EVALUATION: 01/11/24 - 06/11/24
Escape Game Evaluation
Introduction
As part of a group project, this evaluation aims to critically assess the effectiveness of my contributions to the “Mental Marine” vertical slice made along with how we worked as a team 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 and the groups overall teamwork and collaboration of our final submission and vertical slice for Mental Marine. Mental Marine is a metroidvania set in a distant future where space travel has become possible. The 2D/3D hybrid has players traverse otherworldly planets to find means of escape.
Throughout the timeline of this project, I set out to design the game’s opening two levels, the first of which being a short opener to the game teaching the player all the necessary mechanics. The second would challenge the player more, having varying enemies that challenge the player in different ways, having a few optional areas for those keen to explore. My other tasks included: designing the enemies found within the vertical slice and animating them, designing pixel backgrounds for each segment of the levels, making the statistics for enemy health and damage to balance the game accordingly, and coming up with the puzzle mechanics that are connected to the player's move set to make them more unique.
Planning
When coming up with the idea, we talked about how a lot of side-scrolling metroidvania games feature swords and fantasy genre tropes. To change this, we opted for a more futuristic approach by making a sci-fi game where the weapon would be an advanced blaster gun.
As Enemy Designer, Enemy Animator, Level Designer, and Background Artist, I had a lot to cover for the Production stage. For this reason, I planned out my steps carefully in order to complete all my different roles. Since Tom was in charge of putting my level into Unreal, I made sure to complete the level plan quickly to allow the team to progress without falling behind on their time plans.
We followed distinct workflows that outlined our main focuses and how much time we should give ourselves to achieve them. We set out a roadmap of all the main processes and how long it would take to get through them, allowing us to keep track of all of our work and help each other if anyone fell behind. This worked to our advantage since we split roles up between us in a way that meant two people would be working on the same medium like how both me and Ross used Aseprite to animate our characters, allowing for us to give each other advice and suggestions. The Kanban Framework made it easy to see where everyone in the project was working towards, using this I was always able to stay on track with all of my personal deadlines for my different segments of production, proving the planning I made to be a crucial and achievable guideline.
Making my own part for the group time plan, I had to organise what tasks would take the most time so I could focus on the most important ones and how I can fit them into the weeks accordingly. In my opinion, I made the correct decision with the way I organised my work. I planned my timeline based on how it would correlate with the production pipeline, making sure I’m on track with finishing one part of production alongside everyone else so that I can send my work to the rest of my team to continue the time plan on track. An example of this is when I had to finish animating my sprites so they could be placed in the Unreal Engine version of the level I designed.
With the GDD, I developed a base so that all the topics about the game we previously discussed as a group could be documented and used for the working document as we take our research and translate it into production. The GDDs were created to clearly outline our vision for the game, serving as a central source of information for everyone involved, helping ensure that the team has an understanding of time plans, mechanics, and art style.
As my GDD developed overtime, I achieved all aspects I intended to include within the document by using good communication and production workflow so that other members of the team could show off their work. Looking at other GDDs helped me to gain an idea of what is considered essential along with other features that can make the game idea I’m trying to deliver more clear to the reader.
From a wider perspective, planning as a whole proved very effective in starting production early, formulating a plan quickly allowed us to spend less time brainstorming on ideas and more time on production to get the finished product we were looking for. A large positive to working closely as a team meant we could always offer suggestions or fixes to any problems we came across that helped us stay on track over the entire process. While everything worked, I would change the planning method to see if it would be more or less effective, developing an idea for what methods are most suitable for me.
Research
Initially, I began with primary research by making a form to get people’s thoughts and interests. I designed the form covering the metroidvania genre and the overall theme and style of the game, helping us to narrow down ideas. This was helpful as it allowed the team to develop a foundation regarding genre, playstyle and character. I believe the questions I made were effective in allowing our team to get ideas down quickly and the questions covered topics that assisted in breaking down possibilities. Sending this form out on the second day of having received the assignment allowed us to speed up planning, finishing during the first week in order to begin secondary research as soon as possible. Gaining this primary research was an important part of the process, helping to understand audience preferences of an initial pitch of the basic concepts.
