In my previous blog, I spoke about the idea and coming up with the concept for the final game design project. Here I will discuss other aspects of our game design such as mechanics, monetisation and prototyping. Game Mechanics
In order to make the game more intriguing, we decided to go with simple but effective mechanics to enhance the player's immersion. Our team developed three base mechanics for the game as discussed below.
1. Choice Based The players are presented with a series of choices throughout the game. They have the capability and freedom to choose any given choices for each situation.
2. Branching Narrative Depending on the choices made by the players, the consequences or the outcomes will keep on branching in order to give alternate endings for each set of particular choices. 3. Timer
In order to increase the sense of urgency and pressure, the game incorporates a timer mechanism for the given choices. If a player fails to make a choice before the timer runs out, the worst possible decisions will be left for the players to select from as the best one will disappear when the timer runs out.
Achievement and Reward System
For the game achievements, our team decided to award stars to the players for completing each chapter. The awarding of stars depends on a few parameters such as the Number of Hostages, Accurate Decisions made and time taken to make the decisions. The maximum number of stars a player can achieve in a chapter is 3.
Monetisation
Downloadable Content (DLC) I came up with a suggestion for the long-term release we could add more stories and chapters where the player gets to play with more stories. Frequent game updates include introducing additional stories and chapters based on hostage situations will be added that players can play by paying either a one-time fee to unlock a single early access narrative or a subscription-based fee where players may play any of the early access stories.
Patreons Create a public forum where the subscribers can come up and submit their own stories from which a pool will be drawn and the most exciting story will be selected and implemented in the game as the next DLC.
Prototype for crisis point
We created a mid-fidelity prototype in Arcweave software. We divided the story into small boxes and those boxes were appropriately linked to follow the storyline. Conditional statements were dropped at places so that the players can access certain areas depending on the condition parameters.
Artwork For Crisis Point
Using Adobe Photoshop, I created 2D artwork for our game crisis point. I chose a cartoony art style with a malicious and precarious ambience.
hostage situation- story1 (main auditorium)
hostage situation- story1 (control room)
Feedback Our Project was met with good reviews and good praise for the team, however, there was a bit of ambiguity regarding how the chapter theme transitioned through chapters 1 to 3. While chapters 1 and 2 focused more on a physical hostage situation, the 3rd chapter majorly focused on a person being held hostage by his own mind thus taking more of a psychological approach.
The feedback received was viable as conventionally the level design should follow a particular flow. At the same time, the team was also appreciated for thinking about the theme on different terms.
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