The document contains initial plans and ideas for a video game project from a student named India-Rain Harrison. In the first section, the student expresses confidence in their ability to create a video game due to experience playing games with their brother. They look forward to coming up with an original story and using GarageBand to create music and sounds. The second section describes an idea for a murder mystery game where the player discovers they are the murderer. The third section outlines a virtual reality game where the player creates an avatar and earns money to customize their home. The fourth section presents a lateral thinking puzzle game containing different difficulty levels. The final section combines elements of the previous ideas into one murder mystery game incorporating lateral thinking puzzles to identify the
2. Initial Reaction
When we were first told that we were going to be creating our own
video games I felt pretty confident as I have grown up with a brother
who has played a lot of video games when he was growing up and I
sometimes played them with him. It will be fun coming up with a
storyline for my game and thinking of a game that hasnât been
thought of yet, I feel I have enough knowledge about games to know
what has been done before and what hasnât and what could be done
different with some games to make them a different genre. These
next 5 weeks will be fairly easy for me, creating a game and the
music to go along with it. Itâll be fun trying out garage band, creating
the music and sound effects for my game and seeing what type of
sound goes with my game genre and what doesnât. Iâm excited for
these next few weeks and hopefully I will be able to come up with an
original game idea and not have to get ideas from other game
genres/types in order to create my own.
3. Murder Mystery
The aim of the game is to discover who the murderer is, however there is a
plot twist of the actual game player being the murderer. There are a total of
5 suspects plus the game player making it 6. The game player is able to
swap and change between each character, but the storyline changes
slightly each the time the game player changes character. Obviously the
aim is to find the murderer, but as the game continues the game player
slowly starts to realise that they are the murderer and has to convince the
computer generated players that they arenât the murderer. The game player
must choose which of the 6 suspects they want to play so that they
convince the remaining 5 that they arenât the murderer. They must steer
them away from thinking they are the murderer by making up different
motives and stories as to why it is one of the other characters. If the game
player is caught out that they have been lying the whole time they get
arrested and sent to jail for murder.
4. Virtual Reality
There isnât a specific aim to this game, just to simply create your own
life through the computer screen. You would key in at the beginning of
the game minor details about yourself and the computer would create a
cartoon version of what they think you would look like stereotypically as
that person. Living wise, you would have just a simple room with a bed
to sleep on, a chair and table to eat with and a few living room items. It
would be the game players job to participate in mini games within the
game to earn money to increase the simple room into a bigger house
and improve the furniture and add extra items to their home if wanted
too. The game would be the sort where the other people you see in the
game would be real people in different areas of the world ands you
would be able to talk to them and get to know them, increasing their XP
points to be able to level up in the game.
5. Lateral Thinker
This game is filled with lateral thinking puzzles with up to 4 different
options of possible answers. It is up to the audience member to decide
which answer it could be. The puzzles would go from being simple to
difficult, depending on how to game player thinks, it could take some
time. It would be a free download onto a mobile for someone to play
whilst with friends, during a long car journey or even if they fancy a
challenge. It would be possible to decide what level the game player
would want to play and that level would have at least 100 different
games within that they can play.
6. Murder Mystery (Final
Product)
My final game idea is a Murder Mystery with lateral thinking puzzles that
lead the game player to who the possible murderer is. The game player
at the start of the game would create an account that is personal to them
and create an avatar based around their own look or someone else;
theyâd also have a random selection option if they donât want to create a
specific person, the computer would generate a character for them.
Throughout the game there will be a narrative that the game player will
follow and mini games containing some lateral thinking puzzles that will
help the player determine who the possible murderer could be the game
would be part of a series, therefore to fully discover who the murderer is,
the audience would have to buy all the different games within the series.
The point of creating the personal account would be so they could
continue on the game they played on the previous disk. At the end of
each episode of the games, the player would have arrested one person
who they think is the murderer (they will have discovered this through the
lateral thinking puzzles) and at the very end of the game series, they
would look back on notes from previous games and make a decision as
to who the murderer actually is.
7.
8. Mood Board Analysis
Within my mood board there is a repetition of characters and colours on the front
cover of some of the games. The colours are all bright and bold, standing out
against the more darker games I have chosen to include. The Mario games, for
example, all use a similar range of colours and characters within the front cover of
their games. All of the games share a similar colour scheme of bright bold colours
that all tie in well together, besides Guitar Hero and Pacman, who use darker
colours on the front image of their games and within the game itself because for the
type of audience they attract. Similarly with the colours, the Mario games also use a
lot of the same characters in all of their games. Some of the games I have chosen
are a little more pixelated than others, showing the age of them, making them a
little more retro, yet they still tie in well with the more recent games. Most of the
games I have chosen for my mood board however are all from 5+ years ago, none
of them are considered recently developed games, although I do prefer the way
older video games are created compared to the newly developed ones. The fonts
used on some of the games are all bold and stand out from the page, except The
Legend Of Zelda, which is understated but still obvious that it is the game title as
the word âZeldaâ is not only a bigger font size than the other wording, but it is also
coloured in red, making the word stand out more on the box. Looking at my mood
board, it will heavily influence my final product colour wise as it is very colourful
besides the few darker coloured games I chose, so itâll influence what colour
choices I use in my final product. My game genre will be more influenced also as I
have chosen more RPG styles unconsciously, therefore it is clear that I know more
9. Schedule
WEEK OVERALL PLAN SPECIFIC TASKS
1 Case Study, Initial
Response, Product
Research
ďˇ Look up other existing games
ďˇ Fully complete case study and research
2 Audience Research,
Production Experiments,
Proposal, Planning
ďˇ Look up games linked to my final
idea and compare them to one
another.
3 Production ďˇ Start creating my game: design
characters, backgrounds etc.
ďˇ Update daily on my Product Reflections
4 Production ďˇ Start creating my game: add sound
effects and music.
ďˇ Complete the game, finishing my
Product Reflection
ďˇ Start on Evaluation if finished or
want extra time to complete game
next week
5 Evaluation ďˇ Evaluate everything I have done
over the last 5 weeks and hand in all
PowerPoints.
ďˇ Finish video game if not completed
10. Bibliography
â Name at least 7 sources that you plan to use in this project. These should include
audience research, books, videos/films/video games, magazines and newspaper
articles etc.
1. Whitehorn, L. (2018) Target Audience Interviews (28th of
November)
2. Official game website
3. Wikipedia
4. My own knowledge of the game(s)
5. YouTube videos
6. Other gamers who have played the game(s)
7. Sullivan-Cree, A. (2018) Target Audience Interviews (conducted on
28th November 2017)
Editor's Notes
Log your initial thoughts regarding the set brief- What could you make? What are you good at? Your opinions?
Can be a list of bullet points of reactions- does not have to be full prose. Can be hand written/drawn and scanned in.
Bubbl.us or hand drawn-scanned using college printers exploring 3 potential ideas
Bubbl.us or hand drawn-scanned using college printers exploring your final idea
Collection of images related to your product/inspirational/visually interesting
At least 15 needed