Heading into the second week, our team was already aware that we had to make some changes. After receiving feedback from our professor and our classmates, we realized that most of our ideas were designed around a narrative concept or an interesting setting. So we stripped down our ideas to only their core mechanics and took a longer look at how those mechanics would work, and more importantly, how would we create them.

Once we removed the narrative points from our top ideas, we saw them from a whole new perspective. We noticed the Skyscraper Stealth game was going to be way more difficult than we realized. The problem with this idea was that there were too many core mechanics involved that made this idea interesting, but we don’t have the time or resources to create those mechanics in a believable way. We also realized that the Wild West Arena Shooter wasn’t exactly very innovative. At its core, it’s another couch arena game that requires the player to do something absurd. However, we realized that with the Prison Escape Game, the gun building mechanic was still interesting without the prison theme. This was also the idea that got the best reaction from the class. People seem excited about a game where the player gets to build their gun with parts they find in the world.

After Brainstorming, we move into the Initial Concepts phase where we are required to build and test three different prototypes. We decided to create 3 different prototypes that use this idea. Each prototype was a different answer to the same question: what is the intentional gameplay experience? So this week, while James was creating the framework we would need for all three prototypes, I began figuring out the details.

My biggest goal for this week was to start building a test level that could be used for each prototype. We know that we want our game to take place in an interior space consisting mostly of hallways and small rooms. I started by creating prefabs of different walls and door-frames to make building the hallways a lot easier. Once I had the structural parts, I made a few modular hallways and rooms.

Once I had a few hallway and room variations, connecting them together to build a test environment was extremely easy. Following this model will benefit me later on when I have to put together real hallways to build our game environment. As long as I have the pieces, I can put them together like legos and then we can end up with something like this…

I would say this week has been very productive for us. The Firing Squad has a better idea of what direction we are heading in now and from a design standpoint, the details are starting to come together. In addition to building a test level, I started to document the pieces of our concepts that we need to be keeping track of like what stats are affected by each gun part and player movement metrics. The work I’ve done this week has helped lay a solid foundation for the prototype branches that will begin next sprint.

Until next time!