FMP – Evaluation

https://jack-honeyball.itch.io/conjure-knight-2

Introduction:

For my final major project I decided to make a simple Mini Real Time Strategy game, with a fantasy theme. I chose to do a fantasy theme as I wanted to make a sequel to my first final major project, because I believe that it’s a good way to show how my production skills have improved over the second year of doing games design. As I intended to make a simple real time strategy game, I had one main design focus, and two secondary ones: my main design focus was video game On-boarding, and I chose this design focus because of the type of game I was making, I am making a Mini RTS (real time strategy) and these types of games can be hard to understand to new players so I decided to have a design focus of Video game On-boarding and base everything in my game around helping the player understand something, For example: the design of each troop tells the player what type they are, and what role they serve in my game. One of my secondary design pillars was a simplistic art style, I chose this one because I really did not want to focus on graphics as making a Mini RTS is a lot of work, and my main design focus is mostly gameplay related. And the other secondary design focus is that the player needs to strategize, and this is quite an obvious one as I have made a strategy game, but it was important to always keep that design pillar in mind when making my game as that’s what the player should be doing when playing my game. In the final version of my game, I believe that I have succeeded with sticking to my design pillars, but with some more than others, as I have definitely got video game on-boarding in my game, but I didn’t limit myself with the graphics and still put too much effort in them which forced me to cut some things in the final game.

Strengths:

• Gameplay:

From the player feedback I received, most people said that the best part about my game was the gameplay, and I can fully agree with this. This is probably due to how much effort I put into the balance of my game as it is a mini RTS, so I had to make many tweaks to the gameplay whenever I added a new feature, as when I added a new feature everything in my game had to be rebalanced so that it worked in line and fairly with the new feature. The player testers also said in the feedback that they could tell how much work has gone into making the game, and some said that they were quite surprised that I managed to create a mini RTS in construct as they released how hard that could be. Not only did they find my game fun to play, but they also said that my game felt quite complete and that there is a lot for the player to play, as my game has three different arenas where the player has Mini RTS battles, and also the hub world where the player gets to select which arena they want to play. It was also really nice to hear that people really enjoyed playing my game as I was worried that it wasn’t going to be fun and would be hard to understand, but from the feedback I received it’s very evident that they did really enjoy playing my game, some also even said that they could play it for hours as the game is very unique and fun. I agree with most of the positive feedback I received about the gameplay, some people might have been a bit too kind with their words, but if there was something I could improve about the core gameplay would be the few bugs I have with some of the troops in my game, and I will mention them later when I talk about the weaknesses of my project.

• Graphics and Presentation:

Originally, I wasn’t expecting graphics to strength in this project as I was going to fully focus on gameplay as I made a Mini RTS, and making a RTS in construct is quite complicated and also my design focus is mainly gameplay related as well, so it made sense that I might have had to cut back on the graphics, which I did but apparently they turn out pretty good in the end. Form the feedback I received from the playtesting, people said that they really enjoyed the graphics of my game as they fit the theme quite well, and really enjoyed the simple style of theme. Which surprised me as I didn’t want to put too much effort into my graphic as my design focus was more gameplay focused and making an RTS in construct takes a lot of time and effort so I tried to sacrifice some of the effort I put into my graphics, but it seems that using a more simplistic art style really benefited me in the end, to the point were people really enjoyed them. People also said on my feedback form that they really liked the presentation of my itch.io page as well, as they liked how it displayed two of the different backgrounds clashing together and how there are gifs on my page which show the player how to play my game, they said it was very “unique” and worked well on my page, which I am quite pleased that the gif genuinely helped people understand how to play my game, as I did put a bit more effort into making that for my itch.io page, it also links to my design focus of On-boarding the player. Overall, I am quite pleased (and surprised) with the way the graphics turned out in my game, as I did make quite a few cutbacks with graphics in production, and apparently they didn’t harm the graphics that much because people still really enjoyed them in my game.

• On-boarding the player:

As video game on-boarding is my design focus, I am quite happy to say that people believe that the tutorials in my game show the player how to play. I chose the design focus of video game on-boarding because I thought it would be quite a good idea for a design focus when making an RTS as RTS games are usually quite hard to understand and a tutorial is needed to show the player how to play, so having tutorials in my game was really important, in a sense of helping the player, and it’s obviously my main design focus, and I would argue that if I did not have a tutorial in my game most people would not know how to play, especially if the only way to know how to play was from just reading the description of my game on my itch.io page. From the feedback I received, most people said that the tutorial on how to play in the first arena was really useful, and without it they wouldn’t have known how to play. And they also said that the card descriptions (that can be seen in the main menu, and also before you go into a arena) are also quite useful and really good at teaching the player what they do. Something that I was really happy with in this project was the designs of each troop, I specifically designed each troop to visually show the player what kind of troop they are, so for example: my stick goblins troop, was designed to look small and weak as they are a very weak troop with not a lot of health, but they spawn in groups and take out larger forces easily as they are a swarm card. Players in the feedback also caught on to the design representing the type of troop and noted it in the feedback, and I was happy to see that people said that this worked really well in showing the player what each troop/card does. Some people also noted on the feedback that the use of a gif (on my Itch.io page) to show how to play was really unique and helpful. Overall, I am quite happy with the video game on-boarding feature in my game, and I believe I have done a very good job at designing everything in my game around helping the player understand how to play.

