RGB Wizard

⚠️ HEADPHONES WARNING - HIGH VOLUME (ADJUST IN OPTIONS!) ⚠️

Development Journal

Final Game Thumbnail by Sea

Tools Used

  • Unity 2021

  • Visual Studios

  • Photoshop

  • Clip Studio

  • Ableton

GMTK Game Jam 2021's theme is "Joined Together", so we decided to make a color mixing game.

Because of our time zone, we received the theme at midnight and the entire team went to sleep 555. ("To plan the game in our dream")


Credit:

  • Design - Peerawich Sinamornwech (Me!)

    • Core Mechanic

    • Core Game Loop

    • User Interface

    • User Experience

  • Code - Tanaphat Vivattanakijcharoen (Champ)

    • Everything

  • Art - Paphon Chorpakapan (Sea)

    • Everything

  • Music & SFX - (Ben)ie Brown & Panop Norasing (Bas)

    • Main Menu Music - Bas

    • Gameplay Music - Ben

    • SFX - Ben & Bas

Core Game Mechanic

Developing the core mechanic is the main piority, I believe that having a good core game mechanic and the gameplay loop will come naturally. The faster you do this, the better it is for you and your team as it help your team as it help build "vision".

I designed the core mechanic to be about color combinations and how it need to be about RGB colors. I then use wireframe to plan positions of UI elements on screen to get a rough idea of where things goes.

I then sketch the gameplay screen to present the design to the team.

I didn't try making it look nice at all (you should too!), as soon as you get your point accross, you can try making proper mock ups. (even that doesn't have to look nice!)

I then remade the sketch into a "proper" mock up to give the artist a bettter idea of where everything is positioned.

At this stage, I also try to make things such as UI, Enemy Size, etc. to be at the correct scale and position.

The artist (Sea) can then put his own spin on the mock up. The concept of having the monster coming out the book spawned from this very mock.

The UI for 'color combination' is actually wrong here. In this case, it is because Sea was unsure about something, I don't remember what specifically.

Communication between artists and designers is very important!

"Placeholder" UI by me

What I do in my free time

I think that when waiting for the coder to code and for the artist to art. It is good practice to get things up and running as soon as possible.

I made this "Placeholder" UI, ready for each elements to be replaced with beautiful art assets.

Before and Afters

Here is some of the screenshot from our mock up/early version of the game being compared with the final product. Let's see how we have improved!

("Before" on the Left, "After" on the Right)

Menu Screen Mock

Final Menu Screen

How to Play Screen Mock

Final How to Play Screen

Gameplay Screen Mock

Final Gameplay Screen

Game Over Screen Mock

Final Game Over Screen

Retrospective

Everyone worked really hard, we were able to published a finished game in the end and are proud of our work. It's like cooking your own food.

This project simultaneously destroy my sleeping schedule and fixes it at the same time. It was really fun working with everyone.

I learned many game design and game development skill from this single game jam, I will definitely do another game jam, especially GMTK Game Jam 2022, can't wait for it!

Feedback

From the feedback we get, people say that the game is too difficult and I totally agree with that. Although the logic of our RGB color mixing makes sense, it is uncommon knowledge. Currently the game have an execution problem and it is due to the coginitive load.

The controls are praised for being intuitive, I am happy that it goes according to design, I am so glad that people noticed the design, or rather they feel the (bad) design.

Someday I would love to go back and work on a sequel / update on RGB Wizard.

Art Assets

Most of the art assets in the game was made by Sea!

This table art asset was actually made wrong because there was a hole in the book and the table from where the hand and monster used to be.

Luckily it is not really visible.

This was made by me using the 'line boil' technique to create a boiling effect.

They can easily be made using any drawing software with layers. Just trace your drawing on a different layer to create this effect!

Other Thumbails

Sea made tons of thumbnails for us to choose from. We know that without a cool looking thumbnail, no one would even click into our game page in the first place!