Iterations of my work so far

Changing designs and prototype aspects


Throughout this project, I know that it is a key element to make sure that your ideas and concepts aren't written in stone and that you are free to explore and experiment with different designs. I have now gotten to the stage of the process where I am showing my designs and partly done prototype to my classmates to try and get useful feedback and criticism about my game and what I could do to improve on it.

After my presentation I received some really helpful feedback from both of my tutors who were present at the time. They described two different visual designs that I should think about changing which would make their purpose a lot clearer to the player. The first one was to do with the thorny vines I had drawn into my level which at as a object for Light to avoid as the player moves throughout the level. They pointed out that, as it was a dangerous object, it shouldn't look so soft and have a relaxed curl to it and that it should look jagged and angular. This would help to portray to the player that it something that they should be avoiding, not approaching. So, in the first image below, you can see the changes I made to the vines and I honestly think they look a lot better.

The second thing that was suggest to me was to change the style of one of the orbs I had designed. My tutors pointed out that a size difference between the small orbs (point orb) and the Large orb (power boost) was not enough to differentiate the two so I would have to do something to make them a little more obvious. I didn't want to completely change my designs so I had a quick look into different 'point' objects in games to try and find a way to make the orb I had look different. A current theme that came across was a simple object with a icon in the centre of it, for example, the bright yellow boxes in the Super Mario series of games have a question mark in the middle of them. This helps to signify the player that the object should be interacted with so this is something I decided to incorporate into my design. I added a 1 onto the point orb so that the player knows how many points each orb is worth and it helps to make the designs not look too similar.

As I started making my prototype I was using the original level design I completed as I wanted to show what one of the simplest levels of my game would look like but, once some of my peers began to play the rough prototype, they told me that the level was not long enough and it just needed a little more to make it seem more complete as well as adding in a goal for the sprite to reach and a few more interactive objects. I took the advice on board and started to add onto my design, making the level a little longer so the prototype would have more to it and give a clearer understanding of the game play. 

Also, one of my tutors in the presentation mentioned that their maybe two many ways for a the player to die in game, for example jumping into the thorny vines, getting hit by an enemy or falling off a platform. This was a fair point so, in my design, I checked it over to make sure there weren't too many gaps between platforms for the player to fall down as this is one of the earlier levels and it isn't meant to be too difficult whereas in the later levels there will be far more difficult jumps for Light to make, making the levels more complicated than before. Even though this level is simple and there may not be a big enough gap for the player to fall down, I kept the leering darkness at the bottom to show that the threat is still there. It was also suggested to me that I add a thin layer of shadow to the top layer of the level to show the boundaries that the player can reach throughout the game. The larger level can be seen below with the added interactive sprites.


Older version of level

Newer version of level