A Missing Piece- Process, Struggles, Future Revisions

Game Presentation: The Missing Piece

The Development Process-

In terms of the development process, we initially had several brainstorming sessions where we came up with the idea that each player would be a child dressed up as an imaginary character, such as a witch or a superhero. These characters would have certain abilities that allow them to work together to solve puzzles and fight enemies.  After doing this we decided to work on the concepts of our enemies and environment, as well as the puzzles themselves. We had various ideas on how these puzzles would work and settled on creating three levels that feature puzzles: a shorter introductory level with a simpler puzzle and two longer levels that feature rooms with small puzzles to solve to move on to the next room. In terms of the enemies themselves, we wanted to create various imaginary enemies that replicate household items, such as a couch monster or a hanging coat shadow monster. Each of these enemies would move and attack in a different way and would be featured in separate rooms/levels. Once we nailed down these concepts we went about coding how these enemies/characters/puzzles would work using placeholder objects in Unity such as boxes and geometric shapes. Tandem to how the  coding process was moving the team was also working on the art and considering how the characters and environment would look like. Due to the concept of the game falling under a child's fantasy, we decided to make the game more child like and the art itself and environment would resemble a child's playbook more so than an actual realistic environment.

Successes-

In terms of successes of the game,  we had playtesters tell us, during the play test sessions, that the game did have a family orientation due to the feel of the art and the cooperation between the characters. This was an important comment that was made since this was the goal that we were heading for. It was also noted during the two first playtests that we had that players were actually communicating with each other while playing the game. This was a good sign as the game was meant to be a cooperative experience were players interact with each other to solve puzzles and fight enemies. Another success noted in the playtests was that testers believed that the characters were fairly balanced. This is another important distinction as the whole premise of the game and the most important thing to achieve in this project was to create an asymmetrical game that is also balanced between players. Hearing players say that this was achieved was a major success for us. Outside of playtests, we successfully managed to create art that appropriately and successfully encapsulated the look that we wanted to go with the game, of childhood fantasies and imagination. Alongside this the programming elements were also successful in that our enemies and player characters more or less followed and did what we wanted them to do. Although less successfully, we were able to achieve the same with our puzzles; we had variety that worked well in each level.

Challenges-

Moving on to challenges, a large chunk of what comprised of our challenges and difficulties can be found in the fact that we initially did not concretely develop the ideas that we wanted to follow through with. Indeed, we agreed upon a few set elements, such as the characters and enemies, but we simply dived into working on these, which meant that other areas of the game were left to ambiguity and uncertainty. In fact, midway through the time that we had to work on the game, we were asked various questions about the story, goals and play-through of the game which we could not all universally answer. In turn, because of this, members of the group where left confused and uncertain on how some aspects of the game were to work or be fleshed out. This also meant that come play test time, we only had fragments of the game complete, but no glue to put them together. Moving on to playtests, we had a number of noted issues, such as sluggish player movement and confusion with objects in the game and points of interest. The most serious issues we had involved confusion with what the goal of the game was as well as level progression difficulty. Firstly, players playing the game did not seem to have a clear picture of what they were doing and why they were doing it. Secondly, there was no distinction and progression in the levels in the game. In fact, we had to figure out how each level would work and sculpt them better with clear distinctions and objectives. Another note made was that while one player was working on puzzles, the other players had nothing to do and simply waited for their role to come in, which could be seen as leading to boredom. In terms of visuals, we were told that our story was dark and serious but the color palette of the artwork and the environment and enemies themselves was light and friendly. Indeed, players said they did not feel threatened by the enemies. Thus, a balance between lighthearted child essence and serious undertone needed to be found. Other smaller issues, however, involved the lack of visuals and animations which was only due to the very early stage of the game and the placeholder art there.

What We Learned-

Through this process, as a team especially, we learned to better communicate and work with each other, which was important since none of us had worked with each other before. As such, it was nice to see how we managed to focus very quickly and work within each other’s abilities and skillsets. Furthermore, we learned to draw up plans fairly quickly and be more decisive with our ideas and which ones should be dropped and which needed more work. On a more personal note, my programming capabilities grew significantly with this project, leading me to feel more confident with myself and what I can do with code. It also led me to have a more concrete and wide arching understanding of different code elements that are very useful in character design. 

Future Iterations- 

In terms of future revisions, I would like to see an even more advanced and complex level of player cooperation where each character can work simultaneously on a puzzle alongside their fellow players, while the puzzles themselves can be more complex and harder to understand. Due to the fact that I had never worked on coding puzzles before, a lot of the puzzle concepts in the game are fairly simple and easy to understand from the get go. Furthermore, it would be interesting to add even more abilities on each character and also to add in more enemy variety and types that require players to work together to defeat them. An example could be an enemy with a shield that requires a melee player to break the shield before other players could attack the enemy. Further iterations could be focussing more on sound effects and sound tracks that would be able to better encapsulate the feeling of the game that we were going for. 

Play Test Images: