Initial Conception

Here we go again, for one last time. Entering my final year at Champlain, I am daunted by one task alone: completing my Capstone, a 5 credit course taking place over the semester, with a chance to be given the greenlight to move forward into the next. I have been through the production cycle before, but never quite at this pace. This blog begins post-ideation phase, following my design decisions, producer experiences, and general highjinks.

Ideation

Moving past the introduction, our team of 4 has been in the works for a couple years. During my first production class, I had the pleasure of working with two of my current team members, albeit on two separate projects. On my very first project, I had the pleasure of working with Emma Campbell, our artist. I have yet to forget the night after our first meeting she had already developed fleshed out concept art for the game. The art was so polished that it ended up being the final product. Singlehandedly, she set the bar of what I began to consider a great artist.

A project later, I began working with a friend of a friend, Ryan Moss, our programmer. Ryan and I instantly hit it off. Our styles for developing meshed well together, and although we have different views regarding sleep, we knew we would prosper while working together. After we submitted our final game for the semester, I asked Ryan if he would like to form the beginnings of a senior team with me and the rest is history.

The final addition to our team was Winston Pemberton the 3rd, a designer like myself. I had known Winston since freshmen year, as we lived in the same dorm. While we didn't have tons of classes together, the few we did, we tended to work as a team. Where I excelled in one thing, Winston would in another and it was easy to bounce things off each other and ask for help when we needed it. Our design ideas rarely clashed, and even when they did, we would find an easy work around to the problem. 

As a team, we began the semester developing thirty different ideas before submitting them to the class. Some were simple, some complex, some impossible, but that is the point of ideation: Get out all the garbage and maybe you will find a gem. After sorting through all the cool, but impossible ideas, we had three that remained: Twin Stick Cloner (working title), Spellbook Rush, and Sleepy Ninja. 

The now

Over the past week, we have been spending time developing Twin Stick Cloner. The concept is rather simple: a twin stick shooter where you can spawn clones to attack the swarms of enemies. While the team found the idea to be a very cool concept, it was universally agreed that we would need to take a solid chunk of time to develop it. So, starting with our weekly Friday meeting, we set off.

In my own vision for the game, I had imagined the player-character being a rather weak character. From a design standpoint, this would force players to summon the clones, rather then try to simply go in guns blazing; from a narrative standpoint, this would allow for more character development as that character would be weak on his/her own, but in numbers, be strong. Furthermore, I instantly had begun thinking of different powers the clones could utilize to make them unique. Simply summoning a copy of yourself might be interesting, but it wasn't the type of engagement I had imagined the player experiencing. Clones, I argued, should be able to be used in combos, and be given different powers. Not only would that make them unique and exciting to the player, but we would be rewarding strategy and would be able to level design around gaining clone powers as a form of progression. 

To my delight, the team bought into my ramblings, and we began to develop further. While sketching out concept art, Emma figured that the best way to communicate to the player that they had gained the power of the gem was to use a staff with slots for gems. Then when we wanted to illustrate to the player that they had successfully added another form of clone to the repertoire, we could just put a gem in the slot. This also began the idea that players could only bring in a certain set of clones per level, in order to avoid being overpowered or having to micromanage the clones. This got me thinking, and while developing a possible control scheme for the game, I began to play around with using the shoulder buttons as the way to spawn the clones. This would allow for fast gameplay and would make it quicker for the player to build combos and deal with oncoming waves. 

At the same time, Winston was busy developing level layouts for the first three dungeons as a sectioned off vertical slice of gameplay. Ryan built out a functioning prototype for it with a basic AI and two types of clones. I developed out different clone types to test in game, and Emma took the idea of a weaker character and ran with it by developing a fun, cute art style with approachable enemies. 

However, we have gone as far as we can manage with our time limit, and must move on to explore our other ideas before finally deciding on one. If our development continues along the path it is right now, I am confident in our team moving forward in addressing problems and putting our foot down to solve them.