Start of Adventure

First steps through our project!

By Cameron, Game Developer

• The first week of our development was purely about meetings and discussing what the game should actually be. This involved brainstorming different game mechanics and different colour themes.
• It was very important for the team to establish a purpose for the game to give meaning to the players actions.
• The initial idea for the game was for it to be a puzzle game but this proved itself to be too much to ask for our target audience as the game is aimed towards people aged 12 and over.
• This is where we decided the game should be an adventure exploration experience.

Second steps to take

Second steps to follow!

By Cameron, Game Developer

• In the second week the team focused on coming up with prototypes for the games core mechanics. This included character movement, a collection system and the level objective’s first iteration. At this point these mechanics were all in separate projects because they were still in the prototype stage.
• The player's objective mechanic was designed to challenge the player's observation skills.
• We created gold coins as an item for the collection system. This mechanic was implemented to offer a secondary objective for the player. It was designed to enhance player guidance in the form of incentive to collect more coins.
• The game’s target age is 12 and over so we wanted the art style to be low poly with colours relating to nature such as green, blue and brown.

Ideas for level design coming!

First thoughts about Level Design.

By Cameron, Game Developer

• Week 3 was devoted to talking about level design and how we can use it to optimize our mechanics. We came up with 3 iterations of levels in what would ultimately become the area of exploitation for the player. This was a useful component of the game to establish early because then mechanics and narrative can be implemented and adjusted to suit the level design.
• The most important goal for the team in terms of level design was for the player to know how to traverse the level without it becoming too complicated to figure out where things are.

First look of Kevin!

Good progress!

By Zac, Game Developer

Overall this week was quite a productive one for us game students.

In our group meeting we finalised the narrative that we wanted to go with for the game which was ‘A rich man has sent you on an adventure to an island to find the hidden treasure that’s shown on the map you were given.’ We went with this as it keeps the game lighthearted and keeps in with our target audience of 12+. We also decided on a name for the game which was ‘Kevin’s Adventure’.

We also started to get a basic layout of the level made within the project. Some simple trees, coins and a path were added which started to form the basic outline of the main route that the player would need to take. Points of interest in the form of large pink cubes were also added to assist in showing the player where they need to go.

Work has also started with the ‘day/night cycle’ that we want to add to the game to help add some immersion to the game.

The main task of finding and unlocking the treasure has also begun and it basically involves the player needing to find certain items hidden within the island and use them to unlock the door to the main treasure.

Model that we want to use for the main character ‘Kevin’ was decided. We went for a model that was; low poly, had simple features, was distinguishable and suited for the adventure type narrative that we are going with.

Character development

Character time!

By Sean, Game Developer

This week we worked on getting a 3d model for our character and started to rig walking animation for him. We used Inverse kinematics and raycast to do this. We finished our textures for our terrain. We planned out a final draft for our schedule after calculating what we had done so far and what we had left to do.

Let the illustration begins!

Last touches for landing page illustration

By Nataly, Web Developer

The web developers have made good progress. For this week we had the task of finishing the landing page illustration. Despite it not looking like much so far, I am sure it'll develop into a friendly and bubbly first impression.

Also, tasked with designing the games logo, my fello web developer created a truly amazing template for the game’s logo. Since we have completed our wireframes in Visual Studio Code, I feel confident in this projects direction and most importantly meeting the self-given deadline.

Web design illustration is on its way!

Reaching the end of web design

By Nataly, Web Developer

The most exciting part this week is presenting the completed illustration for the landing page. Researching illustrations that match our aesthetic, and a long week of learning Adobe illusatrator commands and shortcuts later, I present the final product to the group:

[edited]
Update:
They liked the landing page! We are one small step away from having a finished product!

One step closer to the finished product

Final stage of the website!

By Jackeline, Web Developer

The website is in the final stages of development, in this week we focused mainly on user interactivity – Nataly, my web developer fellow implemented bubbles for the user to interact because once the user clicks them, they pop! As our game has a bubble machine, we thought we had to include something bubble-related to the website and this was the most fun idea we had!

Altogether with this a new section has been implemented, the blog section where it will take the user to our itch.io blogsite where they would enjoy three blogposts about our experiences developing this game and website.

Also, thanks to the feedback that we received last week we decided to implement a comment box section below the game so users can leave feedback for us. Last but not least, the developer log books, as we can see now, are implemented on the website with different perspectives from the game developers and my web developer colleague!

Game play visuals

What's New with the Game!

By Cameron, Sean and Zac, Game Developers

Day/Night cycle Demo

To-Do:

Web Devs

• Fix bugs (modal and bubbles)
• Marketing
• Create email templates including website
• Responsiveness