Game Development Blog - Week 6

[Apologies for missing another week, things got a bit hectic]

Week 6

Progress Update

Over these past two weeks, we've been hard at work refining our game idea. We finally have it in something close to its final (mechanical) form, so hopefully we can continue to shape it into something awesome!


Overhaul

As of two weeks ago, our game was still mostly taking the form of a beat-em-up. However, after several team disagreements and some divine intervention from a professor, we've since taken the game and brought it to a state where it more closely resembles a traditional rhythm game. Allow me to show a quick mockup:

(Forgive me my art, there's a reason I'm not the artist)

Now the game functions much more like guitar hero - enemy attacks come at you from the top of the screen, and you defend against them by hitting them when they cross the lowermost section. You can, in turn, send your own attacks back at your opponent by pressing the triggers to the beat of the song. If you hit on beat, you'll do more damage. Finally, there will be times (as pictured above) where you will face off against multiple foes - you can switch between them by pressing the left and right bumpers. Keep in mind, you can only defend against the enemy you are currently facing off against!

With this core concept in mind, we as a group feel that this is a game we'll all be very excited about. And clearly, so did everyone else - we challenged the next stage of development with this concept, and successfully moved into Deep Dive at the end of last week!

My Work

I've been hard at work these past two weeks myself. Not only did I work on overhauling the game
, but I've had plenty of other duties to get around to, including:

* Getting all the visual design documents together
* Testing the games at QA (spoilers: they loved it)
* Composing a song for use in the final game

The song in particular was a challenge - I normally love music, but this sort of Dance Club style is way outside my comfort zone. I like to think I did a pretty good job, but of course, that will be for the players to decide.

Moving Forwards

Now that we finally have our game concept finalized, we have to work on getting the game to a more presentable state. We have some bugs to work out (mainly in regards to the timing of the enemy attacks), but from there it's just research and testing. We plan on challenging the next stage of design this week. With any luck, we won't run into any further delays, as our group is beginning to lag behind. But right now, I feel confident.

Until next time!