Requirements Of The Product
The product that I will be making is a demo of a 2D side on platformer with light combat elements in which the player must navigate across city rooftops while fighting enemies periodically. My main design focus during the creation of my game is pacing which is why my game has the combat elements as those are what I will be using to break up the pace of my game so that I can keep the player engaged and due to this being my design focus it means that this is what will affect a lot of my creative decisions but the main areas it affects will be my level design, my enemy balance (such as health and damage) and movement balance(such as speed and ability limits), while pacing is my main design focus I do also have two other areas that I wish to focus on which are the movement as I want to create a fun and satisfying movement for the player and exploration as I want my level to be moderately open so the player can make use of the movement to explore the level, my primary design focus will be the main thing that I create my game around however it is important that I still try to incorporate my secondary focuses too. Beyond my primary and secondary focuses there are other elements I will include in my product however these will not be as focussed on and some parts may have to cut in order to better peruse my primary and secondary focuses, these other elements consist of things such as a narrative as so that I can give context to the player about their current situation and the world they are in, another element of my game will be the sound since it would really help to elevate the professionalness of my product and its something I can use to further my secondary goal of satisfying movement since I can help make it more satisfying via the sound design of the players movement, graphics are another element that if done right will help to elevate the professionalness of my product and once again it can be used to help further a variety of other element such as the movement via satisfying animations and creating a visually unique environment making use of my theme/setting.
Conventions Of The Genre
Due to my choice of product there a good amount of conventions for my chosen genre of game (platformer) which are key elements of the product that I will greatly consider in my products design. Firstly there are the basic elements of a platformers such as the movement options the player has access to which are typically directional movement, jumping and sometimes more advanced options such as wall jumping and dives which help to increase the skill ceiling of the game so that players have more skills to master if they want, a good example of a game with advanced movement mechanics would be the glide mechanic present in Birb Peak as it adds another layer to the complexity of the platforming. Another key elements of platformers are collectables which have become a staple of the genre and can be used by the developers to help guide the player through the level, collectables are designed in a way to make them satisfying to collect for the player and to help add replayability to the game as usually there’s a reward for collecting every collectable meaning that some player will have to go back to get a collectable they missed and a good example of this would be Gundrill which had very satisfying collectables due to the sound design of them. Another convention of platformers is powerups/upgrades which boost the player in some way whether that be a simple speed boost or invincibility or something more complex such as a new ability which can change the players playstyle greatly, A good example is that in a New Super Mario Bros game when the player gets a super star they become invincible and so they tend to play more risky since they lose repercussions for getting hit by an enemy. The next convention is enemies as while not every platformer makes use of them a lot of them do and given my games combat system it is a convention I will be making use of, enemies are typically used to add complexities to the platforming since it gives the player another danger to face and Kid Icarus is a good example of this as at one point an enemy patrols an area that you need to jump to which makes that jump more complex as now you must wait for the enemy to move away from that area which adds a sense of timing to the platforming. Story is a common convention of platformers as while it tends not to be a focus or something that’s very complicated platformers do tend to use basic storytelling to give the player context to their current situation, this can be seen at the start of most platformers as the player is told how something bad has happened and that they must fix it which gives the player their primary goal such as how in Mario typically the player is told that Bowser has stolen the princess and so now they must go to save her. Lastly exploration is a common convention of platformers however while it is harder to do in a 2D environment it is one of my design pillars so it is something I hope to achieve, exploration is used to give the player more interesting gameplay than just following a path from point a to point b as with exploration the player has the choice to wander off the path and find new ways to get to point b or find secrets such as hidden collectables which can be seen once again in Gundrill which had secret rooms for the player to find that contained hidden collectables.
