It has been three weeks since I first started my digital game project for my class ART 108. I had a chance to partner up with Sai Sumija Ande, my awesome programmer. We are all novices in game design, and we did not have any experience with designing digital games before. Thus, we started very rough, but our great communication worked things out eventually. I talked to Sai every Wednesday to discuss our game. I came up with some game ideas, but Sai liked the idea of Wizard that I presented to her. On the first meeting, we brainstormed how the game should feel like, and what components we should create in the game, as well as the theoretical mechanics of the game. At that time, everything is still an idea, but we were excited to build the game.
As an artist, I made a headstart and designed the characters and stages. After showing the draft to Sai and the instructor, I was confident that I could progress further. I used Piskelapp.com to draw all the characters and their animations. This is the first time I use Unity, so I was having some struggle starting it. However, with the help of the Assistant and the tutorials, I could implement the animations into Unity successfully. With the stage design from Sai, I made revisions and built the platform in Unity. I also designed a startup screen and an Intro video to create a narrative for the game. It was a daunting but fun experience seeing my art come to life.
I finished my part within one and a half week and transferred my work to Sai, so she could program the game. From then, I supported her when she needed, as well as doing playtest to give her feedback on the programming. For the alpha playtest, we aimed at building the first stage of the game and making some basic mechanics work.
Besides being an artist, I’m also a producer. I discussed with Sai about the objectives for each week, and we made some great progress until the alpha testing on Wednesday, October 21st. We received great responses from the playtesters. Everyone was enjoying our game and complimented my art. Also, all responses rated that my game felt completed and fun, so I feel our hard work has paid off. There was mixed feedback on the difficulty, but I think the current difficulty is just right, so I would like to keep it this way. We also asked about the music background choice, and it seems fitting well with the theme, and we may adjust the volume in the next update. We will fix bugs and add movement for the enemies as well as adding more stages to complete the game’s narrative.
If you are interested in playing the game and know the story, click here for the prototype version. Enjoy! Any feedback is highly appreciated.