Over the next two weeks I spent my time creating a Miroboard to display all my research. I found that looking into genres and styles of 3D games helped develop a more clear perspective on what our game would look like. I believe a 2D/3D hybrid was the right decision, as it allowed me to play to my strengths than If I would’ve made 3D animations.
With the games I researched, I looked into both metroidvania games for their similarity in playstyle to our idea and other escape themed games and how the theme of escape was implemented in different ways. From “The Messenger” made by Sabotage, I was able to see how aspects of a Metroid-vania can be incorporated. The Messenger uses level design to teach individual mechanics and then moves into combining certain moves together for a more difficult platforming challenge. Another reason this was a helpful resource was its use of a unique mechanic: the “Cloudstep”. This feature allows you to refresh your jump every time you hit certain objects or enemies, allowing for lots of aerial movement possibilities. What I learned from this was that by having a simple movement option, the level design can be influenced to follow that trend as it evolves over time with upgrades and new abilities.
On the escape theme side, “The Room”, while not what our team was looking for graphically, the game did help while I was researching puzzle types to add to the project. “The Room” displayed how you can take a simple puzzle and expand on it as each chapter in the game focuses on solving a puzzle box where the box is one giant puzzle solved by completing a series of smaller puzzles, some of which have to be done in a certain order to be possible. Seeing some of the individual puzzles was insightful as it proved to be a helpful resource to build my foundation of ideas off of. Researching into different games was one of the most helpful aspects of research, allowing me to learn what other titles did that made their game stand out. Some of the most helpful games like “The Room” and “Link’s Awakening” both have a similar general end goal of escape but achieve it in different ways. While all the games I looked at embodied a physical escape whether it was from a prison or an island, it encouraged me to look into the idea of a psychological escape and helped to create the main character.
Given that I had spread my work over several roles, I needed to make sure I covered all the roles I needed to complete within my research board. Building off of what I already knew about each of these, I looked into different tutorials like Mark Brown’s video on Puzzle Design and Saultoons’ video on Pixel animation principles. All the videos I looked at were noteworthy and helpful in some way to building up my production, especially animation as I learned how to better manipulate the pixels I was working with to create character and movement.
Over the weeks I spent on research, the most helpful part of research for me was the puzzle elements. At first, I had a few ideas about different puzzles but looking into the kinds of puzzles that appear in 2D games allowed me to narrow it down to the best options that offer plenty of combinations. If I were to redo the project, I wouldn’t have changed the research process much since I covered everything I wanted to do to the standard of detail I expected. If I were to change one thing, I would mostly try to fit the research process into the span of one week to start production earlier, leaving time for potential issues or setbacks.
Production
When I made the enemies, I gathered reference images in the research stage to give me an idea of the enemy anatomy based off of their real world inspiration, being useful to get me started making the sprites. Despite having pixel art experience, I had never made sprite work to this scale before. This offered a challenge first, but by breaking down each sprite into smaller chunks it made it harder to be overwhelmed by the canvas size. A similar process was used when animating to allow for faster progression with each sprite, changing major parts that make the most difference like the legs of the Mnasuhkka (inspired by a praying mantis) to get the foundation of the walk cycle or the Touga’s (a ranged enemy inspired by the alligator snapping turtle) head, timing the frames to know when to have the mouth open. After that point, I could then begin working on animating smaller parts that would give the animations some follow through like the Mnasuhkka’s antenna or the Morcrura Flower (inspired by carnivorous plants) leaves that move as a result of the flower body moving. This method of animation allowed me to develop the base of the animation first and then add detail based off of the twelve animation principles to add more expression and emotion to each sprite. After all of my animations, I think the one I would change the most is the Mnasuhkka. When looking back on the walk cycle, I would’ve changed the movement of the legs to be more independent if I had more time. To summarise, I’m pleased with how this side of my production turned out, creating three unique enemies with different attributes while making them a cohesive group that makes them appropriate for the chosen environment.