Thematic Elements
My platformer will use a cyber-noir theme and a setting of an unnamed city, after conducting research into my chosen theme I have chosen that I will lean more towards the cyberpunk side of cyber-noir however I still want to include a good amount of noir elements present. Due to my games theme I will have a good amount of freedom in my visual design since its the future and nobody knows what that will look like, so I intend to make use of noir elements mixed with more traditional cyberpunk elements to help me create a visually unique look to my designs, a major element of noir that I want to mix into cyberpunk is a darker tone which I hope to achieve via the use of a darker colour scheme while still maintaining the bright visual style of a cyberpunk world. Since cyber-noir is a combination of two genres I will need to make good use of my thematic research so that I make sure that I don’t stray too much into just cyberpunk and don’t make use of noir influences since that would be something that would be quite easy for me to do, its important that I don’t lose sight of my goals with my theme and try my best to create a cyberpunk world with a darker tone to it with noir elements present. While not one of my design pillars/focuses I want my theme to be an element of my product that I do not neglect as I would love to be able to make the most of my chosen theme to allow me to create something amazing however if the need arises and my pillars are not met then it will unfortunately have to be neglected in favour of those pillars.
Target Audience
After conducting some research and the prior knowledge I have from creating a platformer previously I know that the target audience of my platformers are people who enjoy a more casual experience with a focus on challenge, discovery and excitement which all are things I hope to offer players with me product. From my primary audience research I asked more specific questions about what type of things my audience would like which I intend to make use of in order to better appeal to my them, for example I learnt that people tend to prefer the use of health over the more traditional approach of lives and so I will make use of health in my own product. I also learnt about the audience themselves, the age of the audience greatly differs depending on the product such as how for more bright and simple platformers such as the Kirby series the majority audience tends to be on the younger side however you also have a part of the audience on the older side due to Kirby being a long running series of games meaning that you have people who have been fans of the game for a long time being a part of that audience, you don’t tend to have platformers target specifically an adult audience however you do have platformers that appeal to the teens to young adult age which tend to be from the indie market that contain more advanced surface level gameplay with darker themes or tones present sometimes. Lastly in regards to gender platformers are something that can be and are enjoyed be all genders as they are not designed to be targeted towards a specific gender however a majority of players do tend to be males but this mean the genre is targeted more towards males. For my own products target audience I have took what I have learnt to conclude that the audience of my game will be people who enjoy challenge and discovery oriented gameplay with an age range of late teens to young adult(15-24) which is a wide range but the platformer genre is made to appeal to a lot of people and my choice in theme for my product means it will appeal more towards an older audience, lastly like most platformers my product wont be targeted towards a specific gender.
Considerations/Potential Problems
Before starting my production there are many things I need to consider that could cause problems for me down the line. A big area of consideration for me are my design pillars/focuses which are pacing, exploration and movement, these elements of my game should be the parts I prioritize and everything I add to my game should elevate one of these elements however it would be quite easy for me to lose sight of my design focus by instead getting distracted with adding unneeded mechanics that take away time from my design focuses. As mentioned in my last consideration time is another big area of consideration for me since I only have a limited amount of time to create my game I will be scheduling my work so that I can better stay on track with what work I should have done meaning that I will be able to meet this projects deadline, meeting the deadline is very important as if I fall behind on my schedule and have incomplete essential work at the time of the deadline then I will fail this project which is obviously something I don’t want to happen. Once again tying into my last consideration the scale of my game is another rather large area of consideration as in the past I have had issues with scaling my project to the time given and my own limitations which led to me being overly ambitious which meant that some of my games features were underdeveloped, since this is my FMP I need to take extra care in making sure that the tasks that I set myself are realistic so that I don’t end up with under developed features, rushed aspects of my game or a lot of cut content. There are also some problems I may face during this project and one of these is coding in my mechanics as I am creating some mechanics that are very different to anything I have done previously and as I learnt from my last project something that may seem easy to create can actually be a lot harder than expected, if I do end up running into issues with code I should be able to overcome them by using my own problem solving skills and knowledge of construct 3 or if I have to make use of online tutorials. Another area that may cause me problems is the graphics as this part of my game has two major things that could create issues for me the first is animations as this is the area of graphics I am the worst at and secondly is making sure all my graphics are consistent in theming since I want the cyber-noir visuals of my game to be distinct, despite how I don’t have the most confidence in this area of my project if I do encounter issues I can always make use of my pre-existing research or conduct more in necessary to help me. There are bound to be more areas of my project that could pose me issues that I have not yet though about, similarly to my previously listed problems/considerations I will have to make use of my problem solving skills and resources that I have access to in order to overcome these issues so that I can complete my project to the best of my ability.
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