This is my first assessment since I begin my university life at Kingston University. We were asked to make a game prototype as a group. I was excited about it.
At first, our group had a meeting to discuss the theme as there are no limitations regarding it. However, we couldn’t come up with some really good ideas at the beginning, so we decided to find a picture from the internet, and then we can talk about what we see in the picture. Our group member Tianhao found a picture like this (photo at left).
Quickly, we all agreed to design a game base on snow. What can we create about snow? There are snowballs, and snowmen… we decided to make a snowman-building game! In the beginning, we set up base rules such as the player can only move 1 grid at a time, and the player needs to collect 5+3+1 sized snowballs to complete a snowman. To have a very quick test on how this game works, we used an iPad to draw simple symbols that represent our own character's snowballs(photo below).
Every time we change the map size or add some rules to the game, we start a new round. When it comes to the fourth iteration, we found out that the player's movements were lack of flexibility. As we figured out that's probably because the base shape(square) has many limitations, so we change it to hexagon-based grids(photo below).
After a new turn of iteration, more flexibilities were shown due to more directions and angles that the hexagon has. We quickly tried the new map on the iPad(photo down left) and we decided to print the map and all the components out(photo down right).
We analyzed the rules that we have changed or added(photo below). With the new rules, the game becomes more interesting and playable. Basically, we divided the grids to 3 tyopes(snowed grid-where player can collect a snowball from it, cleared grid- no snowballs can be collected but player can go through this grid, blocked grid-no snow and player can not go through).
The final prototype can be seen below(photo below). In order to adapt to more players or raise the difficulty or make the game more fun, we also thought about what could be added to the game. For example, adding more layers of snow, adding snow weather(can turn blocked area into a cleared area or turn cleared area into a regular snowing area), and adding snow mountains... After this exercise, we noticed that “Getting started is better than just wandering around and finally doing nothing.” Don't be afraid of ideas that you think are not good, just bring out your ideas and discuss them with group members, more people always mean more possibilities.
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