False Promise
Overview
The game I am making, “False Promise”, is about a Princess and Prince that are getting married, and all seems good in the land, until a giant robot comes and takes the prince. The princess then takes it upon herself to find her Prince and uncover the robot’s motive. This game will be a 2D side-scrolling platform, which will be similar to Mario in a way.
Game Engine Requirements
To make this game possible, I will need to choose a game engine which is capable of providing the following:
- Rendering
- Sound
- Physics
- Collisions
- AI
GameMaker Studio facilitates all of these, so I have decided to use it to create my game. Another good feature in GameMaker is the fact you can design and create images within the engine, and it is easy to understand, due to an option to use blocks to perform functions instead of lines of code.
Animation Requirements
Regarding animation requirements, I am looking to use a prgram which can produce the following:
- Produce a pixelated animation
- Export as a gif
- Export as a sprite sheet
- Easy to use interface
- Tools to meet every need
A good web-based program I have come across, Piskel, facilitates all of these. As well as utilising the image editor in GameMaker, I plan to use piskel for animation and exporting things as sprite sheets. As piskel makes pixelated images, it allows me to create images with ease that fit into the theme I am leaning towards. The fact that it is easy to save work in multiple formats is really useful as well.
Sound Requirements
For audio I will be using Logic Pro as it satisfies all of the following requirements:
- Uncompressed/Compressed file types
- Wav/mp3 capabilities
- Stereo/Mono
- Music/SFX
The fact that I can use this to make both music and sound effects is very useful as it can confine me to one program, which minimises confusion and clutter, and keeps everything in one place. This will make everything easier to do as well, so I have chosen this program to satisfy this.
Production Schedule
As I will have carried out a large amount of research, I have not included this in the production schedule. I will constantly and consistently be researching the best way to go about making this game, as well as seeing if Im on the right track and current market trends throughout the duration of this project. Instead of adding this to each week in the production schedule, I have written it here. This will avoid confusion and make my schedule more streamlined.
Primary and Secondary Research
From my knowledge of the game industry and what is popular now, I identified that out of the most popular games, none really include something that follows a girl rescuing a boy, always seeming to take the more traditional route to make the boy save the girl. As a comparison, I used vgchartz.com to see the current most popular games, which I could then use as a more solid basis for my initial thoughts.
As well as this, I conducted a survey to see how the average person plays games, and summarised the results I found to use as research. Personally, I didn’t see a conventional summary as very appealing, so I decided to interpret this differently, and convey my results through a more visually appealing demographic:
The information collected from this survey was very useful, as it helps me to develop my game towards the target market. I now know that people are fine to play games multiple times a day, so would need to include some hook factor. My game should be free with the possible chance of micro-transactions, or a 1 time ad-free payment, if at all. I am happy that it would fit into the categories “Action”, “Adventure”, and “Strategy”. I also need to make sure the game is enjoyable, has a good story and well made levels. Customization may also be a handy thing to implement, and objectives and rewards would be a must to keep the player hooked.
Target Audience Survey, Marketing Statement and Results
Using the responses I have collected from this survey I will be able to use the information to aid how I will develop my game. The survey I conducted consisted of the following questions:
To help interpretting the data, I have created a demographic to better lay out the results:
Q1: What is your gender?
From general knowledge, I know the industry is very balanced regarding gender, and swings back and forth very close to 50/50 constantly. However, my survey is very male dominated – 70.83% male to 29.17% female. This could be due to the lack of responses. As the majority will have been answers from classmates or colleagues, it is to be expected as in both environments the vast majority of people are male.
Q2: What is your age?
Following a similar trend to the previous question, the results are very close to what I would expect, given who the respondents were. 62.5% of the respondents were aged 15 to 16, and 37.5% were aged 17 to 18. This shows how young people currently dominate the gaming scene, and how my games main focus should be on younger people.
Q3: Do you play games?
100% of the people surveyed play games. This is a big statistic as it shows how much reach the gaming industry has now. Almost everyone now plays games, even if they don’t consider themselves to. This is a big statistic and shows just how vast the market is.
Q4: How often do you play games?
Regarding playtime, 58.33% of people play games multiple times a day. In my opinion, this is no longer too surprising due to the amount of people with mobile smart phones. The average smartphone user has around 26 apps downloaded on their phone, a percentage of this being games. This means that a lot of games will be opened daily, making it understandable that a large number of people play game multiple times a day. 29.17% answered that they would play games once or twice a day, emphasising this point. The other 12.5% play games once or twice a month, or even less.
Q5: How long do you spend on games per session?
