Introduction
As part of an individual project, this evaluation aims to critically assess the effectiveness of the “No Slime To Lose” game along with how I managed my resources to reach an end product. Within this evaluation, I will provide an analysis of my planning, the effectiveness of my research, and how my research led me to the designs for my production stage, covering what I could’ve done differently in my final submission for the project and whether it would’ve been a benefit or a hindrance.
In this instance, the project timeline was spread over a short amount of time. With this constraint in mind, I set myself the milestone of designing the game’s opening level- including some assets that could appear in later levels. The initial concept of the level was to start the player off easy and develop what the player is required to do. Over the course of the project, my tasks included: designing some enemies found within the full game and animating them, designing a level that felt competitive to speedrun, and creating a HUD that didn’t take too much away from the gameplay.
Planning
Using time to my advantage I began the project of sketching out what the next three weeks would look like in the form of a time plan. During this time, I developed my idea to try to make the game appealing while taking a unique approach to the hero. With my inspiration from RPG characters, a slime made for an obvious protagonist that could have a lot of diverse abilities to make platforming more enjoyable.
Reflecting on my time plan, while I didn’t stick to it completely, I was able to maintain a steady workflow that allowed me to focus on one thing each day and be condensed enough to submit on time. Given programming isn’t my greatest strength, I prioritised each of the custom aspects I wanted to implement and any I felt I didn’t have time for I decided it was in my best interest to not include. This helped me keep on track with my schedule by knowing what I should work on and what I could afford to remove.
Looking into the concept itself, I believe establishing an idea quickly was helpful in moving on from the pre-production stage as fast as possible. Setting on the idea for a game that used design theories and practices to make a short level but still tested players was a good main goal to maintain, as it helped me develop a foundation of ideas to initially plan what the level would look like. Using sketches for the early designs was helpful as it helped me to visualize the style I was going for, giving me the idea to have an abandoned overgrown tower as the first level.
I found drawing the level out helped me to formulate the ideas for the enemies I wanted to include and of the enemy designs I had come up with, selecting the most appropriate choice given the theme I’d set for myself. This had the after-effect of knowing which sprites to make first so since I ended up ahead of schedule in the sprite phase, I could draw all the intended sprites I needed.
Research
Firstly, I planned ahead by drawing some early sprite silhouettes in Aseprite, allowing me to show them off to peers in a form, and conducting some initial primary research to narrow down some designs. I designed the form to cover the concept of both the game and enemies, asking questions regarding which options look the best. This was helpful as the questions I made were effective in deciding on which few enemy variants to pick, what colours to give them, and how I could improve the design. Making the form my top priority helped me to have feedback relayed quicker, and I could begin to develop ideas with sprite work, having the end result of a successful first week. Gathering research from this form was an important process that helped in understanding audience preferences of the first impressions of the game.
The first half of the opening week was spent creating a Miroboard to display all my research. Looking into art style options and target audiences, this project helped me to obtain an in-depth understanding of demographics and psychographics, which will help me to analyse games using a different perspective in future projects. This has taught me how I can intentionally implement these into my own games and how I can target a broader audience using what I’ve learned. With the various art styles of pixel art to choose from, I had to choose one that made sense for my intended end product. Deciding on a modern style will add more diversity in colour and shading than if I were to select a style used for older games like monochrome. Conducting research on what genre to use provided a refresher of how each style is represented and typically what tropes they follow. This led to an easy decision that felt the most in line with the characters and architecture shown within the game. Looking into style was a successful opener to secondary source research, but if I were to look into it in more detail, I would consider another art style that I could use that maybe wasn’t so widely used in the modern day, perhaps giving the game a unique sense of nostalgia.
With the games I researched, I looked into platformers that focus on verticality, like Celeste and Jump King. Celeste’s level design uses simple ideas and then begins combining them into a chain of jumps that can quickly increase in difficulty. This method of level design is efficient as it eases players in but allows advanced mechanics to be taught that are easy to learn but hard to master by being applicable in numerous scenarios. While I ended up without some of the controls I wanted to add, I was able to take inspiration from this structure of level design and toggle with controls during production to make strings of inputs that challenge players in different ways.
Given I had to cover multiple roles over the solo project, I wanted to cover my main areas the most while also researching the areas where I knew I would find them challenging.
By gathering references for enemies when designing sprites, and looking also into how some enemies typically move, I could begin to consider programming that might help me create some unique hazards for the player. While also helping to concept how I can illustrate shape language and colour theory through pixel art, I could in addition look at how these mechanics and enemies could be animated based on their inspiration and texture. Despite not being the most experienced at programming, I decided to research the topic to give flowchart logic a try. From my experience, doing this was useful to gain a brief understanding so I can apply a similar logic when building blueprints for the custom assets I had in mind.
