05 - Potions, Assembly Lines, Fantasy?
Welcome back gamers,
This past week was interesting change in direction so let’s talk all about it. The week previous to last we had the opportunity to meet with our mentors in person which was an absolutely amazing opportunity. We all learned a lot from the outing and it was so beyond exciting and motivating! During this visit we were able to sit down with our mentors and discuss how our project was progressing, and any concerns we might have had, well we certainly had some. Chief among them, we felt as though the gameplay we had achieved up until that point was disjointed and unclear, worse still we had failed to communicate to players through the language of design. So what were we to do…
Well after further discussion we decided to pivot into the absolutely nonsensical; we now have a factory that produces potions, for a fantasy world. While the genre mashup is a little strange, the premise is much easier to grasp as is the process. So let’s talk about some potions.
Our magical potion sprites
Given that we are not artists, I’ve sourced (and attributed) sprites that we can use in our project and these are just perfect for our purposes. They give us a wide range of styles and colors which will be extremely useful later as we scale up.
So let’s discuss our MVP, our most valuable person, wait no… maybe minimum viable product? So what on earth is an MVP, well it’s the most core mechanics without which a game would not exist. For example, for a shooter, you would likely only need the ability to point and aim a gun to call it a shooter, and from there you expand. In our game that translates to…
Grab potion vial
Fill Potion Vial
Deliver Potion Vial
Now that’s clearly overly simple, but as we expand on each core aspect, we can begin to add complexity, which is our plan moving forward. Let’s see what some options might look like.
Grab Vial
There may be different types and shapes of vials
Vials can be dropped and broken
Vials and replacements may cost some form of currency
Fill Potion Vials
Potions could have their colors changed
Potions could require reagents to be added
New potions could be created by mixing colors
Delivery of Potions
Potion Orders could have time requirements added
Orders could require multiple types of vials
Orders could require more extensive and larger volumes with time
As you can see we could go on for quite a bit of time here but, the main point is that there is a lot of room for expansion from that minimum viable product. For the moment the MVP is our goal and that’s what I’m working on. The rest of our team is hard at work adding many other features. Josh is working on creating the order popups and expanding the order system I created. Li has been whipping up a story to explain how we have a modern factory in a fantasy world, Dorian is working on music and expanding the tutorial to include the changes we’ve made, and E has been working to modify and tailor the assets we’ve sourced for the project to be appropriate for our needs, of course, he is doing this as the licenses allow for the art we’ve sourced.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for you guys this week, it’s been a bit hectic as professors have a tendency to throw the kitchen at students in terms of work following spring break, and in our case, it seems they’ve included the sink. So most of us have been trying hard to tread water and keep from drowning in the process but we’ve managed to gain a bit of a lead and we’re all looking forward to this coming week to finally complete a satisfying gameplay loop for our project.
Until next time…