Blog post 1 – Dragonfly

I’ve chosen to discuss the design process behind one of the enemies of our game, the dragonfly. Note that this reflection will be about the design of the appearance, and not the animation.
I should preface by shortly introducing the game concept we in group Mimic chose, which was A Game of Beelonging by group Ouroboros. A Game of Beelonging is, like all the other concepts, a shoot em’ up game. It’s primary target audience are kids in the ages 7-8. It […]

Enemy Types

Enemy types – A design decision
Our game is fairly short and simple. The concept is that, as the player, you are supposed to kill a few enemies and then a boss to win the game. As such, we decided to use the enemies as “training practice” and make the boss the main event.
The player character has four features; movement and three kinds of attack. To help train the player in every attack, we created three different kinds of enemies. All were […]

Power-up systems and Repair kits

Hello, I am Hampus Bergström, the game designer for the team Wendigo that works on the game Umibōzu. This week I have redesigned how the health pack (called repair kit in our game) works and with that also changed how the whole power-up system works for the game as they are connected. Originally all power-ups and repair kits originated from the same asset, that of a crate. When the player collided with the crate it would either randomly give them […]

5SD064 – Blog Post 1 : Lighting

Lighting is a big part of Depth. It both sets the tone and serves the aesthetic goal of the game. Outside of the player’s spotlight and a small light emanating from the cockpit, the entire screen is dark.
The submarine which the player controls has a light which follows the cursor, goes off when you get hit by a squid and can be upgraded temporarily by a power up. This was one of the artifacts I had to create during the second […]

Up the power-ups!

This week I have been working on the first ‘power-up’ to be featured in our game.
The creation of the power-up is twofold: Firstly, a base power-up Unity-gameobject had to be created. Secondly, a specific power-up had to be created which somehow changed the dynamics of the game, as according to the MDA framework. The base power-up will work as a template for future power-ups that are going to change the dynamics in different ways. Our group agreed that it would […]

Post #1 – Aiming the canon

Who?
Erik Rosenberg, I have been working as a project manager at a smaller media company prior to coming to Uppsala University, Campus Gotland where I am currently taking a bachelor of Game Design with a minor in Project Management. It is the second semester of my first year at the university.
I am also a member of Group Siren (a group of students at Uppsala University, Campus Gotland). Said group is currently developing a game, Behemoth, based on a concept document […]

TEST

TEST

Game Design journal 1

Mikael Ferroukhi                                                                                                                           date: 07/02/18
5SD064
During this week, I have been helping my Game Design team (Bugbear) by providing them with assets, sprites and ideas for different elements of our picked game: Omibozu.
The general idea of the game is to control a ship sailing through a mist in a quest to discover a mysterious supernatural entity, and while doing so using a floodlight in order to see through it and differentiate the different shapes that will appear, revealing if it is an […]

Am I doing this right?

 
Task: UI: Health and Aether bar with player avatar icon
As a project manager who used to have digital drawing as a hobby, I have been waiting for the right opportunity to help out my team with some art. During this week’s sprint, that is exactly what I did. While both artists in my team are working on tasks that take many hours to complete, I thought I’d help out with UI, a smaller feature that doesn’t take too many hours, […]

5SD064 – Blog Post 2 : Tutorial level

This blog post will center around the design of the tutorial level for our game, “Depth”.
The aesthetic goal of “Depth” was “Last Leg”. We therefore had to make the player feel:

overwhelmed.
constantly in danger
pressured
relentless pursuit

However, the game still had to be fair. We therefore decided on creating a tutorial in which the player could experiment with moving, getting hit by enemies and shooting without getting penalized for it. An added bonus to such a tutorial is the stark contrast it creates […]

Splashy Splash Screen

08/02/18
Splash screens typically serve to enhance the look and feeling of a game, it is the first thing the player sees when launching the game.
The fog, darkness and spotlight gives the player the aesthetic feeling of mystery before the game has started to make the player prepared and expected for what is coming next.

Process
While making the splash screen, we were sitting in the group together while drawing it so everyone could be involved in giving feedback. It is always good […]

Aether/Or: Creating a Projectile

As the inaugural entry of chronicling my experience in game development, I would like to talk about something I worked on this week, which was the projectile of the enemy set to appear in alpha. (Disclaimer: All assets are in the alpha stage and subject to change)
 
While it had been agreed upon that the enemy (the “Aether Ray’) would attack by firing a projectile from it’s tail, the exact nature of what was being fired had yet to be decided […]