Our first Stand-up meeting Part 2: Finalising the Game Concept

Once we had sorted out our team charter, we moved onto the second part of our meeting (Perry, L., Quinn, L., Tsaklev, G. and Waters, J., 2021.), which was to narrow down all the ideas that had been brainstormed and then use these to create a final game concept, as well as establishing the core mechanics (Core Game Mechanics, 2021).

To prepare for this, one member of our team, Luke compiled all of the ideas listed on our Miro (Miro, 2021) board and listed them in this document.

He consolidated these ideas into three distinct ideas for game concepts which are listed in bullet point form in the document, along with a subsequent list of miscellaneous ideas for story or mechanics.

We then collectively went through each of the three game concept ideas, as well as the list of ‘General notes’ and talked through each point within them to assess how viable they really are. As we went through each point, we would highlight it a specific colour according to the following.

Green These were aspects that we really like and deemed to be practical given the time and resources we have. We decided we would definitely use if we went with the concept it is listed under, that would definitely utilise this aspect and include it in our game.

Yellow These are parts which we generally like and would consider to be desirable but that we would only use if it is possible.

Red These are aspects of the project that were brainstormed but that we have ultimately decided not to use, either because they are not practical or they no longer fit with the game concept or the theme of the project.

In addition to the above, we also used Orange for ideas we are reluctant to use but may have to in order to make the game work and also Blue to indicate core mechanics/hooks.

We decided that we would mark the bullet points for each game idea according to the above colours and whichever game idea had the most green points or fewest red points would be the concept that we would go with for this project.

After consdering all three ideas very meticulously, we went with the second of these three ideas. This idea can be summarised as follows:

You play as a traveller who stumbles upon a magical temple. Explore the different sections and solve the mysteries utilising the abilities granted to you by the Tree of Life – altering the building blocks of reality

There are two themes that we have decided upon for this project – Accessibility and Sustainability. The inspiration for this game idea comes from the environment and looking after the environment as well as not interfering too much with the environment. The player character is granted the ability to change elements within the game to solve each level. However, the further you play the game, the environment goes from being earthy and green colours, through to dark, desaturated colours and starts to decay.

The ‘hub’ for this environment will be a tree located within the confines of a temple and the player visits each level within portals located within the tree. I believe this would give us the opportunity to use a lot of nature-based iconography.

This game will be a 3D first person game in which story is told and unfolds visually and the player completes puzzles to proceed to each level. The core mechanic within this game will be that the player can change the material of certain items (boxes/platforms) around the world in order to complete each level. This core mechanic will also serve as the driving force behind the storyline as unbenknownst to the player, this ability will contribute to the destruction of the environment around them.

This fact will not be communicated overtly within the game but rather covertly through visual cues as well as well as voice overs, which will be the dying voices of those who may have come to this place before.

As a team, we are all getting behind this game concept. We have also considered taking some of the best points from the two ‘rejected’ ideas and incorporating them into this game concept.

The next stage of the project is finalising the Game Design Document, which is what we will be doing in the coming days.

This stand-up meeting lasted just under 3 hours, because we had a huge amount of ground to cover and it is very unlikely that subsequent stand-up meetings will take anywhere near as long as this one did. However it was a completely productive and worthwhile session and we now feel a lot more confident.

Our next stand-up meeting will take place on Sunday 20th.

References

2021. Miro. San Francisco, CA: RealtimeBoard, Inc.

Perry, L., Quinn, L., Tsaklev, G. and Waters, J., 2021. Stand-up meeting – Wednesday 16th June.

Videogameworkshop.com. 2021. Core Game Mechanics. [online] Available at: <https://www.videogameworkshop.com/game-design/Core-Game-Mechanics.html> [Accessed 17 June 2021].

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *