In this evaluation, I will be assessing my Unit 10 Tower Climber solo project. I'll be generally going over the project as a whole, what my aims were and how well I met them, if at all, how I felt going into it, how each task went, issues I ran into along the way, and what I’d do differently next time.

For this unit, we were assigned to research heavily into target demographics, conceptualise and create a 2D Tower Climber/Vertical platformer game. When this was assigned to us, there was a lot of emphasis put on pixel art, which excited me as pixel art is a passion of mine and one of my strong points when it comes to 2D artwork. Though I'm typically enthusiastic when it comes to most assigned projects, this unit in particular stuck out for that reason, and I found myself growing quickly ambitious, something I'd have to learn to dial down later on as I often do. The initial idea for my project came about during our briefing. I knew I wanted to make something inspired by the games Celeste and Yume Nikki, with surreal, dream theming. Over the following days, this idea would quickly evolve into the final concept.

The concept I came to was a game called "DREAM-EATER" or "YUMEKUI". As the brief for the unit suggests, the game would be a 2D, pixel art, vertical scrolling platformer with heavy influences from the niche yet popular Japanese indie RPG Yume Nikki. In this game, you would take control of a mythological fairy named Yume, otherwise known as the titular Dream Eater. This main character takes inspiration from mythological figures like Sandman. They would invade and feed off of particularly weird dreams, perhaps even causing them in some cases. Not a particularly malicious entity, but mischevious. You would be invading one particular host's dreams. As you proceed through these surreal, quirky levels, these dreams get longer and longer, more abstract and unsettling, detailing the collapsing mental state of the host. You'd travel these dream worlds every night, avoiding obstacles through precise and harrowing platforming, and escaping just at the end in a state called "Waking", but eventually, it'll take longer for the host to wake up, all leading up to a climax once they don't wake up at all.

The target demographic I was aiming for was teens to young adults and onwards, rated PEGI 12 with Horror and Mild/Moderate Violence. It'd appeal to those looking for a story driven game à la Celeste with potentially serious, darker themes, as well as those who might enjoy the surreal and abstract visuals and design style. In terms of the Bartle taxonomy, I imagine the full game would appeal to Killers through leaderboards, speedrunning, beating other people's best "Waking" best times. Socialisers could cultivate a community. Explorers could take more enjoyment in the story and complex mechanics, and Achievers would have a game to beat, with ways to maximize your experience and 100% the game.

At the start, my scope often changed sporadically. I had imagined myself using all the time I was given to create something beyond what I've ever done in college. Something with the production quality and presentability of a real one level indie game demo. This, of course, would be greatly unrealistic, and it was. Regardless, the median I wanted the demo to be was a very short tutorial level, potentially around 3 minutes give or take, introducing a walljump mechanic and a potential double jump mechanic which is triggered by a reoccuring ingame object. Featuring the aforementioned "Waking" state at the end of the level, where the player must traverse a medium to large stretch of level before the timer runs out and the dream ends. The time you took would be recorded and placed on the title screen. Despite this only being median, it is still highly ambitious. The game was developed in GameMaker Studio, an engine I prefer using whenever I can.

Starting off, unlike Unit 9, I didn't start off with any issues. We were given our first task, and it all went smooth for me. However, I did neglect to continue some of my initial research until a while after that task was assigned to us, but this did not set me back in terms of research in any substantial way, and I quickly got back on my feet. This is something I'd say has definitely improved about my work. Though there was still a bump, it didn't set me back and I was able to remedy the issue before it did, while in the past, something like that might have lead to a loss of potentially weeks of production. I decided to abandon Unreal Engine early on, and later into the unit, used Jordan's Unit 10 Unreal Engines lessons to catch up on any potential missing work or to get ahead with concepting and production, working on my own. For a while, I do believe I had a pretty good and steady workflow. Of course, it wasn't perfect and there would be times where I'd go off track, working at home was scarce too as I typically came back too exhausted or demotivated to start with anything. But regardless, it came with very little stress and I felt confident with how I was working, unlike some of my previous projects and assignments.

A few weeks into the unit, the deadline was extended to January 6th. I got a little bit overconfident about this as I thought it was all I really needed, and for what it's worth, it was what I needed. I feel like this overconfidence led to be becoming passive and complacent at times, though. When half term came around, we had around two weeks to complete anything left to do on the assignment at home. I was excited to see what I could do over those two weeks, but by the time it happened, I happened to fall into a sort of slump, losing motivation to so much as get out of bed, so work was scarce besides the occasional thing done on my laptop. Not to mention it was Christmas, so for about two days I was with family, unable to work even if I had any motivation. It wasn't until the last few days where I got the energy to work, likely out of a subconscious panic. I was thankful that I had a majority of work, written-wise, already finished by that point, with only blog progress updates left to be added on, otherwise I might have been substantially late to hand in the assignment. Already being so close to the due date, I had to cut a lot of corners, going from that aforementioned median to around the minimum. In those last days, I got a surprising amount done, which tells me the final product would be much grander, much closer to my vision if I had spent some of my time wisely and had motivation near the end.

In conclusion, the project had a promising concept, a decent execution with unfortunately cut corners, and cleaner yet still imperfect inbetweens. It seems I've definitely improved somewhat from previous projects, but there's still a lot to improve on here. I think the way I worked when I did work was great. I managed to stay somewhat on top of things, didn't let myself get delayed by one issue at the start. Like mentioned, I had to cut a lot of corners, so I didn't end up meeting some of the target audience appeals unfortunately, but I learned a lot. At the start, since I was taking this so seriously, I was considering a more structured workflow, finally organising everything, planning things out on paper, but that never went anywhere. I think if I were to do this again, I'd take that more into consideration and execute it, and try my hardest to motivate myself to work at home or find a way where it'll be easier. Use my time to the fullest. I think I'd like to put some more time into properly managing a realistic scope, too. For the programming I managed to get done for this unit, I think it did help to further my abilities and knowledge a little bit, as is evident by my enthusiasm in the latter half of the last progress report I wrote in Jordan's Unit 10 page, and I'm considering picking the project back up at a later date to use as practice and keep sharpening those skills, perhaps bringing it closer to my original vision in my own time.