Since level design is one of my strengths, I was able to compare and contrast two different levels which gave me an idea of what I should include in my own to make the level engaging.
To keep the level engaging I needed an effective HUD, causing me to conduct some research into the user interface. By watching a tutorial, I could become acquainted with some UI basics that help avoid cognitive load and have concise information displayed. By the tutorial covering several genres, this tutorial will also be helpful for me in future when exploring a wider set of genres and game styles.
If I were to redo this, I wouldn’t change many aspects of the research I’ve done as each component was helpful in its own way to bring me towards an end goal. If I could change anything, I would most likely look into more environments from my mini mood board, showing off some more level concepts if I had the time. Looking back on the time plan I set myself, however, I was content with the quantity of research I ended up with.
Production
Commencing the production stage with sprite art was useful as since it was one of my more experienced areas that the project covered, I was able to work productively and manage my time the best out of any of the roles I had given myself. Due to my experience, I was able to finish all of the animations quickly with little issue. Using a palette to make simple but impactful sprites, I could make a consistent set of animations in an area I was comfortable with. Working with a smaller canvas allowed me to get out sprites quickly, the most challenging to work on were the Ambush enemy and the main slime character, as it was hard to make the slime seem unique. I would say that the animation of the sprites went well, as I got to use the principles in unique ways and apply them to each character to create a cartoon level of exaggeration within the sprites which ended up as a really fitting addition for my chosen art style.
After all of my animations, I think the one that I would change the most is the ghost enemies (the Specturns) as they have a simple animation, and the animation is shared between all three variants, I could improve this by changing each animation slightly by adding frames, giving them a little more personality.
I believe that my tileset works well with the environment that creates a good colour scheme, using palettes similar to that of the sprites but instead using darker colours to solidify the abandoned theme I’d set out to achieve. By adding variation, I prevented areas of the level from looking too bland by adding numerous versions of background layer tiles like the pillars or vines. I enjoyed making the tileset despite having no experience prior, as it had an end result of giving my level more substance and detail. If I were given more time, I would create a tileset for a Neapolitan-themed level that would feature the Snowscoop enemies.
The segment that I definitely had the most difficulty in was coding using blueprints. Due to me finding programming more difficult than some of the other tasks, I found that I didn’t have time to execute all the ideas I had within the time I had left by the time I started coding in the second week. I found the basics straightforward enough to understand, but the area that gave me the most trouble would be the health bar, as I had to alter a few things with the way that the defeated state was set up to add a health bar. While this was a challenge, I was able to efficiently discover bugs and fix them by troubleshooting. Although I still find coding difficult, I was able to take the project as a learning curve and can now understand blueprint nodes and their functions better than if I hadn’t done this project. If I could do the project again knowing what I now know, I feel like I would have the confidence to be able to fit more of the intended inclusions within the game by the end of the deadline, such as the character customization and abilities for the player character movement like a super jump.
Designing the level was one of the most exciting parts of designing the game within Unreal, since I could create a level using practices I had learned about level design theory to make what is in my opinion an engaging first taste of the game. Looking back, setting myself the realistic goal of one level was the best decision as I didn’t want to spend too long designing the level when I knew I would need to allocate more time to areas I believed I would encounter more trouble being the blueprints for instance. Spanning a reasonable length for the idea of a fast-paced level, I was able to advance the level as it developed, adding new threats one instance at a time and applying them in different situations to test players. One example of where I believed the level succeeded was in the branching paths, further complementing the intended gameplay style of beating the level as quickly as possible. Consequently, this led to players being able to try multiple paths to see which was fastest, meaning there were more opportunities that each game through the level could go differently.
By the end of the project, I also believe I accomplished creating a successful HUD for the game. Only including the necessities meant the experience was more enjoyable and there wasn’t too much information to process on screen. While I initially had a lot of bugs with the widgets, I was able to fix them using what I’d learned during the bulk of the blueprint phase. Because of the simplicity intended, I wouldn’t change anything in regard to the layout of the HUD.
From a wider lens, one of the big success factors was the pace of work for the project. Despite having to cut content, I was able to add a lot of unique elements to the level while having little experience. I have been able to learn a lot regarding blueprints in the duration of using Unreal Engine which will ultimately help me to gain more of a generalist outlook regarding game development. Moving forward, I was pleased with how No Slime To Lose turned out, my greatest strengths were rooted in the pixel art direction and level design structure. The greatest success was being able to take the skills I already have and adapt them while developing new ones in the process.
Conclusion
When starting the project, I knew that working on my own could prove challenging as the project would certainly highlight my strengths and weaknesses. Though I had to scrap some ideas, I was pleased with the overall personal performance. The project has been a great experience for improving my generalist workflow, as I have learned a lot from the project that has encouraged me to keep up with Unreal Engine in order to further develop my set of skills. To conclude, I was pleased with the end product and being able to overcome everything within the allocated time frame.