One week project

During the first semester of my junior year, the syllbus asks us to make one game per week in order to discover what we really like and possibilities within games. We are given a word or a phrase every week as the theme, and use that to make a short prototype. At the end of semester, I was able to finish 12 games within less than 4 months. Based on this process, we can better decide what we want do in game industry.

Week1-Pop
Week2-Stack On
Week3-Awkward Moment
Week4-Bounce
Week5-Arcade Game
Week6-Leaving Home
Week7-One
Week8-Out of Time
Week9-In View
Week10-Level II
Week12-Hero

One

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The theme for Week7 is one. My inspiration is that there are a lot of games that have the humor of making the main character extremely weak, so they will die at points you didn’t consider which is funny. Art style I thinking of is old rpg maker games. I want this game to be hard and overwhelming, the trap is everywhere, and you have to be careful to keep the character alive. As the result, the way I respond to the theme is my character only has one health left, anything can kill him very easily, like hunger and a rock.

Responsibilities

Team Size: 1 (solo project)
-code and animator arrangement for walking animation
-code for hunger and stamina increase and decrease
-cut the spirit sheet into pieces and arrangeing the map

Reflections

I learned that building up a world using a spirit sheet is not easy, the scene can get very messy pretty quickly, so organizing and naming becomes very important when building a complicated map. I also learnt how to use animators and had a better understanding of how animation works.

Level II

For the theme Level II, we can revise any game we made in previse week. I chose in view to revise. Because I like the aesthetic I drew and the photo taking function. When brainstorming this game, I circled around the idea of how to be a better bird photographer. And I made these elements into three mini games. The three mini games are to take a photo of the bird closest to the center, take a photo with most birds, and find the most number of birds in a limited amount of time.

Responsibilities

Team Size: 1 (solo project)
-manage three mini game into different scene and organizing them together for the score caculation
-illstruation for all the assets
-code for taking image
-code for click to find bird within image
-code for caculation how many birds are remaining in the frame

Reflections

For find the most bird, I did a similar game with leaving home, so it was not very difficult for me. And calculating the distance between the bird and the center point is quite easy as well. As a result, the hardest part remains to be what I wanted to do in the beginning, and avoiding a lot of coding problems happening in the last time, like birds behind the tree will still be counted, and everything is generated at once. Gladly, I think this time, the final result is much closer than what I want to achieve, the movement of the bird feels more natural, and I found another way to calculate the number of birds within a frame. If I have more time. I would also include more narrative, now it is hard to tell the player is trying to be the best bird photographer, an ending scene will be good to have as well based on the total score the player gets. But overall, I think the aesthetics are working together, and all the main functions are working, so I am glad what I made this in a week.

Hero

This is the final project of this semester, so different from other game projects, we got three weeks to do this. And there is two theme we can choose from, Egg and Hero. There are three figures given for Hero as an addional requiremet. I chose the hero as the theme for my final, because I think the three character models are really cute, and they have different personalities. So using them and thinking about what they can do is pretty fun. Also, I always want to make a game with inventory and more open-world puzzle solving games, so I think this three week duration will be a good opportunity. I also want to make the game more complete and the UI looks nicer and the game play is longer.

My game idea for this one is that three characters represent three different abilities, breaking things, time passing, and getting things from far away.

Responsibilities

Team Size: 1 (solo project)
-code for positioning and dragging the UI
-code for dialogue and dialogue change after they receive what they need
-code for the checking previous requirement to get the excalibur and which ending player get
-illstruation for all the assets
drawing my own spirit sheet and placing everything together

Reflections

I think I finished the majority of what I want to achieve in this game, there are multiple endings, a relatively free explore world, and a puzzle solving game that is longer and a little more complicated.

There are still bugs and errors I have to fix, but I did not have enough time like order of sprites, sometimes the move button is not working or the ability UI did not stay at the position it should be. But because it is not an easy fix, and it does not affect the overall gameplay, I did not fix it right away.

I like this game, like the art style and overall dragging gameplay. It is like a mobile game, easy to play. Moreover, it is a puzzle game which is the kind of game I enjoy making and playing by myself. Although I think the puzzle itself can be more logical and harder, it needs more time within the planning stage. So if I have another chance, I will spend more time planning out the whole game. But i think it is in a pretty good place for three weeks game.