It Never Ends! Design Journal

Disclaimer:

The following design journal will have spoilers for the game project. If you are interested in experiencing the narrative of the game it is advised you play the game before reading the journal.

Week 1 (26/09 - 30/09):

The Task:
- Team members come up with potential ideas for the game that we want to create.
Objective:
- Decide on the game and the theme we want to create by the 30th of September and start planning ahead.
Research:
- An important point to mention is that our artist in the group Alex is specialized in 2D pixel art, therefore, we already knew that the idea we want to create needed to be applicable in a 2D environment. That was an advantage for our research because by eliminating the possibility of a 3D game, we eliminate multiple genres that would not be optimal to create in a 2D environment.
- While Thinking of a game idea, I personally like to think about the story and the narrative of the game and later on think about what genre would best fit my vision of the game instead of thinking about the genre and then giving it a narrative and a story.
- When thinking of what games we could create, I had 2 genres in mind that I generally enjoy. These 2 genres are pirate and Sci-fi games
- I wrote a simple description of the game ideas that I wrote. They are the following:
  1. Sci-Fi Roguelike/Dungeon Crawler inspired by Doom and Diablo in which the events are on an exoplanet. We crash and we play as one of the soldiers that were sent on the spaceship as a guard for the other colonists. We find ourselves in the wreck of our ship and the only survivor (or at least that is what we think). Our mission is to try and find a way back home.
    - Possible perspectives for the game:
      - Isometric
      - Top Down
  2. Pirate Game in which the player will be able to find treasure maps, follow clues, solve puzzles and find the treasure
    - Possible perspectives for the game:
      - Isometric
      - Top Down
- As mentioned above, the isometric perspective was one of the possible perspectives that we could adapt for the project. However, it came to my mind that I have not seen many 2D games that use the isometric perspective, and that me question the reason behind that. Throughout my research, I found 2 possible reasons behind that. Keep in mind, that this was not academic research and the reasons found were found on a Reddit thread on the GameDev subreddit. the 2 reasons for the lack of isometric 2D games that I found were that Z-sorting and layers would be harder in isometric than in top-down perspectives. The other problem was that artists usually find making isometric art harder than making art from other perspectives.
- Link to the thread mentioned above:
What's wrong with isometric 2d games?
Tools That Were Used:
- A website was used to create the mood boards. that website is:
Grow your business with VistaCreate Pro
- You can find the created mood boards if you follow the link below:
  
  https://liveplymouthac-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/mohamad_alsamman_postgrad_plymouth_ac_uk/EoENx4UOL5BDuLVOcdxLuKMBkaxWBFx9anXns0VyztP9wQ?e=bFBLVQ
Challenges Faced:
- Since the 2 problems that were mentioned above in the research section are from an art and programming side of things, and I am a game designer. I had to consult the artist and the programmer of the team and get more information from them about the problems mentioned.
How The Challenges Were Overcome:
- During our Friday the 30th of September meeting; the meeting in which we wanted to choose a game and start the pre-production phase of the project, when I mentioned the idea of an isometric game and the problems that I found other game developers talking about online, Alex, the artist, confirmed what I found online in that isometric art takes more time to create. Alex showed us a single sprite that took him around 3 weeks to create.
  - The sprite in mention:
  - This single sprite and the time it took Alex to create made it evident that going for an isometric perspective is unrealistic and can’t be achieved taking into consideration the size of the game we want to create and the time we have available to do so.
Results:
- The team decided that we want to create my idea for the sci-fi game. The reason behind the decision is that sci-fi games give more creative freedom than pirate or medieval-themed games. When a player loads into a pirate-themed game they usually expect what they can find from ships and sea battles to mythical creatures such as the Leviathan or the Kraken to puzzles and treasure hunting. To add, a medieval game usually has swords, knights, and taverns. On the other hand, in a sci-fi game, although usually expected to have aliens, the development team can usually have freedom in creating their vision of a sci-fi world or exoplanets since humans don’t really know what aliens or their planets look like.
- The team decided that we give the artist a whole week to try and create isometric sprites. By the end of the week, we would look at the progress and what the artist was able to create in a week. That way, we could make an estimate of how many sprites the artist would be able to create and see if having an isometric view is realistic for the time constraint that we had.
- I would have to start creating the mood boards so I help the artist envision the world of the game and further expand on the narrative of the game and the initial story.

Week 2 (03/10 - 07/10):

The Task:
- Create and present an initial design presentation
Objective:
- Present my ideas to the team in a more organized matter and document them, so all of the team members are aware of the idea and the contents we will have in the game.
Research:
- While I was creating the presentation, I wanted to find different examples from other games to get my ideas through to the team members. The following games were referenced in the presentation:
  - Returnal
  - Darkwood
  - Enter the Gungeon
Tools That Were Used:
- PowerPoint was used to create the presentation. The presentation can be found by following the link:
  
  https://liveplymouthac-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/mohamad_alsamman_postgrad_plymouth_ac_uk/EZZ5g4gCz3dIgU9iAXLO25QBL_DiKk-J-DpS3bcdWKhtKA?e=WS0hzS
5th of October Meeting:
- On Wednesday the 5th of October, the team had their first meeting with the newly added producer to the team, Thiago. During the meeting, we discussed the idea of the game and how we can make it better and take it forward.
- The initial narrative of the game was that after the character crashes, they will start looking for a way out of the planet. There would have been 4 distinct areas the player will go through each one and towards the end of the area, they would find a piece of a device that will help the player escape the exoplanet. There would have been NPCs in the game that the player will find in the form of other crash survivors and the player can interact with them to get information and quests. On top of that, we wanted the player to feel hopeless as there is no way out, however, there would be a way out at the end of the game and the character will escape the exoplanet. (This will become important to remember when I discuss what happened during the following week).
- Toward the end of the meeting, the producer asked me to create a design presentation and present it to the team on the 7th of October. This design presentation would include the 3Cs of the game (Character, Camera, Controls), the main mechanics in the game, the enemies, and how many levels.
- To add, during this meeting I came up with the idea of using an oxygen tank that keeps depleting and the player needs to find a refill or they would die.
Results:
- On the 7th of October, we had a meeting in which I took the lead and explained the whole design of the game following the Initial Design Presentation PowerPoint.
- At the end of the meeting, all of the members understood my vision of the game. At that point, it was up to the programmer and the artist to let me know if they think they can do what I mentioned in the presentation or not so we adjust. To add, it was also up to the producer to let the team know if we would have enough time to create everything from the design presentation within the time constraint that we have.