When designing the two levels for the game, I made them a reasonable length, making the levels to allow enough time for a realistic goal while being suitable in length for a vertical slice. I wanted a clear difference between the two while offering a similar structure in design. I was able to use my knowledge on level design theory that created a brief first level introducing the controls one by one by asking the player to use them separately. One example could be how the level starts off with no real threat, only ledges the player has to jump up, then the next area has gaps with spikes at the bottom, forcing the player to jump with an added level of consequence. This methodology of design allowed the player to learn each mechanic one by one in a safe environment before being thrown into a more challenging task. Another way I applied theory was patterns in the level to hint at what action the player should proceed with. How this is achieved is by using repetition to establish the limits each movement option has like the jump. By getting the player to jump over heightened ground and gaps a few times in the opening can allow the player to develop some bearings on if the other side of the gap is reachable with just a jump. This is why when introduced with a large gap, the player has to fall down where the item with the solution is at the bottom, allowing you to charge a gunshot and fire it, giving enough of a horizontal boost to get across. This process leads the player into an assumption where they’ll assume any gap wider than a few tiles requires the charged shot to get across. Reflecting on level design all together, I successfully made two levels that first teach the player the mechanics then present them in more challenging situations in the second level.
In my opinion, incorporating puzzles into the level was a success. I was able to take a concept and make multiple iterations that advance in difficulty in order to teach the player necessary knowledge for more advanced later puzzles. I believe the decision to include multiple different puzzles was helpful, preventing the game’s puzzle aspects from getting repetitive. This is important for the replay ability factor that will make it more appealing to the intended target audience. To make the puzzles feel more natural, I included them in some ruins rather than out in the open jungle. This decision meant the world felt more diverse, offering a change of pace throughout each section by splitting the level into segments. In all, adding a new appeal to the game was a success as it would widen the target audience.
After I designed the 2D aspects of the level, I needed to work on the 3D models to add them into the level. We made a decision as a collective to save time by splitting the models between us, modelling each asset and texturing in Substance Painter within two days. Reflecting on this choice, I believe it was the best decision moving forward in order for the level to be built faster than if one person would have done all of the models. While it was time efficient, the models didn’t look as good in the level as we had originally thought. This could have been because of the size difference of the pixel shaders in comparison to the other sprites.
One of the big success factors for the project was our communication and pace of work. Having each of us work closely to advise improvements or solutions to any assets, with me and Ross working together so that all of our sprites can be of a similar size to allow for a consistent set of characters. This allowed the game to have more consistency throughout the sprites while being drawn by different people.
Now the project has finished, I was able to overcome all the challenges I faced and completed everything I gave myself to do. I was most pleased with my animations for the Morcrura Flower and Touga, having anticipations before each of their attack sequences. The biggest success was being able to develop my skills from the project, working on skills I’m already familiar with but also learning new things like designing pixel backgrounds and designing puzzles for games. This allowed me to further expand my field and aid in my generalist skills as a game developer.
Conclusion
From the beginning, I knew that working on several different things would be a tall order. Despite this, I was able to complete everything I set out to do, leaving me pleased with my personal performance. By the end of production, I had plenty of spare time to polish any work I wanted to update, helping me to increase the overall quality of my different sprites and backgrounds.
I believe this project to have been a great experience to learn from while taking on multiple roles at a time, developing a broader range of skills moving through the year. I was pleased with the final outcome of the “Mental Marine” demo, while I would’ve liked the 3D models to blend better than they did, the process is useful to know for later, I think the pixel art I ended up with was a big strength for me, encouraging me to practise my skills more in my own time. To conclude, I was very pleased with the end product and being able to overcome all my job roles within the allocated time frame.