This question had a gradual increase regarding answers. Very few people (4.17%) spent under 10 minutes on a game in one session, and a massive 75% play over 1 hour on a game per session. This shows how important it is to have an addictive factor in my game, as the player expects to be able to play them for long periods of time.
Q6: Where do you play mobile games typically? (eg. On the toilet)
From the results collected, I can see that the majority of people play mobile games either on a mode of transport, before they go to sleep, or on the toilet. This means that my game will truly have to be mobile so it fits with the current trend with where people are playing mobile games. It needs to be able to allow the player to leave then pick up where they left off.
Q7: What genres do you like?
By quite a margin, most respondents prefer Action or Adventure games (62.5% and 50%), followed by Strategy (37.5%), then dipping down to MMO, Role-play, Simulation or other (25% or below). This is good as my game will be Action and Adventure, and may include some Strategy.
Q8: What is your opinion on single player games?
The responses for this question were very mixed. They varied from “boring at times” to “brilliant”. The general feedback I have pulled away from this is that they are good if they are made correctly with unique gameplay or a good storyline, so that is what I will set out to do.
Q9: On average, how much money do you spend on games every month?
The answers to this question were very varied, spanning across all but one category. The majority of respondents said they would spend £6-£10 on games monthly (20.83%). This was closely followed by Under £5, £11-£20 and £21-£30 (all 16.67%). The rest varied from not spending any money to over £60 being spent monthly, all sharing a similar percentage.
Q10: What art style do you prefer?
37.5% of the respondents said that they would prefer a “Realistic” style. The style I am looking to adopt, Pixel Art, only shared 8.33% of results. However, as this was only to see what the user prefered, I am going to stick with this style. The results were pretty evenly spread excluding realistic, which can still justify my decision.
Q11: How big of an influence does the storyline have on you?
For this question the most common answer by far was that story has a “major” influence when considering what game to play. This is great as I am aiming for my game to be story driven, so story will be a large factor when playing.
Q12: Do you like cut scenes in games?
65.38% of respondents do enjoy cut scenes in games, which puts my game idea in good-stead as the majority enjoy them. A better statistic to look at from this is that 84.62% either enjoy cut scenes or have no preference, only leaving a small amount of people (15.38%) disliking them.
Q13: Do you prefer games to have a twist at the end?
65.38% prefer twists in a game, and 34.62% have no preference. This means that 0% of the respondents wouldn’t prefer a twist in the game. As my game includes a twist, the information collected from this surveys completely supports the idea to do so.
Q14: Do you prefer a storyline to be linear (point A to B) or non-linear (open world – anywhere between point A and B)?
Unfortunately for me the majority of respondents (73.08%) prefered to have a non-linear game/storyline. I can still however justify my decision to make a linear game as it is for mobile, and being made to follow the storyline so close justifies this. The results to this question have made me consider adding bonus levels, or incentives like quests with rewards while playing.
Q15: What genres do you least like to play and why?
For this question the majority of answers I received were that “Simulators” are the least liked genre as they are “boring”, but a small minority of respondents did mention “FPS” or “MMO”. This is good as the genre for my game has not appeared, meaning that the genre may be liked for the most part.
PEGI Rating
For my 2D game I have decided to give it a PEGI Rating of 7 as any depictions of violence are light-hearted and are not graphic, and there are no areas which may frighten children, as deaths or fights are depicted in a slapstick – like character. The only thing boderline would be the twist at the end of the game, but I believe it still sits within the Rated 3 region.
Platform and Distribution
As a game designer, there are a number of things I need to know before building a game:
- Who is going to play the game , and how I am going to distribute the game to them (the person, platform, outlets and cost)
- What options are available regarding the level of production.
- What type of game I am making – Video game (high end, cutscenes – console, gaming PC) or computer game (includes mobile etc.)
- Pricing – It is actually cheaper to buy a physical copy of a game when taking into account the distribution costs (30%) that a company will add on so they do not lose money when digitally distributing.
- I need to know my game, audience and platform first of all.
After discussing these points and the pros and cons regarding them, I looked at the ESA Facts 2016 to see how they could influence my idea based on the information that was collected. After looking at the document, a number of things surprised me:
The first was how dramatically the percentage of male to female gamers had changed in a year. The percentage last year in the US had 49% Female to 51% Male. This year in US there were 41% Female gamers to 59% Male gamers. This is a very surprising and quite dramatic change for a year’s difference.
