Assignment 1: Game Design Document

Link to Game Concept draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YiPAZpWo-3QQEFL9Cwdo5MadVoniylv2azr4k2KI9bU/edit?usp=sharing

Assignment Scope and Specifications

For this assignment, my partner and I must develop a Game Design Document for a video game. The setting for this video game is a school. The Game Design Document consist of 2 parts, the Game Concept and Functional Specifications.

Game Concepts must contain the introduction, description, key features, genre, platforms and market analysis of our game.

Functional Specifications must contains: Game Mechanics, user interface and story.

Brainstorming Game Idea: 25/05

My initial Game Idea

An RPG game that got a school with a lot of classes, but they all start from warriors, but with different classes each warrior has to attend, they focus on different fighting techniques. Each warrior will have to grow in the school to become a (Title of expert warrior). The world is filled with monsters in the outside world. Different fighting style and for different classes. Players have a story line to follow. Players can choose what class they want at the start. And whatever they choose, how they complete the mission given will be different. Physical appearance change base on decision a 3rd person view open world game. Each of the decision matters, as it affects the ending. A game that is very similar to The Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed: Origin, an awesome story-based game with lots of actions and freedom.

My partner's (Jun Wei) Game Idea

You a student in [School name] woke up in the school hall with a bunch of school mates that you are not close with, you all have no idea why you guys were knocked out and why you guys were in this hall. When suddenly the projector lit up displaying a mysterious figure with a mask. He grin and said “WELCOME TO MY GAME, [game name]!”. As he explanied the game rules everyone’s faced just turn pale as the missions that you have to do each day is disgusting and gory. To win his game you guys have to either find the game master, escape the school or be the last on standing. The school is locked down and everyone have no idea how to get out. After explaining the rules the game master wished you all good luck and disappear and right after that the light lid up a scream was led out by the girl behind you. A girl was murdered already and the closest person is you. That’s when everyone started suspecting you….

So which game concept do we plan to go with?

After debating which games concepts to go, we decided to go with my idea. The reason is because both of us played RPG games but Junwei is more of a MMORPG player. It is easier for us to brainstorm and think together. After showing him the some of the RPG games like Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed and other RPG games. He find it interesting too. So we came to the conclusion that he work on a RPG games together.

Changes to my Game Idea: 27/05

After consultation with teacher

After consultation with teacher, we re-think about our game concepts. These are the few questions that we need to ask ourselves

Is our game more of the story or action? We decided to go for more action
Should we focus on 1 character or multiple? We decided to go with 1 because it's easier to concentrate.
How are our games different from those similar games? We have though of a game mechanics that add more actions and increase the speed of the game.
What are the games that similar to yours? Our games are inspired by Witcher 3.

We also came out the title of the game name, the names we initially was thinking are: Pro title: Exalted/Anvil/Warrior/Adamantite/Arslan/Asura/Hunter/Aries/Exile but we ended going with Warrior.

Writing of back-story: 28/05

Junwei and I have decided to work on our back story together.

Our backstory draft: In the world of Arthe, where peace and harmony was disrupted by creatures called “Krogan”. Humans decided to come together to form a [something] where they train selected young talents to become a warrior to protect the world from these ferocious creatures. Not everyone can be a Warrior of Elderwood’s school. They must go through high intensity training and [some chemical experiment](15% success rate) in order to gain supernatural power which makes them dangerous and highly versatile against their enemies. All [Pro Title] will have an increased strength, speed, reflexes, and endurance after the [chemical experiment] but each of them got their own unique power determined by their bloodline and genetics. Those that failed the [chemical experiment] will result in a painful death or paralysis. In this game, you will be playing as Lyria, one of the few survivors to become the Warrior of Elderwood.

Our games need a lot of story writing because it's RPG. So we decided to split the job. Junwei is more creative with game mechanics so he focus more on that. I am better in thinking of ideas for story so i focus more on story writing. Our plan is to finish working on game mechanics so we can concentrate on story writing. We started doing a little.

Key Features & Market Analysis: 29/05

Started and finish key features and Market Analysis.

We work on key features and trying to find out what are the things that can make our game unique. Looking for the selling points of our games and how if our game will be successful in the market. We were very efficient on that day.

While Junwei is working on Key features, I was working on the market analysis. I went to research and see what we can do better in our game in order to compete with those high tier RPG games. Junwei thought of an interesting game mechanics which we believe that it will add more actions to the game. We managed to finish both of this in a day.

After deciding, here are the game features we have:

High intensity action game!

