Week 9 – Presenting

On Monday of Week 9 the time came to finally present our three game concepts to the class. After a lot of work I presented the following three ideas:

• Beatmasher – Swap in blocks to make an ever-changing rhythm and combine them to defeat enemies
• Rushes – A 3D-visual novel hybrid narrating a coming-of-age story following four youths in the UK in the early 90’s.
• Pusher – Rhythm survival game where you move to the beat to grow a crowd to protect yourself from police infliltration.

Clicking on these three game titles will take you to their page where you can see the initial research for each one.

Presentation

As well as screenshots showing mockups of what a finished game would look like, for each game I included a page titled “Why This Game?” which included positives about each idea, helping me get feedback about which idea I should move forward with as my main idea as well as encourage people to perhaps work together with me in the next semester.

I have experience in programming and art but I would really like to work in a group for my next project so I am hoping someone will share the same passion for the game concepts as me.

Nodenoggin Feedback

Overall the feedback to my pitched ideas was very positive, with most positive reactions being for my third idea, Pusher, centring on the simple but unique and intriguing gameplay loop. This may have been due to my bias towards the idea which I would have to keep in mind.

Feedback Responses

• Breakmasher
  • “Interesting combo of music and ‘fighting’. Can players explore the music independent of its effect on the game? A free play mode?”
    • This question raised an interesting point, as I do not want the gameplay to overwhelm players who may just enjoy the musical aspect and perhaps the more puzzle-oriented side of the gameplay with fitting loop blocks together. A free play mode could fix this but it would add additional development time, so maybe this could be considered at a core design level.
  • “Seems like it could be a nice mobile game in fact?”
    • This was something I had not considered, but upon further thought I realise that the gameplay experience of dragging in and switching around blocks lends itself well to a touch interface. This would require a lot of consideration concerning playtesting and engine choice as I have not made a mobile game before and am currently planning on using Godot, but it would be a challenge I am not opposed towards.
• Rushes
  • “Clear idea – but idea felt a little less developed than the other two in my opinion.”
    • This is something I can somewhat agree with in that this idea is much more simplistic game-design wise, with art and narrative being more of a focus. To amend this I would have to quickly flesh out characters and storylines much more if this is the game idea I want to go with.
• Pusher
  • “This one is my favourite! I’d look into game feel and juice. Consider accessibility too! Crypt of the Necrodancer has a mode where the player isn’t forced to move to the beat, might be worth looking into.”
    • I am very glad to hear that this idea was well recieved as I struggled to refine the design idea into something that can be easily explained in the presentation. The movement of the game definitely is reminiscent of Crypt of the Necrodancer so I would love to have a closer look at this mode and how it interacts with the music.
  • “I agree that the game design is unique, simple and impactful. Interesting to think what parameters of music you can control through simple user input.”
    • If I go through with this idea I am planning to have a dynamic note and loop based system, so simple things like a drum beat can be pre-arranged and brought in and out. I can also do live effects like fading volume or applying a filter to emulate real rave music.