Project Name: Notstalgic
Genre: First-Person Adventure
Role: Gameplay Designer
Notstalgic was my graduating project. We had four months to create, prototype, and polish our game. Each month correlated with a different class.
In month one, we focused on documentation. Our reference games were Jazz Punk and Sludge Life.
Month One
In month one, we focused on documentation. Our reference games were Jazz Punk and Sludge Life.
These screenshots are from the Perforce page I made referencing Jazz Punk. As a designer, I love the feeling of Jazz Punk. It is one of my favorite games due to its comedic narrative and varying locations. Most of my inspiration for Notstalgic came from Jazz Punk.
During this month, I also found time to implement two staple mechanics within our game. The scoreboard acted as an internal challenge for players. We originally wanted players to get high scores to progress, but that was changed to give players more complex end objectives.
This mechanic was relatively easy for me to figure out. Given my background in Java coding, I already knew about the various sorting techniques. My teacher telling me how bubble sorts percolate to the top will always stick with me. Thanks
Mr. Kresier.
In this example, Anna represents the player character. The other names have been hard-coded into the system. The player's score is compared to the others, and if it is higher, then it "percolates" to the top. This modular system works with all of our games. There is a blueprint that handles the scores for each game, but they are always thrown into this sorting algorithm.
Eventually, I went back and made the scoreboard look nicer. This occurred during month four when I made all of the menus follow the same color scheme. This helped take our game from a prototype to a final product.
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The scoreboard provided a great way to engage our competitive players. It gave them a challenge to strive for, which is important for their player profile.
The second staple mechanic was our card swipe. When coming up with ideas for our game, I knew that I wanted to incorporate widgets into normal gameplay. One great way to provide tension in a game is to force the player to complete a mechanic that leaves them helpless. Upon interacting with the door, a widget will appear. It contains a simple slider, and once the value hits 1, the door opens.
This mechanic was a hit with our playtesters. It caused them to pay attention to their surroundings, and it provided a purpose that pressing "e" to unlock the door could not. Once Jamie, one of our artists, made textures for us to overlay, it looked even better.
Month Two
In month two, we each had to prototype two mechanics and levels. Mine were Bomb Squad and Thief Squad.
Bomb Squad was intended to be a humorous puzzle game. It eventually changed to be more action-based. Here is a video of the original layout of the building:
The original time limit for the level was just five minutes, which is why it is more condensed. Each of the three rooms holds a different puzzle. The executive room had a tile swap puzzle, the computer room had Simon Says, and the server room had a wire maze. Of these puzzles, the only one to be scrapped was the tile swap.
After watching player feedback, we realized that many playtesters were not engaged with the tile swap. They often found it to be too challenging and would spend their whole time trying to solve it. There was always the option for players to only solve two of the three puzzles, but the existence of the tile swap made them want to finish it. Here is an example of how it worked:
Here is some of the code for the mechanic. My goal is to always keep my code clean and documented. If Mr. Kresier could see me now, he would be so proud.
