Game Development Process

The game is set on a pirate determined to find her lost treasure that was stolen from undead pirates! These pirates have been long dead decades ago but came back alive as skeletons. This games takes inspiration from the games Celeste and Metroidvania. Like the platformer game, Celeste, it explores the player's abilities to maximum potential. The game can get quite challenging if not accustomed to the controls well enough which makes it 100% skill based. Similar to Metroidvania, there is a big map that consists of new areas to discover and players can visit old areas whenever they'd like such as the level selection menu I have and the big premise of the game focusing on a treasure map that I'd like to implement in the future. 

The first two weeks was spent brainstorming the concept of the game such as the narrative, mechanics and aesthetics. Once that was figured out we gathered sprite assets for the player as well as the level background and platforms. Player functionality involving the grapple hook and sword attack was designed. Enemy patrol was implemented.

The last two weeks consisted of finishing up level and enemy design, debugging player functionality, and implementing a save and level selection system. The save system had the most bugs to resolve while the level selection menu was functional only if the save system was working properly. The grapple hook and sword attack had some technicalities to be resolved in order for the player to feel that it was fun to use them rather than it being too difficult to learn or if these mechanics completely stopped the fluidity of the game. Wall jumping was implemented. With enemy design, there is a skeleton with an axe and one without. Initially, As for the level design, 4 levels were made. The first level was a tutorial level that would introduce the mechanics of the game with tutorial messages that would pop-up on the screen telling the player how to control or use the grapple hook, wall jump, and sword attack. The second level slightly increased difficult and has the player utilize abilities like the grapple hook to reach higher places with enemies along the way. The third level was much more difficult as it provides the player with different pathways to take to reach the end of the level, more enemy encounters, and the ability to use the grapple hook not just for higher places but to reach lower places as well. The fourth level was a final boss that consisted of different states that would challenge the player: dodging his attacks from his large sword where the player finds little openings to attack him, the boss would leap into the air and slam down to the ground giving the player an indicator of where he's going to land, and he also charges back and forth in the playing field with his sword and the player has to grapple up onto floating platforms in the air in order to avoid it. 

A few days before the deadline, sound effects for the player mechanics, enemies and music for the boss and the background was added. Further debugging and testing was done. 

Playtesting

Input and feedback was given from both my classmates and my professor. I gave them a list of questions detailing the most important aspects of the game I wanted feedback from such as player movement, the controls for mechanics, and enemy design. The main takeaways were:

• Attacking stops all motion
• there needs to be more levels available in order to explore the concepts of the mechanics more
• grappling in general gives the player too much control as you can "grapple the air next to yourself"
• Using a keyboard input to attack while the grapple is a mouse click is a bit jarring
• the axe enemy design did not fit the aesthetic and their design did not challenge player enough
• there needs to be more of a relation to the grand scheme of the player finding treasure, more of a clear purpose to defeat enemies and finish levels

By the time I had to present this prototype, I only had a test level available. Closer to the deadline, I was able to completely redesign the first level and make 3 additional levels with one being the final boss. I took the player's feedback with making sure each level explored the mechanics more such as having each level increase difficulty on how the mechanics are utilized. The grapple hook giving the player too much control was one of the bugs I was experiencing with this mechanic. Luckily, this was resolved by restricting the grapple to only hook on to certain platforms. The sword attack controls was also switched to a mouse click so that the player can easily switch through the player's abilities with the left click being the grapple and the right click being the attack. The skeleton enemies were changed to fit the aesthetic better and more enemy interactions with the player was implemented. I also added a shader to enemies whereas whenever they are hit or attacked by the player, the enemy sprite will flash white to indicate to the player that they were successfully damaged. To give the game more purpose and a clear goal in mind for the player, I created a result screen that appears every time the player completes level as it details the score and time elapsed. I also gave players an incentive to collect shining rubies that are placed along their path. The rubies are supposedly apart of the lost treasure that the pirate is trying to find. The score on the results screen calculates how many rubies was collected, the enemies you defeated and how much you were damaged throughout your play time.