Reflective Evaluation Of Family Secrets:

Video of final game

Introduction:

The project’s name is ‘Family Secrets’. This game aimed to be creative and to also stand out for the handmade art for our characters but also for the overall story line to stand out from the other projects, which it does. The project’s overall aims was to not only have fully functioning dialogue but also to have handmade artwork for the character designs and also for our game’s story to stand out with mystery and unanswered questions playing a major part.

Roles And Contributions:

For the individual roles and contributions made to the games, myself and Joseph had discussed a potential plan for the the production of our game. This included myself making the concept art, final designs and also making dialogue icons and full body designs for all of the characters. However, I also made textures for our assets in Photoshop and also made a draft script for the potential dialogue. Besides this, The contributions that I had made to our project took a lot more time and consideration for the overall final products.

The Positive:

The positive things that had occurred during our project was that the concept designs were completed easily and they also gave me a chance to further develop Fifi and Willow’s designs to make them look like stuffed animals (teddy bears). Another positive thing was that the overall art looked the way we wanted. The characters had a cutesy style but they also looked serious and like their individual personalities.

Screenshot of in-game dialogue

The Negative:

With this project, a lot of things had gone wrong. But this does happen with every project but the changes that have been made have made the game better. The main setback would have been my laptop crashing twice. This not only delayed the artwork from being finished but it also meant that the artwork could not be detailed as much as I would have liked to. However, this change did make the art still look great, even without shading. Unfortunately, some of the progress I had made on the artwork had been lost because of this issue.

Finn’s failed attempt

Fifi’s failed attempt

Willow’s failed attempt

The Changes:

The changes that were made to the game on my roles were not major but they did affect the final project. The main changes that were made was not having anything to chase the player as myself and Joseph couldn’t decide on a character concept to chase the player. This didn’t happen because we also were short for time. Another change that happened was that the full body designs on Fifi and Willow had to skip being shaded because of technical difficulties with my laptop as the drawing tablet I own doesn’t work on the computers. Looking back on the project’s completion, I am happy with how it turned out but I know that I could do better next time.

Before:

Willow’s failed attempt

Finn’s failed attempt

Fifi’s failed attempt

After:

Fifi full body after

Fifi after

Willow after

Progress:

With the progress of production of my contributions to the game’s overall completion, I would personally say that the progress was steady and constant, even with a few slips in the production’s process. With the timetable, it didn’t play a huge part in keeping myself organised as I prefer to work on one thing at a time until I am happy with the overall product. This meant that some assets or textures took longer than others because they were more complex or needed more time to be at a high personal standard.

First ever concept design for Fifi

Fifi’s concept art designs

First ever concept for Willow

Willow’s concept art designs

Ty Beanie Boos: Inspiration for the full body designs

Fifi’s base colours nearly completed

Willow’s base colours completed

Ten second video of game in development

Influences And Inspiration:

For the inspirations behind the concept of ‘Family Secrets’ to even the overall story-line, there was many different inspirations from not only other video-games that either myself or Joseph (My colleague for this project) have played and enjoyed. There are many different games that have inspired this game but the games that I found personal inspiration from were:

Five Nights At Freddy’s:

With the 8 game series (There are 7 games so far, the 8th is in development), The main inspiration was the lore (story) behind the games. The inspiration that I took from the series was to have the story be surrounded in mystery and have unanswered questions but to also have things that wouldn’t add up.

Latest upcoming installment in the series

Splatoon:

With Splatoon, The actual colours of the ink that Nintendo chose are what inspired me. The colours are not only vibrant but they contrast each other. This is known as complementary in artist terms. This inspired me to have some of my own art in the game but have the colour schemes be complementary.

Splatoon title cover for the game’s disc case

Mario Odyssey:

With the latest Mario installment into the huge series, Mario Odyssey took everyone by surprise. From the retro aspects to old characters coming back into this game with a modern spin to even the story line. The inspiration from this game was the creative flare and it showed that any simple idea can be developed into something truly spectacular.

Mario Odyssey title cover for the game cartridge’s case

Communication:

As this project was developed and completed in a team, communication was vital to getting this project to the overall game it is now. Our communication was constant because of ideas being developed further and also to ask questions or for help with a certain part of the project that we were working on. Communication was also present between myself and my tutors. This was not only to show the progress of the project but to also ask for advice and assistance on the project’s development.

Learning:

With communication, I have learned to make sure to address problems to my partner or tutors before they get worse. Also, verbal and physical communication is important as with verbal communication, words can be used to explain an idea but physical communication can show your ideas physically on paper or on a screen.

Survey Feedback Summary:

With the recent play-day, Myself and Joseph wrote a survey to get feedback on the game’s completion to see what our classmates and tutors thought about the final game. To summarize the feedback in a simple way would be to say that the majority of the feedback was extremely positive, However, there was a lot of constructive criticism and other potential ideas for the game if it was to be further developed in the future. Some of this constructive feedback included “I like the fact that it was pencil drawn and then moved over to computer maybe if you had dark outlines picking out certain features of the characters that would be good”. This is referring to the first question, which asked about the game’s graphics (More specifically the graphics for not only the heads up display but also the full body versions of our characters that you meet at the end of the game).

Evidence for the first constructive criticism

However to show more constructive criticism, “I think the game mechanics are straight and easy to follow, however I do think that the text could go a little bit slower, I did find that the text was going a bit too fast for me, also there should be some kind of music to relate to your game play. if you have been inspired by “Luigi’s Mansion” then think what kind of music they have used.” (This is referring to the second question which was on the topic of the game’s mechanics).

Evidence for the second constructive criticism

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the project outcomes were to make the game stand out and to have a good story-line. These were both achieved with the story being left on a cliffhanger and the game having handmade art to make it stand out. With the aspects of game design, I would like to be able to focus on getting my 3D modelling skills to improve but also to have more opportunities  for experimenting. With skills that I would like to learn and develop it would be on how to make AI’s (Artificial Intelligence) to make them potential enemies for future projects that I get the opportunity to work on.