Over the past few months, I've been fine-tuning my Game Design Document to be the best it can be. I mostly did this whilst creating the website for the UX/UI units, and there is some information about changes I made in blogs from that unit.
Click here to see the posts from the UX/UI unit.
Here is the PDF version of the document:
Here is the final iteration of my Game Design Document, which has changed a lot since this project first began. As discussed in previous posts, though the theme of the game has stayed the same, the way the game is played hasn't. Instead of being against the clock and having to try and create a potion correctly whilst following riddled instructions, the game is now about creating combinations with the highest scores.
This means that the target audience of the game has changed as well. I added in a section about the target audience of the game, which is the casual gamer crowd. I decided on this because of the lack of threats the game contains. This would be perfect for someone looking for a game to help with stress, as a game without any threats or time constraints would be quite soothing to play.
Another section I added in was about the previous iteration of the game, which I felt was worth mentioning since I had originally planned for it. Its also mentioned numerous timers throughout the document, so a bit of explanation would be good to avoid confusion.
This version of the document is also far cleaner than past versions have been, as they've contained text left behind from the previous iteration of my idea that had no bearing on my current idea. This meant I had to go through the document a few times to weed out any sections that referred to the previous iteration. I did this mostly in tandem with the creation of the website of this document, which has kept me regularly updating the document.
I also added in some artwork to the document as well, which break up the text and makes it a bit nicer to scroll through. The most notable of the artwork is the image I used on the title page, which is also used for the bonus result screen that appears when the player successfully creates a potion that they were prompted to make.
This brings me onto another point, which is that my game wasn't very compelling. I speculated that adding in a prompt to create a randomly generated potion, but I decided I needed to finalise this idea. I made sure to explain it in detail and also added this button to the main menu screen.
That sums up all the work I've done on my Game Design Document between the last post and now. I've had a lot of fun with this project, and have learnt quite a lot since it began. My first iteration was thought up with the idea of being as imaginative as possible, but I realised that it was something I had no hope of creating by myself.
The second iteration was designed with feasibility in mind, which in this case didn't involve a budget and only involved me taking my own skill level into account. With minimal knowledge of how to use Unity, I planned out a simple game that I could create by myself if I had a few more months on this project.
To summarise, I brainstormed ideas for the second iteration in the constraints of what I thought I could complete, which turned out to be a far better idea to work. My most frequent and favourite type of idea generation is daydreaming, as it's something I do naturally all the time. It's also how I've thought of many ideas. Not having a set time in which to think of ideas takes off the pressure of trying to think of something good, and makes way for ideas that I'm enthusiastic and passionate about.
Another technique I used a lot during and outside of this project was mindmapping, which was also what I used to brainstorm ideas for a Game Design Document in the first year of NextGen. This is a great way for me to connect ideas and generate new ones from those. Having a physical representation of my ideas also helps me organise them. Sometimes I have multiple ideas at once and they all end up getting muddled. Mindmapping is a great way of un-muddling them and sorting things out.
One technique that I used without realising is synetics, which relies on logic. I used this technique when calculating what all the various combinations of potions would amount to and what their names would be. I went about this in a rational and also creative way, using synonyms for potion and drink, and also going through a list of mythical creatures.
A technique that I didn't use a lot of was forced relations, which entails forcing two or more ideas together to become something new. This was a lot of fun, as it made me look at problems in a new way, and opened me up to trying various different things. I tend to settle on ideas rather quickly, and this technique helped me counter it. I took a bit of time in this project to fully settle on an idea, which went through different iterations along the way.
Something that helped me a lot when generating ideas was in a stress-free environment. During lockdown, I was only ever in one room for lessons, and this prevented me from feeling fully de-stressed. However, I found that after college hours, I would just be reading a book or watching a film, and I would have more ideas for the project sporadically. I concluded that changes in environment helps a lot when thinking of new ideas.
It was also something to do with how I was feeling during generating ideas. Watching films and relaxing is far different from being in a college environment, or an environment in which I would be doing work, and thus it was easier for me to just let my mind wander and come up with new ideas from a more rational perspective.
This concludes this project. I've had so much fun coming up with new ways to encourage new ideas, and also putting together a document with the evolved versions of my original ideas. Going back to the mindmap I made of all my ideas, there are many things that I could've experimented with more, like the idea of a maze game, but the ideas that did end up getting used are far different from what I started with.
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