Taking Inspiration
Taking the core loops from games such as The Witness, what remains of Edith Finch and other walking simulator style games. I decided to merge these with the setting and enviromental puzzle elements from God Of War : Ragnarock to create a Nordic inspired puzzle game where by the player walks the ancient path to uncover the secrets of the mountain. This designs puropse is to take the starting concept for the game and turn it into a playable demo focusing on delivering a strong narative introduction for players as well as teaching them the base mechanics they should fmiliarise themselves with as they will be present during the majority of the game.
The initial concept for the blockout created using pro builder to get a sense of how the idea translated to a 3D enviroment. This allowed me to run through the enviroment to get a sense of how the level would flow.
Project Manegment
Using Trello for project managment allowed me to keep all of my references and ideas in a single location. being able to look at this and add to it during the design was critical to keeping on track with deadlines i had set for myself, Looking back at where the scope of the project used to be compared to where it is now and the changes that were made along the way. This allows me to keep a record of changes i have made mid development and why i changed it. This could be user testing feedback about the design or that the mechanics were not the right fit for that section of the level.
Drafting Ideas
The initial concept for this project involved researching into what makes a traditional walking simulator style game. Using this research I would adapt the mechanics to suit the games setiting, God Of War : Ragnarock and create a walking simulator around the games theme and level design.
During development of the project, tests were done to ensure the design matched that of the concept. By regulaly running tests on the blockout it's easy to pick up where the layout needs adapting to meet the playstyle of the project. some examples of this would be the left hand path, this was desinged to be a flat land puzzle section but was changed up to add vertical elements to match some of the desgin aspects from God Of War.
If It's Not Broken...
Ensuring a wide range of user testing sessions from both gamers and casual players was important to see if there was a difference in play styles. People used to playing games would be familair with mechanics and metrics where as casual players may not pick up on these elements. By getting them to test the project you get a better understanding that your mechanics are desgined well enough for the majority of players to understand. Areas where they may get stuck could then be itterated upon to decrease their complexity depending on the nature of the mechanic. This could include additional UI element to a redesign of the area to increase its readability or, as done in God Of War, the enviroment could be used to further guide the player to their goal.
A Perfect Match
This final blockout for the project was done using Maya, the scripting in unity. This was the first time I had used unitys C# so getting to grips with this at the start of the project allowed me to get a scope of how far I would be able to take my desgin with the limited knowledge I had of the language.
Using my prior knowledge of Unreal Engine and its blueprint system, it allowed me to get a better understanding of how to code as the core principles behind the two systems are nearly identical. The use of arrays for checking a series of player inputs to solve puzzles, creating public Co-Routines to break down code into smaller scripts making the debug process smoother and ensuring all code is commented out so that identifying its purpose later on is easier.
Overall taking the lessons learnt from this project i've learnt that keeping projects in scope is critical for the desgin process. Taking the concept too far too quickly results in cuts needing to be made as dedlines approach. keeping the core mechanics simple early on and adding on to them when its appropraite is the best solution to avoide these issues going forward. Once i've got the blockout down for the player to move around I can start working on adding in the technical elements needed for gameplay.