Game Development Process and Notes from Playtesting

Game Development Process:

We started by imagining what kinds of mechanics we could implement into a point-and-click adventure game, and we came up with an idea of an escape room with a dice mechanic. Originally, the game was going to be casino-based, but because of the scarcity of free casino assets, we swapped to a ruins setting.

From there, we needed a way to connect the dice to the game, and we thought of using the dice to determine which room would be generated next. In the game, the higher the number you roll, the better the next room will be. “Better” for our game means more collectibles and puzzles, and a “bad” room is one that has no collectibles and only punishment. By splitting up the room designs amongst our team members, we were able to create unique puzzles that helped generate variety in our game. As we continued to build our game, we tried to focus on keeping the player interested with new puzzles while allowing them to return to rooms they had not finished yet via the dice roll mechanic.

Animation Development:

Initially, the goal was to develop and animate an original 3D character through the software, Blender. The basic body and walk animation were created by molding a cube with the extrude, stretch, and mirror functions, then rigged with a humanoid skeleton. While the basic functions were easily learned, I felt as if the character made just did not fit the art style of the rest of the imported assets. In the future, more advanced functions would have to be learned to create a more complex character or the character should be low polygon to fit a low polygon environment. Eventually, I stuck to downloading a 3D Asset of a rigged character and using the Animation and Animator functions in Unity, I created a basic Idle and Walk state for our character that follows a bool parameter. I could have added more animations to this to create a more dynamic character so that would be another note for the future.

Playtesting:

While we have more detailed notes, generally from playtesting we learned that players enjoyed the random aspect of the game as it was something new and exciting. However, they wanted to make sure it would be fair and not difficult to finish the game if they had bad luck. We also needed to emphasize which rooms would be “good” rooms and which would be “bad” with a visual component or sound effect. Players also wanted more variety in the puzzles, which we added by increasing the number of rooms to play from 4 to 6. In general, players liked our concept a lot but wanted more feedback as they played.

Feedback

Group 1 - Demo'd candle room, explained teleport, explained candle mechanic and dice roll, demo'd maze room, they played for themselves

 - if hit walls, dice roll for debuff

 - dice roll animation is really cool

 - like the premise

 - frustrating to have a one strike system (will change it)

 - can walk on stairs, would be cool to implement that

 - add walls to the outside of the room to keep the visuals consistent (rather than the void)

Group 2 - same demos (Angie and I are working to improve some bugs/implement small things)

 - new mechanic (dice) is really cool

 - really like the idea of the candle room and collecting parts from different rooms

 - randomness is really cool

 - enemies? (might be too much)

 - variety of puzzles is important to have a good game

Group 3 - still same demo

 - randomness is not fun

 - is every dice roll it's own room teleport? add like 6 rooms

 - are we adding instructions? no

 - the candle room is very cool (glow is neat)

 - dice roll is cool

 - (they wanted us to explain how the camera change works)

 - how will players know they're in the punishment room? maybe a UI or sound

Group 4 - with prof!

 - not many rooms yet

 - likes getting rid of rooms from the rotation once you are done

 - likes leading players back if there's something left in that room

 - likes placing candles

 - if puzzles are a little hard, make sure to include the answers in the write-up

Group 5

 - confusion on what the dice roll is

 - how to win game? collect everything

 - high numbers are better rooms

 - really like the assets used

 - enemies? obstacles? probably not, just use time as a constraint

Group 6

 - maybe change the acceleration (good for punishment, but bad for normal navigation)

 - love the puzzles

 - we really need to make sure it's clear there are only going to be 6 rooms, with 1-2 collectibles per good room

 - really like it, especially the randomness

 - for the non-punishment rooms change the style to make it obvious that they aren't punishment rooms

 - for puzzles, could add number puzzles (more variety)

 - punishment rooms are only negative if you fail the puzzle (either debuff or insta death)

 - don't make too much work for yourselves :) thanks group