Evaluation

4/6/2019

Evaluation

The finished product of the game didn't stray far from the initial concept of the game, other than that it was improved and expanded upon. I knew from quite early on that I wanted to make a game set in a Victorian Townhouse, ca. 1850. I did briefly have an alternative Idea for a game, where the player would explore the house and pick up clothing to progressively dress the character. However, I scrapped this Idea soon after and quite immediately came up with the final Idea. 

I wanted to make a game that featured a murderous, but young main character, simply because I am a big fan of the concept of killer children. I then adapted to the idea of this game taking place purely inside this Victorian Townhouse, by having her victims be her family members. I also knew I wanted the game to be a story driven exploration game, therefore I had to make sure there was not only enough rooms to explore, but also that the player had something to do, since there wouldn't be any combat or puzzles etc. 

Initially I had only planned on having NPC dialogue, to tell the story and progress the game,but after realizing this, I added objects into the world as well, so that the player could explore the house and find objects with backstory along the way. This way, I was able to kill two birds with one stone, as this not only added interest to the game, but also helped with telling the story, which is a vital part of the game. Lastly, to make sure the player didn't miss any important information, I guaranteed they could not progress unless all story elements had been found A.K.A all NPC's had been talked to and all objects had been found. 

There wasn't really a message to the game, it was simply a product of my favourite concepts and interests, and therefore something I immensely enjoyed creating and was very passionate about. On top of that it is something that I wish to study further and make a career out of, so it was a great way to gain valuable experience. This will be especially helpful when I move on to university and eventually a job in the industry.

The target audience for the game was people who are 16+ as a game portraying death and injury to a Human (rather than a fantasy being) cannot fit into a lower age rating according to an article I found on the internet. Other than that the game is also targeted at people who, similarly to me, enjoy games with a darker more twisted theme to them. I would like to think I succeeded in creating a game that fits into both of those categories and that I am quite proud of. Other than looking up conditions for Age ratings, however, I didn't do much research into my target audience. The few people that play-tested my game and belonged to either or both of these categories also seemed to enjoy it and that makes me happy.

To attract the people in my target audience, I included graphic images of gory deaths to each NPC and a dark twist concerning a murdering child that should appeal to people who enjoy story lines that are more twisted and less typical. For example, The game's story line itself revolves around a disturbed young girl who murders her entire family, which is in itself a very dark theme, that is not explored often in games. Then there's the brutal depictions of how the family was murdered, which limits the game to the before mentioned 16+ age rating.

There was an extensive amount of research that needed to go into this game, in order for it to be able to portray its aspects accurately. I conducted mostly primary research such as the clothing research I conducted in the Museum of London, or my trip to the Dennis Severs House for environment research. Both of these trips were incredibly useful for my game and provided me with plenty of reference material. I truly could not have gotten where I did without them.

When it came to designing my background, I could not have done it without the trip to the Dennis Severs House, as the pictures from there served as my main reference material. I also learned a lot about the lifestyle of the people who live in those houses, which really helped me define the characters personality. And regarding the Character designs themselves, I was really relieved to find so many clothes from the 1850's to use as reference material in the Museum of London, as this helped me design characters that fit into the world I created.

The concept of the game took heavy inspiration from the games Sallyface and Fran Bow, so I used what I remembered and enjoyed about those games and tried to add elements of that into my game. For example, both of these games are 2D Horror sidescrollers which greatly inspired me to make one too. They also both feature unexpectedly gory scenes which is an element that is quite prominent in my game. Lastly, they both feature very lovable and innocent main characters which, as I mentioned before, is an aspect I also added into my game. 

I was very worried abut time management, since I'm very bad at following schedules and have a tendency to procrastinate. However I found that I creating a schedule that made sense to me really helped me not want to stray from it. I also found that the fact that I enjoyed working on this project encouraged me to push myself to get my tasks done on time and I even managed to get ahead of schedule in the end. 

To create our product we were able to access a usually quiet room with a number of computers as well as graphics tablets ,if we did not own our own, and microphones we could borrow. We also had the ability to book a recording booth for professional sounding Audio. We were also shown a place where we could find royalty free music to use in our game if we could not make our own. Lastly we had a range of programs available to us, that we were allowed to use whenever we needed. 

I was lucky enough to have a graphics tablet already, so I did not need to make use of the ones available at school, however I do not have any of the needed programs at home, so I made use of the computers at school for basically all of my work. The programs I used for my project were Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Animate, Adobe Audition, and Construct 2. The Adobe programs are fairly easy to use, however they require a bit of practice to get used to them. Construct 2 is program created to simplify coding and is therefore many times easier than actual coding. However it does still require a bit of an understanding in coding and can therefore be hard to use for some people.

A big problem I've encountered, is that I made all my art in Adobe Photoshop, including the character Art. This meant that when I wanted to Animate them I had to add them into Adobe Animate. However I've found that there is a big quality difference between drawings in Adobe Animate and Adobe Photoshop images added into Adobe Animate, so when I animated anything on top of the images, there was a huge difference between the two. This is still quite apparent in the final product if you pay close enough attention to it. It is also the reason why I animated with Adobe Photoshop in my last project to begin with. 

I think I was able to become a lot more adept at using Adobe Photoshop thanks to this experience and I know I've definitely vastly improved upon my understanding of coding with Construct 2, as I was able to code some fairly complicated things with barely any trouble.

I encountered a few smaller troubles along the way, but in general the project went quite smoothly without any too big frustrations.

My finished product pretty closely resembles what I had in mind and because I wasn't in a struggle for time, I was able to accomplish everything I had wanted to. It has all the menus its supposed to and all the story elements I wanted to portray are there. I am a bit disappointed in some of the backgrounds, as I definitely think they could have been drawn better, however that is something I know I struggle with and I think I did pretty well considering. Otherwise I'm very happy with how the Art assets turned out and I think the Animations are also as good as I wanted them to be. I don't think there is much more I could have added had I had more time, given that I managed to finish ahead of time. Of course if it was a professional game I would have made it much longer though. 

The Feedback I've received has been very positive and I've gotten little criticism for it from my QA testers. This makes me unbelievable happy, as it makes me feel as though I've done a good job. Some quotes from the Feedback sheet are: "An exceptionally good game." -Nour  "The game gives me nostalgia for other horror games!" -Nicole