We just finished making a game prototype in 4 weeks, so I want to reflect on that process as well as analyze what makes a good game prototype to see if what we did is good or not. To do this, I'm going to go back over the purpose of prototypes and look for what others consider to be qualities of good prototypes.
Our game was a dungeon crawler type game focused on the Durham Orange County Light Rail, a proposed light rail train that would connect many major locations in our community. The prototype we made only had one level, and as our programmer said "it's very easy to cheat". This is because there are some tiles you can hit multiple times which increase your funds (basically increase your health) so until that feature is removed, it is possible to cheat if you figure that part out. However, this would be an easy fix if we were to move to the next stage of game development, though it might be nice to remove already so that we have a prototype that is easier to test. Were it to become a full game, I would want to make the graphics that I made a bit cleaner as I had to resize them late in production, which reduced the quality a bit. Overall though, our prototype was playable and though there isn't a lot of replay value, I think the first playthrough wouldn't be too boring. The purpose of a prototype is not to have a perfect finished game though. Instead, it's supposed to represent the main features of the game without having everything there. This article from Pluralsight, you should focus on convincing people that your game is fun, and showing them that your mechanics work and that the game is playable. It also talks about prioritizing certain features over others. I feel like we could have done better on showcasing the fun factor (though that may have been very difficult since the maps are hand made rather than randomly generated, so replayability is hard to create). However, I feel like we did a good job knowing when to cut things (like deciding to cut out the enemies for now) and knowing what things to focus on instead in order to create a working game. Gamasutra also has a good article about prototyping in 1 week. We had 4 times that long, but the article has good tips regardless. One really interesting one is restraining creativity by sticking to a theme, because it will make you more creative within that theme while still giving you a cohesive game. We were restricted to the theme of the light rail, and I think it did make us come up with a game we wouldn't have otherwise created. The article also suggests working "in parallel" with a team of people who aren't just talented, but have good attitudes. This allows the group to work together well and see what the others are doing so they can get a sort of picture of what the game will be like as they go. I think our group was very good about communicating and checking each other's work as we went, and I'm glad that we got along so well, because I do think that really helped the game. Based on these articles, I think both our process and final product were both pretty good.
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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