FINAL GAME IDEA CHOICE
Friday, November 29th
Today we must make a decision in what game idea we want to take forward. To make sure our reasons are well grounded, we decided to evaluate each game idea and see what we think about it, and then pick the one we think will meet our goals as a team.
GAME IDEA NO. 1 - ANIMAL GAME
The animal game is an interesting environmental game. It presents a big issue we are facing nowadays, and that we must address as soon as possible, before we run out of time. I like the concept of teaching the player something useful about the world. The idea touches on the subject in ways that maybe other mediums such as movies or articles cannot. Getting to play 'in the shoes' of these animals that are forced to migrate will definitely make the player see the situation in a different way. With that being said, I would love for our game to teach people a lesson, but from the point of view of our project, I don't think it's very stimulation for our team.
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The game is just another almost story-driven game, in which the player is forced to do what the designer tells them to do, all while he is being lectured about the situation of the world. The mini games we have come up with are nice and cute, but I feel like our team can do better than this. For whatever reasons, this is what we have come up with and while the idea and everything sounds good, we want something else from our last major project, more ambitious.
GAME IDEA NO. 2 - ENERGY GAME
The energy game - if we can call it a game, is very simple and straight-forward. We like the essential experience "the understanding of continual loss", but I don't think the game fully portrays that feeling. If we take a step back and look at the game idea from the point of view of a player, I think the focus will be on the physics and the game play, rather than on loss. There's many issues we haven't really thought of when developing this game idea. First of all, we haven't really developed it. We found a mechanic that we liked and we kept it there. Then, the research we have done was not enough to develop further. Also, we stirred away from the essential experience, by focusing on making it an educational game, and this is where we lost our main point. What we have at this point is not enough, the idea is not solid enough, and besides that, we are not that keen on the whole concept of energy transfer.
GAME IDEA NO. 3 - SENSORY GAME
This game idea is, I think, one of the most exciting we have come up with. The concept of giving the player the ability to imagine themselves in such a space, game universe, with no visuals is beautiful and would allow for a new type of experience, the player being able to immersive in the game at a new level. I think this concept is very creative and has potential for a major project.
However, what we are not happy with is the fact that the game we have come up with already exists. The Papa Sangre Series is using the concept in the exact same way we wanted to. The story might be different, but I'm pretty sure we would run into copyright issues here. We are thankful we did the research on time, before spending too much time on this game idea and then figuring out in already exists. What I am happy with from this point of view is the fact that this game shows we are capable of coming up with good ideas that are worth developing to a finished product. This helps my self esteem a lot. Unfortunately, we won't be taking this game idea forward due to these reasons.
GAME IDEA NO. 4 - ABSEILING GAME
The abseiling game has a very interesting concept too. You get to create your own story by generating sounds. This game idea was developed from another one, the Diving Game. We changed that one because the concept of creating music was forced on the diving mechanic. It didn't feel natural and so we took the key elements from there and developed it into an abseiling game. At the beginning, wit was a nice concept and game idea, but then we kept adding things so that they would make sense for us, the designers, but we got lost in our minds and only after that we realised the idea doesn't make too much sense from the game universe point of view.
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We like the concept and the game idea, but we complicated it too much, and now the whole game feels a bit like its predecessor, a bunch of concepts and things glued together. We know we can do better than that. What we are aiming for is a sleek project, something smooth, smart. We don't want to have a salad of a game. We want to have a cake game. Where everything works and blends together for a finished product. Therefore, we won't be choosing this game either.
GAME IDEA NO. 5 - IMPROVISATION GAME
This game idea we came up with just yesterday. It is a unique concept, something that hasn't been created before. This is exactly what we were aiming for ever since we decided to team up. A game that hasn't been made already.
We love the freedom that the game allows for the player. It fully portrays the concept "We write our own stories. For the first time, in another language.". By combining this language, music, with improvisation, we get the perfect mix of freedom of creation. In this game, you can do whatever you want, if you don't want do anything and just sit there, it's fine, it's your choice. We like to look at this game as a new musical instrument. You can create music with gameplay, something we haven't encountered before in our research. Of course, there still is a significant amount of research to be done, but we really like the idea.
The project scale is ambitious enough, because we are creating a new type of game, which means a lot of research, but is also small enough that we can manage the development while we are designing it. We believe it is something we can achieve, designing it will be more complicated than developing, we think at this point, but we can handle it. We love the concept behind it, the idea and everything. This is the game that we will develop in semester 2, as we all agreed.
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In addition, this project gives all of us areas to improve our skills. Rylan can explore experimental music, and do something he hasn't done before, Daryl can take on and explore how he can create an art style that suits such a fast paced environment, as well as figure out how the animations would work, and I can try to figure out complicated systems and develop a game from scratch, as well as study user experience design. There is plenty of room and opportunities to improve our skills, so I think this is a great reason to choose this game to take forward.