Postmortem

Process:

When I was first assigned the task of creating a shooter game that must consist of multiple waves that each evoke a certain emotion/tone, I gravitated towards the idea of deconstructing the stages of grief.  After cycling through a couple of ideas I ended up deciding that centering my project around a lost person in the wilderness could act as a good base to convey the emotions I was interested in. Though I did not follow the stages of grief exactly, I loosely decided that my first round would represent confusion/helplessness, the second round would represent fear/anger/loneliness, and the third round would represent acceptance/happiness. Once I completed my first sketches I went straight into creating game assets on Procreate and the game pretty much unfolded exactly as planned from then on. 

Successes: 

After receiving feedback on a project from a previous semester, I was reminded just how gratifying it can feel to play a well packaged and complete game. I really wanted to make sure that all ends of this game were neatly tied up and that the game loop really brought players through an experience with a satisfying ending.  The success I'm most proud of might be the transition scenes and how they act as a good tone setting intro to each wave. 

Another success I am happy with is how connected the art, story, and game play are. This may be the first game I've created where I focused this much time on making each game aspect heavily relate to one another. From increasing player controls as time went on, to adding a directional light on the character in the nighttime scene, to removing the game timer I initially had in level three to emphasize the feeling of carefree happiness, I am quite satisfied with the choices I made and the final product.

Failures:

One failure that I am extremely disappointed about is not allotting myself time to flesh out the sound design. I feel that to not have any sound in an emotion-oriented assignment is a massive missed opportunity.  I had planned from the very beginning of the game making process to add in sound effects and background ambiance/music throughout every scene to emphasize tone. 

Another failure of mine is that I ran out of time to switch out my placeholder text UI for sliders. I strongly feel that if I had sliders tracking the level progress and even the overall game progress the whole project would have felt one step more complete. Sliders are such a great way to personalize our games and I think that if I added those in it could've added a nice stylistic flare to set my game apart a little more.

The last failure I will mention (though there a definitely more - ex: struggling with the input manager to allow for use of game pad and not placing strict game boundaries) is that my code was quite messy. Once I was deep into my development I began to realize more and more just how many of my scripts could have easily been simplified into one. Had I really spent time creating an overall game manager, I am positive I would have saved myself so much time and headache.

Next Steps:

By far my number one next step that I wish to take would be to add sound into all areas of my game. From the storyline transition slides, to hitting the next button, to throwing an acorn at a bear, I want every key interaction to be met with a sound effect and every scene to have some background music/ambiance playing. Another step I would love to take is continuing to tweak floats such as speed and spawn timers to make the game feel better from a gameplay view. Lastly, I am dying to add in game boundaries to my game...this is the most simple addition ever and it would give me much peace of mind.

Process Photos:

Early brainstorming:

Lots and lots of asset creation:

Old UI (top left):

New UI (top right):