The document outlines the student's initial plans and ideas for their game design project. They were initially thinking of making a platform game but realized from the brief that they had more options. They considered a puzzle game or side-scroller as alternatives. The student also created a mood board analyzing screenshots from different games to help inform their art style. They realized the tone and message of games can be conveyed through colors and details alone. The student outlined a 5 week schedule for the project including tasks like level design, character sprites, sound effects, and evaluation. They also listed 7 potential research sources to draw from including game interviews and existing video games.

1. Initial Plans
Your Name

2. Initial Reaction
My initial reaction was that were more possibilities than I had imagined. The brief stated that the game could be for any platform,
including mobile and console which really lengthens the list of options. I was at first thinking that I could make some sort of
platform based game that involved the player traversing a multi-level world, similar to the advergame that I made, but with the
new ideas that came from the brief I realised that I could make almost anything. One of the suggestions was a puzzle game, which
was something that I had never even considered, another was a side-scroller.
I had made a platform game in the introductory project and the results were satisfactory. It was let down by the video resolution
but apart from this error the production went smoothly. I would like to create something similar to this but it would also be the
perfect opportunity to try something completely different and a little more challenging. I did not implement a scrolling feature in
the Irn Bru game, so this would be a challenge to try in this project.
I realise now that the game will have to fit an amount of specifications, it must be 2D so any of the content in the case study can
not be a benchmark. This will also mean that the artwork must resemble pixels and drawn to an 8-bit style. This was done
previously in the advergame but one aspect I took back was that my own artwork was a little basic and not very complicated.

3. Mind Map
Three potential ideas

4. Mind Map
A single, more refined idea

5. Mood Board

6. Mood Board Analysis
To create my mood board I decided to only use screenshots of games that I have actually played myself. This way I would know
exactly how these images represent each of their games. Each of the individual works are entirely different but in terms of their
art style and presentation they are very similar. They are not exactly the same and it is crucial that I understand this. The
screenshot from the strategy/puzzle game, Gunpoint, may use a similar drab theme to Paper’s Please, but it is the smaller details
that set the two games apart. Terraria, a popular open-world building game uses a very art style to Gunpoint but the theme and
the message of each of those are very different. By looking at the two side by side it is clear that things such as the colour palette
and the tone make the games very separate works.
Although the colours used in the games Cheese Dreams and Risk of Rain are a variety of deep purples, the tones are very unique
to each of them. With the use of the shadow and slightly more muted colours on the main character of ROR it is clear to see that
the game’s mood is much different to the other one, depicting the escape of the moon from a mouse-driven spaceship.
Games such as Draw Rider, as seen behind the title of the page, use only shades of black and white. It is harder to gauge the tone
of the game just by looking at a still image. It does, however, focus around traversing levels on a variety of vehicles so the game is
clearly not as dark and serious as others in the board.
In terms of art style all of the images show games that have very similar artwork, with the exception of Paper’s Please. All apart
from this one game, they all show 2D animation in a slightly exaggerated way that is not quite realistic. PP takes a different
approach, but this may be down to its slightly darker theme to its story line. The game also relies on the player’s ability to match
NPCs faces with documents, someone which is harder to do when the artwork is more cartoonish.
This mood board has shown the differences between different approaches to 8-bit games. The multiple screenshots have made
clear how the tone of the entire game can be altered purely by the colours used and the amount of lightness on the page. The art
style is something that will be directly affected by the mood board. It has given me insight into what looks good and what doesn’t.
As my game will not rely on the textures being realistic, I can create the artwork in more of a cartoon way. This will also lighten
the tone of the game.

7. Schedule
WEEK OVERALL PLAN SPECIFIC TASKS
1 Case Study, Initial
Response, Product
Research
 Case study
 Initial response
 Mind maps
 Mood boards
 Analysis
2 Audience Research,
Production Experiments,
Proposal, Planning
 Researching video games
 Experimental designs
 Production proposal
 Planning
3 Production  Level design
 Character sprites
 Enemy character sprites
 Object design
 Animating
4 Production  Sound effect creation
 Music creation
 Editing audio and video
 Adding additional features
5 Evaluation  Evaluating positives and negatives
 Comparing against existing work
 Comparing against previous work
 Ways that it could be improved

8. Bibliography
• 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. Interviewees, Name. (2018) Target Audience Interviews (conducted on
DATE)
2. Suspicious Developments, 2013, Gunpoint.
3. Re-Logic, 2011, Terraria.
4. Miniclip, 2008, Commando 2.
5. .
6. .
7. .