Unique game mechanics to boost your game experience

Huge virtual playground for you to do whatever you like!

Packed with a variety of mini-games! (Random events included)

Multiple game ending based on your decisions in the game!

Hundreds of weapon customisation to choose from!

More than 20 perks and abilities to aid in your adventure

Game Mechanics & Storyline: 30/05

The beginning of our story and the interesting game mechanics

We decided to split our work to be more efficient. I worked on the game story-line while Jun Wei work on game mechanics. Even though we were doing 2 different parts, we still communicate and share ideas with each others to ensure both of us agreed on specific idea. By doing this, I as the story writer, need to link the game mechanics with the game.

I managed to finish up the first 2 chapter of the game, introducing the main character. I focus mainly on how he was before he become a hero, his personalities and character. Not every hero story is interesting without a sad past right?

MORE Story to tell: 31/05

Story, story and many more story...

Writing Story is very tough. The fact that we decided to do an action-adventure RPG game, we need to write a long story for the game. This will take up the most time in this game design document. After Jun Wei completed his Game Mechanics section, he helped me with story writing. At the start, we have hard time brainstorming ideas and sometimes Jun Wei and I got different thinking of how the game suppose to be like. Sometimes we feel like it doesn't add up to the game we initially planned.

I think what we did wrong was taking too much time plotting the first 5 chapters of the game. We realized that if we continue to write at this pace, we won't have enough time with other assignments so we decided to go as brief as possible for the following chapters but still keep the story interesting for the players. We kept our promise for multiple endings and we make 4 different ending depending the major choices made by the players. I believe this will make the game memorable and leave a deeper impression for the players.

At the end of the day, we still manage to resolve it quickly and come out with many interesting plots. We managed to complete the story after doing it for the whole day.

Changes and Added to idea: 01/06

Mini Games Key Features

After writing story, we decided to work on our game key features. One of our unique features we have compared to Witcher 3 is to allow players to continue playing after finishing the main story-line. Jun Wei and I brain stormed on many ideas and decided to add many interesting mini games that will keep our players coming back for more. We came out of many different ideas but we only keep some implemented to suit the theme and gameplay.

Here after the following min games that we implemented:

Open duels
Random events
Gambling Dents
Rare artifacts
Horse System
Horse Race
Boss Rush

Logo Designing & Video Pitch : 02/06

How the games logo look like? How to pitch?

The day we plan to do our video pitch, we decided to make some logo and arts to ensure the players/audiences have a clearer understanding of our idea. We also decided to put Jun Wei got more advanced Photoshop skills than me so I just focus on giving ideas. He is my partner for all the assignments so we are constantly in Discord. He share screen and we discuss on how we want the Art concept should be.

After designing the logo and art concept, we decided to work on a script for the video pitch. It took us long enough to understand how to do a video pitch properly. We watched some videos together on YouTube and also did some research on Google. We found a useful website by Gamasutra and decided to follow it's format. Jun Wei love to start the video pitch by gaining the audience attention with a problem statement. I decided to say the part where i dislike about Witcher 3. By comparing our games with Witcher 3 will allow us to give the audiences a better understand of our game. We spend an hour to record our video pitch because we keep messing up HAHAHA. JunWei kept saying "We are working in ..." instead of studying in. For me, I cannot pronounce the word enthusiast which cause us to retake. After a few times, we decided to just edit the video for that small part.

Editing and Finalizing Video Pitch: 06/06

iMove? How about no

Both of us are MacOS user, we planned to edit the video with in built program called the iMove. Jun Wei had a hard time editing the video and we cannot find how toeven export out the video properly. At the end of the day, we still get our work done.

Here is our video pitch about our game.

Link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAozTWGMcDo&feature=youtu.be

THE DEADLINE: 07/06

Are we really completed?

On the last day, we decided to touch up on everything in the document. We tried reading the documents and it was... insane. Because of our story-line, we ended up with a total of 7000+ words, thanks to the 10 chapters of story and the player choices. We just want the audience to understand our game and not lose out any important information.

It was a great and tough journey throughout the process of developing a game design document. It was really tiring but fun at the same time. I realized how hard it is to develop a game and will appreciate games more. Jun Wei and I had been partner for almost all our assignments in Ngee Ann poly so far and our way of thinking/solving problems are very different. It was another great journey with him and I believe this is the toughest one we ever had because we need to be constantly thinking of unique ideas. Overall, I believe that we did a good job and it was pure hardwork. I would like to thanks Jun Wei for all his hard work he putted in, constantly burning midnight oil with me and finished this assignment, We have a hard time coping with this MAD.

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