Weaknesses and Improvements:

• Planned too much:

As this was my final project, I wanted to produce something that was bigger than the other projects I have made in the past, and I wanted to go the extra mile for the last project, but this did not really go to plan and in the end made things a lot harder. Because I was too ambitious with this project, I set myself up with too many things to produce in production, and a couple of things were a result of this. When planning the production of my game I said that I was going to limit myself with the graphics and animations, but when it actually came to production, I limited myself a bit with the animations but not really with the graphics, people were happy with the way the graphics turned out but I really should have limited myself more with the actual gameplay of my game and the how much I included. I planned too many features in my game and as a result of this I found myself to be behind sometimes in production and so I had to do quite a lot of extra work at home. And also as a result of creating a large game there were many bugs that had to big fixed, and a lot of things to balance which I will talk about later on. What I could have done to improve on this was really limit myself, and make sure that I am not too ambitious when starting a project, I should have really had more of a contingency plan if I found myself to have lots of things to produce, and then I wouldn’t have had to put the extra hours in.

• Audio:

As a result of planning too much and being too ambitious with this project if found myself to have not much time left in production when producing sound, so I had to make some cutbacks and I believe audio to be a weakness personally, as in the feedback I received people did like it, but personally I believe I could have improved my audio a lot. As my main design focus was video game on-boarding I wanted the audio to really help the player distinguish what enemy is on the battlefield, and also just general information audio feedback, which I did achieve in my game as some people pointed out that the audio did help them, but again I think I could have improved it. When I was adding the audio into my game, I was originally going to have sound effects for when the enemies attack but this made the audio very cluttered and not nice on the ears so I had to scrap it, but upon further thought I think I could have got it working in the game if I used more specific sounds that played less frequently, I also had to cut sound effects that the stick goblins made as when the player spawns that card it spawns a group of them and if they all made sounds individually it would not sound good, and created a lot of loud audio, which was also not nice on the ears. So yes on my feedback people did like my sound, but personally I believe that I could have improved it if I had more time and if I put a bit more effort into it, as I was running out of time in production because I planned to much in the gameplay part of my game and I should have managed my time better.

• Bugs:

Another result of planning too much is that it did not leave me with a lot of time to fix some of the bugs, now from the feedback I recently got with the latest version of my game it seemed no one encountered any major bugs, as before that playtesting session I tried to get rid of any major bugs I could find, one of them being: one of the troops gave the walls/ bases extra health, and someone found this in one of the earlier playtesting sessions, and I did not find it myself because I didn’t test that troop that much. But I think there are some other small bugs that I did not have the time to fix, one of these being troops getting stuck, and I believe this bug is caused by the different event sheets clashing with the different layouts and fixing this small issue probably would have taken a lot of time. Again, like with the other weaknesses, I would have been able to fix the bugs if I had more time, and I would have had more time if I didn’t plan so much and wasn’t so ambitious with this project.

Project Reflection:

I think that this project has been quite successful as a whole, as I have produced a game that I am quite happy with, and I have managed to stay one track for the most part. The main thing I have learned from this project is that it is very important to limit yourself when planning as I was way to ambitious when starting this project and that lead me to be behind in some part so of production, and as a result of that I had to work on my game at home a lot and I had to do some major cutbacks in production, but in the end I managed to stay on track and complete my project in time. I don’t think that there was a main part of the project that brought it down, but again I just think too ambitious and planned to much work for myself, and if I was to do this project again I would have limited myself more, and maybe think to myself: this idea is good, but I need to be realistic and  decide if this feature is necessary for my game.

Conclusion:

Overall, I believe this project has been very successful, as I have: stuck to my design focus, produced a fun game that people enjoy, and created something I am quite happy with myself. But I do believe I might have overworked myself a bit too much, as I was too ambitious when planning my project as I set myself up with too much work. As I planned too much it resulted in me doing extra work at home and that made me feel quite overworked at some points in production, but in the end, I managed to finish my project, and leave it in a state where I believe it too be good. Overall, I have learned a huge lesson that being too ambitious can cause some problems with time management and it is very important to limit yourself, but again I am quite happy with the end result of the product and I am quite pleased with how I have progressed through this project.