For my final year product, I created a game that had the best fundamentals for myself, with what is included in the product. I chose the viewing dimension, software, story and art direction that I felt most comfortable in, and made a product I am proud of. I took a lot of time to work on the blog posts, and spent time with the characters and story, to have the game be more immersive and well-designed characteristics with characters and story. My design focus was to better represent minority groups in games, and have representation in the game. After my research and planning, I decided I would take this focus and put it into the change of art and have it more applicable to all races, not just centered around primarily white characters. My art style has changed from this, and the design focus better helped have all the characters and the world of my game have a more diverse cast that was up to the players imagination and up to the players own ideas. This is up for interpretation, and I wanted this to be a chance for players to have the characters be up to them what race and ethnicity they belong to, a way for players to feel included and be in the community. I chose the theme of the Superhero genre, having the game be centered around the adventure and journey of a rookie hero on her first mission to fight evil. I had it be like this because I enjoy the genre of games and media, delving into the superhero category, but I also enjoyed creating a character with over-the-top proportions and outfits, making her design creative and fun. I had a lot of fun with the character design and the story idea, spending time to create a story about evil and good, and the hero’s first time fighting evil, which helped play with the players first time playing, who is also new to this. The game is in the 2D viewing dimensions, as that is what my art-style is fit too and works best in this format, and from previous projects and products created, I have the knowledge that my art style does not work within the 2.5/3D dimensions and viewing ports.
Going to my blog posts, I believe that my research was a strength for the product, as it was both descriptive and well researched, going through different articles and videos, but also practically playing games and watching media in order to learn more, I found a way to take these different forms of media into different genres and category’s of themes, such as 2D platformers, beat ’em up’s and superhero’s, and wrote about them all in a descriptive form that analysed and went into the core fundamentals and characteristics of the different products and how that made them to be what they were, and how I could take this and apply it into my own product. I also created a questionnaire, which better helped get a better personal response to different ideas into designs, story and gameplay for the product I envisioned. I also took this and applied it to my own product, and used this in my planning page.
I believe a weakness of the product is my context page, as I found it hard to apply certain thematic elements and characteristics of the gamer motivation model to my own product. I began to talk about the characteristics of the product, my goals to achieve, the problems I will encounter and the gamer motivation model. Though I accomplished these things, and was able to explain and write more onto what the product is and what it is setting out to accomplish, and the different techniques on how I will make it, I still feel like I didn’t write as much as I wanted to and wasn’t as descriptive, I wish I could have spent more times to include more.
I believe that both my planning and production page was also big strengths of the product, as both went over everything that were included in the game, including all the graphics, controls, ideas and reasons for why the certain inclusions were in the final product. The planning went through all my ideas, and explained why and how they were made, both in appearances and colours, drawing all the graphics and layouts planned in a red and white format to better visually represent my ideas and the process behind them. Whilst that page were ideas created and discussed, the production post had these original designs and ideas and I wrote about them more and finished a detailed explanation and drew the graphics in ink. I took the original designs and level layout, to creating full graphics and a full layout. I believe that the two pages were both informative and were quick to discuss what the level included and what was going to be added, to what was included and added.
For my presentation post, I believe my Itch.Io page was both well designed and illustrated, both including a description on story and how to play, but also including graphics that were included with in the game and the characters who were featured in the game. This was similar to what my final year product included, however the final product had more personal information, as I described both myself and the product with my ideas and myself included. I also included graphics, both from the game and a self-portrait in it. I believe that the two presentations showed the game off well, and would give the viewer an informative look into what the game is about, and how it looks.
Overall, I found this project to be where my knowledge from the past years came into play, having my knowledge on Construct, Photoshop and Animate was put into play and I used the three to create a product that I am proud of. The story, graphics and game play exactly how I envisioned it, and I’m proud of the product I have created. I believe that this product is also my most creative game, as it has my own characters and story that I have been working on outside of college, and have created and improved upon in not only college, but my own time and at home.
MORGAN'S BLOG 