Continuation of Initial Concepts
This week during our development, we began to spend more time developing and nurturing our other two ideas for the project we would decide to go forward with: Spellbook Rush and Sleepy Ninja. Since we had a clearer sense of where each project was going from the beginning, we did not have to spend an entire week dedicated to a single concept, and instead were more fluid as to how we went about developing each idea. We did end up splitting our design focus into two separate sections of the week as it was easier to work through.
Spellbook Rush
The main thing we worked on this week was Spellbook Rush. One of the benefits that we had while working through the design on this game was that their was many known qualities about the way the game would work, look, and feel for the player. Spellbook Rush is designed to be a local co-op game where 2 young witches / wizards have awoken a library of spellbooks and must run around a quiet the spirits within before the librarian comes and gives you detention. We already knew that the game was going to be going for a cartoony, cutesy look to it, so while developing obstacles and levels for that, it was easy to set a narrative context around a certain object or idea. The team was able to set off quickly once we broke from our design meeting and we all got to work.
I began work rather quickly, as I had a lot of ideas I wanted to get down quickly. Because I am responsible for designing systems, it was also important for me to get down what obstacles players would need to interact with over the course of the many levels so I could pass them off to Winston, our dedicated level designer. The primary work that I began developing was the the different book types that players would have to deal with as they appeared in the levels. Messing with a few different types of ways to beat the books, I came up with about 8 different book types that could be present in the level and that would all provide a different challenge to the player. My personal favorite is the one that took a slightly different tone compared to the rest: the History book. I have always loved history, but I know many people find it to be one the most boring subjects imaginable, so this enemy is a tribute to them. While in range, the history book lulls players to sleep with his endless tales about the different ways that Sir Blair Flubwubbles and Sir Arthur P. Tubwuffles enjoyed their tea. The second player then has to go and wake up the other player so they can get back to work. While this book was slightly different in the way that it interacts with players and the subject it took, it is representative of the general theme that was taken with the books.
Once on the same page with the rest of the team, we were able to finish up Spellbook Rush and move forward on Sleepy Ninja.
Sleepy Ninja
Sleepy Ninja currently presents the biggest challenge of all of our games, though we thought something similar about Twin Stick Cloner at one point. We held our typical design meeting, and although we had a lot to hash out and try to decide on, we thought we had landed in a pretty OK space. We had a fairly good idea about gameplay, the biggest problem that we are currently dealing with is we aren't entirely certain what narrative path and what setting it should take place in, as that is incredibly important for our art direction. Hopefully, in our meeting today and we will get one step closer to challenging for Deep Dive.