Roles

Nicky: Level Designer, Programmer, 2D artist, Screenwriter

Development

To start off with this 2D space-shooter-like game, I brainstormed 5 different themes. The 5 ideas all includes shifting of emotions between levels, as the project requirement demands.

• Player being both merchant, pirate and the government in the 1600s carribean sea;
• Player being a deformed kid who has severe myopia, who thought he looks normal;
• Player being a kid grown up in the woods, and comming back to the ruin of it 20 years later;
• Player being three generations in a Chinese family walking along the same road, in different eras with different stories;
• Player being an innocent prisoner, experiencing the loss of hope, and adapting to the prison life.

Out of all these ideas, I chose the second one, as it's the briefiest yet the strongest one among all 5.

I them moved to plot-planning, and devided the story into three scenes: a friendly space, a strange space and a malicious space. The main character will go to school by himself, leaving a friendly and familiar community, heading to the crowded downtown streets, and finally arriving a classroom full of bullying. 

Then, I drew several drafts to show how the game would look like, and how colors are used to display the mood of the character. The happier the character, the smaller his hue value is (meaning leaning more towards yellow), and the higher the brightness value will be.

Programming, being the least specialized field of mine, is the most time-consuming part in the whole development process. I didn't use a calendar in this project to track time, instead, I made a list of mechanics I needed to learn and apply to the game. Most of them are successfully done, while two remains unresolved.

The most intriguing yet frustrating part of this project is making the fog of war mechanic. This is the first 2D shader I did, and it helped in rendering the fearful atmosphere a lot.

Self-Review

Success

• I finished a project with a complete play loop , featuring original art style, programming, storyline and partly original sound
• The heart shooting mechanic and the fog of war is a fresh visualization of emotions

Failure

• Unclear indications to the player of where to go and what to do
• The minimal art style is not delicate
• Programming took too long, leading to very limited time to do the art and narration
• The dialogues have to be removed completely due to a bug in my dialogue sequencer that I couldn't solve

Lessons learned

• By far, programming is the one factor that limits my scale of design. Either collaborate with other programmers, or practice more on coding.
• I am better on project management, and large-scale stuff such as brainstorming and scheduling. Therefore, a group project of 3-4 would be the best for me.
• If there is another solo project, I will downscale the technical part of the game, and enhance the concept/storyline.
• Make a plan B when deciding to work on an technically ambitious feature, so there is always a backup to fill in the void.

Future plans

(This project is not prioritized for future development. I will work first on Afternoon Walk/Purple Ball Guy in my leisure time.)

• Fix bugs in the game
• Optimize the indications
• Finish the dialogue sequencer, adding more context to the game with dialogues
• A better knockback mechanic
• Make the graphics more delicate while remaining monotonic