“The most frequent FEMALE GAME PLAYER is on average 44 years old and the average MALE GAME PLAYER is 35 years old”
This could have many causes. Inequality in the workplace is a viable cause based off what age the same level of expendable income will become available based on salary. Another may be prioritisation. Female game players may prioritise makeup over games for example, or the need for female sanitary items like tampons (these are taxed so can have an impact on where the money would be spent first). The same would be applied for cigarrettes, but that affects both males and females.
Most frequent purchases: 40% Female 60% Male
Parents buying games has a massive impact on this as it can skew the results if they are buying it for a child as a present.
“51% of the most frequent gamers play a multiplayer mode at least weekly”
This surprised me because of the percentage. I expected it to be closer to 60/70% given the fact that multiplayer is growing as a a primary feature in games.
The most surprising thing about these two top selling charts is the sheer number of Sims content that is in the “Top 20 Selling COMPUTER Games of 2015”
The most interesting thing I found out was how physical copies of games are usually cheaper than digital ones due to things like return fees.
For my game I will be developing it for PC and Mobile.
Hook and USP
USP (Unique Selling Point)
To start with, we discussed how having a Unique Selling point is important in making a game. A good example of this are Zombie games. There are many zombie games, and a number of which are very memorable due to their USPs. For example, Dying Light is known for parkour, whereas dead rising is about customization and high kills. This is proof that you can make a popular game even in a crowded genre, as well as the importance of a USP.
Hook
Hooks are all about addiction. This literally means to keep the player hooked. This could include currency, XP, customization, ranks, story, expansions as well as visual and audio feedback. This can all be utilized through an external leaderboard so the player can compare themselves globally or compete with friends.
Thought Clouds
Visual Styles:
- World – medieval/modern world
- Characters – princess, prince, robot, horse, robot, prince
Game Play:
- Interaction Model – Avatar, Single Player
- Game setting – In the world, castle, grass, valley, countryside
- Goals – Save the prince
- Challenges – collect coins (possible currency)
- Rewards – Achievements
- Player Actions – Jump, attack, move side to side
Mood Boards
Different visual styles are achieved through 3 main elements:
- The Style
- The lighting
- The colour
For my game, I am interested in 3 preferred styles:
Realistic:
Retro/8bit:
Stylised:
I would probably use either an 8bit/retro or stylised theme for my game as I think it would look very effective.
Concept Art
Below I started to look into how animations will looks smooth, and which would be the best way to make each character move. Each frame will need to have been turned into a sprite sheet for GameMaker to use, so I have tried to keep them to a minimum. Sprite sheets can be very long, and one is needed for each animation an object or character will do. I have created a generic “Idle” and “Walking” animation to be used as a template when animating characters from my game.
Idle Animation:
Sprite sheet:
Walking Animation:
Sprite sheet:
As to the use of backgrounds and level design, I have made a tile map which can be used to create multiple levels. I used pickel to create this tile map, then proceeded to design a level using them:
Regarding GUI, I am only expecting to display the health of the player to be displayed throughout the game, and potentially the amount of coins the player has collected that level. As I am developing a mobile game, my GUI won’t require as much information, and therefore will only have to display one thing: Lives. For this I am only going to show hp or lives in the top left/right corner of the screen:
For the game menu, I am going for a simple background showing the prince and princess’ castles. This is only a concept so is subject to change, but the finished menu should look something along these lines:
Beat Chart
The beat chart above shows the basics of my game. As you can see, the difficulty is progressive, usually increasing a little bit as you progress through the world, but making a big jump on the final level of the world (1.1 = Difficulty 1, whereas the boss level, 1.* – level ten, difficulty = 2). The world tends to stick to the same level scheme, usually only changing time of day, but occasionally being set in a castle. The robots (enemies), also usually tend to increase difficulty slowly, almost parallel to the level difficulty. The first couple of levels are to introduce the player to the game, but then once they are “settled in” it will reside to a slow level of difficulty progression.
Visual Style and Game Play Elements
Here I developed my game idea further, noting Visual Styles and GamePlay:
Visual Styles:
- World – medieval/modern world
- Characters – princess, prince, robot, horse
- Non-playing characters – robot, prince
- Perspectives – 2D, side scrolling, third person
- FMV – Events/cutscenes that occur thoughout the game
Game Play:
- Interaction Model – Avatar, Single Player
- Game setting – In the world, castle, grass, wherever in the world the level is set
- Goals – Save the prince
- Challenges – collect coins (possible currency)
- Rewards – Achievements
- Player Actions – Jump, attack, move side to side
- Rules – Complete each level to progress to the end
- Difficulty – Starts easy slowly increases in difficulty
- Addiction – leaderboards?, challenges and rewards
Script Story Treatment
My script story treatment can be found here