Week 6

Pitch deck:

This is the pitch deck I created this week to pitch my game to a company or to be made during semester 2:

Title / Hook:

This is the hook which I think would best describe my game, I want the player to immediately know that the game will be difficult, that its a platformer and that you need to be precise. I chose the name ‘Shattered Light’ because my game focuses on the distortion of a perfectly safe thing, in this case the light. I chose the image in the background because it looks like light coming from all different directions and being ‘shattered’ in that aspect.

Elevator pitch:

This is my elevator pitch which we came up with in Sarah’s lecture during week 4, it is intended to be short and brief but detailed enough to make your game stand out among others, for this reason I included an open ended question at the end to make the person who I am presenting the pitch to second guess the information I just told them and to want to know more about why what I said is true. When you pitch a game idea to any company there is always hundreds of people doing the same thing per day sometimes if its a triple A company expecially so being able to stand out is key. With regards to why the pitch is relivant to the game it links in fully with the main story at this point which is the cat exploring a world which it used to do so with its family but now alone and with more fears then before.

Design intentions:

For the design of my game I want to denter it around a few existing design ideas for certain aspects, I would like the cat to look cute and clueless rather then strong and intelligant as if its exploring the world for the first time and the map aspects from both Ori and the Will of the Wisp / Blind Forest as well as Rainworld in terms of now showing any markers and just being a simple map shown from the side of the world like a ‘slice’. I included my initial plans of making a linear exploration game where you avoid he light and make it to the end simply by overcoming puzzles and nothing more centered on the underlying trauma aspect of the game and why the cat is scared nore how it can overcome its fears eventually in the end. My final idea centers much more around overcoming the issue of being scared of the light and learning that its okay to go into it and that its not something you should be scared of, building on the idea of having gradual resistance to it based on NPC interactions as well as reaching checkpoints in your journey.

Pillars:

Fearing the light because its deadly (shown in the gif on the side of the pillar)

Game is intended to be difficult (shown in the gif on the side with a part of the prototype people most struggled with)

Game aesthetics (shown in the gif on the side by images of how I would like the game to look / feel when played)

Player will have to pick upgrades and continue with them (shown on the gif on the side by the player realised light resets them, so the next time they go past they avoid it)

For my pillars I wanted to have 4 instead of 3 because it better fits my game, I could merge 2 pillars into 1 but it would not work as well that way. My first pillar is around avoiding the light and why / how you do that in gameplay. My second pillar is focused more on the mechanics of the game and that the platformer aspect is going to be very difficult on the player as well. the third pillar links into how I want the game to feel and look during being played, when the world is made I want it to feel abandoned and dangerous, something I briefly touched on when presenting my pitch deck was that I want the cat and player to feel like the world is fighting against them so that it will get more and more difficult to keep going and some parts may feel unfair in some ways. The fourth pillar is centered around the idea which I decided on more recently which is theat the player needs to change stratergy to get through some areas and getting to checkpoints allows you to ‘level up’ in some way.

Core game loop:

This is a rough idea of how I want gameplay to feel when playing, you complete a challenge which can range from a dfficult section of parkour or moving a box so you can sneak under a ray of light, collect your reward which in this case is an orb you use to build your resistance orgain health and then you move onto the next challenge. I want the player to settle into the idea of completing challenges and upgrading being one of the main goals in the game aside from the story since to be able to progress to the end they need to overcome everything. One thing I highlighted when going over this slide was that I want there to be no actual checkpoints throughout the game as in areas you reset to if you die, I want it to be ‘one life, one chance’ as is represented by trauma sometimes if you make one wrong step you can find yourself straight back to where you started and I want that feeling to be reflected in this game too.

Prototype:

This was the slide I used to present my prototype, some people chose to make videos of gameplay and why things are the way they are but in my situation I feel like its very simple and all its supposed to show is the light reset mechanic, how platforming is supposed to feel and the general aesthetic of the game alongside it. I put a brief overview of the game on the side and the idea of traversing through a series of challenges being reinforced here also adding that I don’t want the game to be linear and that I want there to be areas which you revisit later after you have gained a different ability or increased resiatance to the light.

Why should you make my game?:

This slide was dedicated to what about my game makes it different from another game which already exists but also what similarities to other games does it have which have succeeded in their launch and become popular, I talked about Rainworld being a similar genre that you are exploring a world which everything is fighting against you as well as the map system being similar to something which I want to aim for in this game. Celeste is good in terms of difficulty and similarities in platforming like being able to traverse through the world the same way and I used Ori for the last part in terms of aesthetics as well as map and the feeling which you develop for Ori through playing the game, He is a cute little creature which the player feels attached to and therefor is more careful about gameplay. I kept the scope simple because I want the game to be interpreted by the people who develop it more so then my own ideas for some parts because the views of a group can decide which of the things I have provided would fit into the game best. If it was to be made by a big studio then I would suggest that they make the game a different way and be able to add more mechanics like NPC’s to talk to or features like crouching changing your hitbox which might not be feesable for a group of students depending on skills. I wanted to creeate a game concept which I think everyone would be able to build to some extent and I think I have succeeded in this aspect.

Crit:

For this weeks Crit, on Monday we presented our pitch decks to eachother and got feedback on all parts of our game design at the end of the project, this involved things like my pillars and gameloop, they had to choose between strongly disagree and strongly agree as to whether these were relivant to my game idea, this is my feedback that I got back:

One thing which I think in future could’ve been improved on my pitch is the referances to the other games in my presentation, I think what they meant by this is that the games I mentioned were either not closely linked enough to my project or were not talked about enough because I think these games are the closest to my game which I could find so maybe more evaluation was needed.

On all other aspects I got majourity positive feedback so there was no other changes which I would have made at that point.