Week 4 - João Sanches

Hi, again!

In this second week, i mainly did 3 things:

1. I developed my first prototype of the game. 
2. I developed 2 storyboards 
3.  I helped a bit in the peer feedback review

First protoype

I developed a prototype where the only obstacles a player can crash into are road edges(brown walls) and  red gates. The brown walls are permanent obstacles, while the the red gates are obstacles the player can destroy if he presses the right keyboard letter/number/input. If he crashes into any of these obstacles, the player has to restart the level.

I also implemented two little routes, where the hardest will reward a player with a coin, something that is registered in the coin counter. One of the routes is a harder because the road is a bit more narrow and has a less linear form than the easier route. 

The player finishes level when he reaches the next planet.

Final prototype thoughts:

I noticed many people were having trouble completing the level even when going through the easiest route. The colleagues who tested were using a mouse who had very high sensitivity and were not used to this types of games, so these could be some of the reasons. But I'll check cursor/object hitboxes in the future to correct this prototype just in case, so I dont cause any frustration to the player.

I also think a pause/exit/restart menu is something important in these types of games and i think i should really implement one.

If I make the modifications refered above, change the sprites of the walls and gates, add some music and sfx and maybe tweak some of the level paths, I think this prototype could be very well be one of the levels with of the final protype. However, I still have to discuss the direction of the game with all team members so I'm still not sure if it will be or not in the final product. We are analysing at the moment the peer feedback in order to evaluate the best course of action.

Sidenote: 

One of my first explorations had comets falling down instead of these gates, but many other protypes were using the asteroid mechanic. I also thought initially of shooting a laser to destroy these red gates, but i think this keyboard gimmick is more interesting because it conjugates more mouse awareness with keyboard layout knowledge. 

Storyboards

I developed two of the storyboards, one that described a short term dark scenario and another that described a long term positive scenario. This storyboards were inspired in our game design scenarios:

1.  The first storyboard described Sara, who wanted to explore a different route of the level, but the route was so hard she had to follow the easiest one. She, being an explorer type of player, decided the game was not worth her time and uninstalled it.
2. The second storyboard is about João, a player who is very bad at mouse skills. He likes to play games for short periods of times so this game is perfect for him, because every level is short and sweet. He believes he will improve his mouse skills gradually over time while playing the game.

Peer feedback review

This week I had COVID-19, so I wasnt able to attend class and couldnt test the prototypes by myself. The only way I could help was by organizing the notes collected by Bernardo and Annika and write some complementary text for missing information(like game references that could serve as inspiration for example).