This week we had a lecture from Venezia Georgieva about game systems. This expanded on some concepts we have already been using like game design pillars and introduced new ones like core gameplay loops.

Game Loops

Core Game Loops

• Moment to moment actions within a game, that the player repeats multiple times to make progress, usally focuses on short term goals.

Meta Game Loops

• Repeatable actions outside of core gameplay, story progress, long term progression, motivation systems.

Loops by Time

• Second-to-second – Most repeatable actions
• Minute-to-minute – Short term progress
• Hour-to-hour – Permanent progression longer goals

User Stories

This is a short sentence layout to be used when adding a new feature and figuring out why you are adding it. It focuses on the player and what they will gain from the feature. As there are multiple users of your game it is helpful to create multiple user stories for each.

• As [ blank ]
• I want [ blank ]
• So that [ blank ]

During the lecture we also did tasks. The first being to pick a game and identify what it’s game design pillars are. I chose the game Subnautica.

These are the pillars I got.

The next task was a group task to pick a game and decide it’s meta and core gameplay loop. We decided to use Subnautica again.

These are the loops we found, it took a while to decide on the core gameplay loop due to there simply being so much to do in the game. The meta loop came much easier. When creating the loop we also focused on the resource flow this is what you gain or lose in each loop. In Subnautica this ranges from materials found exploring to health lost from dangerous creatures.

Presentation

We also had another presentation of the work we had so far. I created a new presentation with a beach decking theme, I included my new game pillars, a draft of the core gameplay loop and a sketch mock up of the screen.

Next Steps –