a useable standard, although I was unsure about the structure of information.
After: Instead of adding more to the page I was suggested to use the information and just make it bigger, while also narrowing down the amount of text to allow prominence for the visual things. The page definitely looks a lot stronger now.
Before: This page was far too cluttered, too much information and too much overlapping visual information.
After: I decided to clean up the page and make it simple, everyone already knows the meaning of the icons from previous pages so it was pointless to have al of that information there. Instead I opted for simple notations next to areas of interest on the level design map.
Now all I need to do is pick at little tweaks to the document and send it off to get criticised again before I present it next Friday.
To top everything off here's an awesome pic of a box I made in Unreal
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