Depth : Post Mortem
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In the context of the course “Game Design 2 : Game development”, my group, Team T, made “Depth”, which you can find here. In the game design document we received, Depth was supposed to be a side-scrolling shoot’em’up in which a monster (which is faster than you) follows you. The mandatory pick-up was supposed to make the player go faster. The player’s flashlight would make the monster fall back and leave some time for the player to breathe. The enemies, titled “Fish”, “Other Fish” and “Other, other fish”, all had the same mechanics, which were to slow you down.
 The game we made is an atmospheric shoot’em’up where the monster, who slowly catches up to you due to the enemies slowing you down, is seldom on-screen. The player is in complete darkness if not for a small light. Enemies have different abilities : the squid blinds you, the jellyfish stuns you and the pistol shrimp shoots a wave at you. Intense music plays throughout the experience (except in the tutorial where it’s more relaxed). A cut scene gives exposition on why the player is being chased, and by what. In Team T’s version, most players didn’t even see the fish, since it was so slow. This was our biggest failure. One fix to this problem, proposed to us by Guy Dimor, another student, was to make the monster “rubber-band”, as in, the monster could not be further away than a certain threshold. This would have felt quite unfair for the player, however. Another fix, proposed by Marcus Ingvarsson, was to, at each checkpoint, have a little scripted cutscene where the monster would appear. After said cutscene, the monster would be unbearably close to the player, who would feel pressured to go as fast as possible. Most players saw the level as a linear cavern due to the complete darkness they were in, although multiple paths were presented to them. We were overall quite content with the product we created, regardless of our deviations from the original document. At the last session of play-testing, we were happy to hear a scream echo across the room as someone got eaten by the monster, ever so close to the finish line. The atmosphere of the game, was the main success of the game. Sadly, the gameplay was… less successful. As Marcus Ingvarsson put it, it played like one of those “don’t touch the walls” game Indeed, the game feel was.. off : the submarine’s jittering when moving, the enemies going over walls, the shrimp’s stoic nature when getting shot, the pitch darkness making the player feel like they weren’t advancing due to not having any reference points except a few walls, unity glitches when light was cast by bullets on the walls of the level, etc. All of that made the player feel like they were moving in a game, instead of moving in another world. This made playing the game less fun and enticing. With one more sprint after this session of playtesting, maybe the game would’ve felt much better. I learned a lot during development. I had no prior experience working with Unity, with other people or with Agile methods. I got a good basis in all these things and learned how to cooperate efficiently with artists and designers. Our group was relatively tame when it came to conflicts. Indeed, we pretty much didn’t have any. This means I didn’t really get any experience in conflict resolution. When problems arose, like for example sprite sheet dimensions not being specified by one of the artists, they were solved without any conflict or bickering. In any case, the game was not bad. Sure, it felt a bit off, but a lot of feedback we got praised the game, despite its shortcomings. I am quite proud of what we achieved for our first game as part of the education, and hope to make even better ones in the future.  |
