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1. Evaluation
Your name

2. Research
To start my project I began with researching different apps and video
games to have a wider understanding of games. E.g. how they are
created, what colour scheme is used for different types of games. I think a
strength of my research is that I decided to research three very different
games. This was so I could have a range of contracting things to research.
I also purposefully researched these three games because they all had a
different audience. Subway Surfers is for ages 11+, Room Escape is
targeted at 17+ and Outlast is for 18+. I thought by researching games for
different perspective audiences would give me a range of different
aspects, for example Outlast shared few qualities with Subway Surfers.
My research helped my end product a lot because I took a lot of
inspiration from the games, however the Subway Surfers research didn’t
really affect my end product. It wasn’t a waste of time spending time
researching Subway Surfers but out of the three games I researched it
was least like my game.
A weakness of my work was that I should’ve included another app/game
to research, I ran out of time on my research and thought that it was
more important to carry on with initial plans then focussing on
researching another game. I also think the amount of information I
included on each game was enough but if I wanted to reach a higher level
I could've included more detail and compared the games to each other.

3. Planning
I enjoyed creating the initial plans part of the project. This project isn’t my favourite and I find it hard
to think of ideas for video games because I don’t have any knowledge about them as outside of
college I don’t own any video games. So initial plans gave me a chance to write down all the ideas I
had and generate new ones. The strengths of my planning were the mind maps as they were very
detailed and laid out carefully making them easy to read and understand. This helped my product a
lot because I could compare my ideas, e.g. to see which would be difficult to produce, and which
ideas would be most time consuming. Then once I had wrote all my ideas down I could chose which
would be most appropriate to make for my end product, then I took these ideas and put them in my
mood board with screenshots of other game characters and colour schemes.
A weakness of my planning that I could’ve improved on was the
schedule. The schedule is a chart where I was meant to plan my
overall plan of the order I’m going to plan the production of my
game over the weeks and include which specific tasks I would do
to stay up to date with my schedule. I didn’t include enough
information because I didn’t know what stages and which specific
tasks I was including. If I could have had more time I would’ve
focussed on spending time on planning what
I would’ve weekly. This would’ve meant that
I would’ve had a clearer understanding of
what I was doing through the project and
this would’ve meant I would of had more
time throughout the project.

4. Time Management
I tried to manage my time carefully throughout my project,
however once I fell behind my schedule it was difficult to
catch up. I think with my time management I underestimated
how long each section of the project would take. For example,
I thought the research element of the project would only take
a few hours but it took longer to find information about each
app/game and then also took time to compare the games to
each other. Also, the mind maps in my initial plans power
point was also very time consuming. As well as this, I feel like I
ran out of time near the end of the project and therefore I
didn’t have enough time to spend a lot of time creating music.
If I had more time I would go back and concentrate on the
music to make it sound more effective. I would also figure out
how to create little sound effects, for example, for the bats
flying across the screen. However, overall I finished the
project on time and therefore think my time management
was handled responsibly.

5. Technical Qualities
In my game one of the things I concentrated on was the technical qualities and whether the game
looked professional and worked well. I had an idea of what I wanted the game to look like before I
started creating it and I took a lot of inspiration from other games. I was pleased with the level of
detail in my pixel art because I took time to make sure the animations were produced properly using
just one pixel for my tool brush so that I could be exact. I am proud of my animated character
because I think the way she moves around the screen looks smooth, I don’t think it’s seamless but
for the amount of time I was given to plan and produce it, and with the amount of previous practice
I’ve had with animation I am proud of the end result.
Looking back at my game I wish I had included more detail on the animation of the
bat because the wings don’t move and this looks amateur and brings down the
overall quality of the animation.
Although I included a lot of detail in the background and different objects around
the room, I wish I had included more animations. I think I should’ve included
another character to give the game a deeper storyline. Because the game doesn’t
include any difficulties or obstacle for the player. There could of been a character
that was made to push the player into finishing the game faster.

6. Aural Qualities
The audio element of my work is, in my opinion, the weakest
part of my project, this is because I don’t have any previous
experience with music. I find it the least interesting part and
find it very hard to make a tune that sounds effective, or links
with my game. I used Beep Box to create my sounds and I
spent time on the website using different notes and beats to
try and create a song that sounded professional.
Once I had created a song for the background it was easier to
create sound effects. I created four different songs overall, one
for the introduction, one for the background of the game, one for
when a part of the key is collected and then a final one for when
the game is completed. If I had more time in the project I would
spend more time researching how to effectively use the beep box
music and how I could’ve I the best possible result from it.
Overall, I am unhappy with my aural qualities and think I could’ve pushed myself further to
create better sounds. I wanted the background music to sound ghost like, or sinister so I
increased the ‘reverb’ levels that gave the music a sci-fi styled backing. This wasn’t the type of
music I wanted to include but all the other setting on beep box just made the song sound too
innocent.

7. Aesthetic Qualities
For my game I paid attention to the little details and focused on including small aspects
that would make the overall end product more impressive. The main theme of my game
was horror and throughout my project I refer to this a lot and emphasize how important
it is to me that the game effectively looks scary. So in production I focused on including
factors that made the game scary. In the background in included stereotypical extras that
would be included in any horror game. For example, words written with blood on the
walls, skulls, and bats. Also, the color scheme was considered thoughtfully, as I wanted to
have a dull, damp atmosphere therefore I thought the dull blue/green walls upstairs and
grey downstairs wall was effective for the theme I was trying to uphold.
If I wanted to improve my aesthetic qualities I
would include another character. I am pleased
with the outcome of my first character and
therefore I think that if I had created another
character it would of made the game more
interesting. The game is very simple and doesn't
involve a lot of thinking to complete the level, so
if I had included a character or something else to
distract the player I think it would of improved
the quality of my game a lot.

8. Audience Appeal
Earlier in my project I talked about my target audience being
aimed at people from ages 16-30. Looking back at this and
realising the simplicity of my game I would re-think the target
age group. I made the age range 16-30 because of the games
horror features, so it wouldn’t be suitable for ages under 16.
However now I have created the game I would change the age
group from 16-30 to 14-18, this is because the game is too
simple to intrigue anyone over the age of 18, and I couldn’t
imagine anyone over the age of 14 being scared by the game.
Also, in my research I wrote about how the demographic
group for my audience would have to own a game console or
phone, so would have to be C2+ to afford it.
For my game I didn’t have a specific gender that I was aiming
to attract, however in my research I did write about how I
found that in the gaming community that 70% of gamers are
male and only 30% female. So in my game to attract a wider
audience I decided to make my main character a female to try
and entice and motivate a larger female audience.