The Des

Intro

In November of last year, I decided to start this project, and around the same time, I also started a short (10 week) Game Design course taught by an ex-Blizzard Lead Designer, Rob Gallerani. Prior to this, the only part of Game Design I had an inkling of experience in was filling out a template GDD, and creating UML diagrams. This massive eye-opener greatly influenced the decisions I made when making my game, for example, what types of fun does your game focus on (funny question right? Types of fun? The best kinds!) Just this question made me think about what players I will be catering to, what their lives may look like(which influences how much time they have to play games), and in return, what kinds of fun they appreciate. This allowed me to focus on a specific type of player, and understand what that player may or may not appreciate, and focus on that. Anyway, that's enough for an intro, in short, just wanted to shout out to Rob Gallerani for teaching me how to better design games, I feel fairly confident now it won't be a hot mess :) (or at least I'll see how you all feel about it)

The Initial Thought Process

Now this may seem like another intro but...

The ideation phase of this project actually started toward the end of another course I took, a course on XR Game Development in Unity, taught by Haidar Abhirama. The end of that course featured a game jam, which I am so grateful for because upon hearing the imposed theme, I felt like the entire idea for the game poofed into my head as if a quest was bestowed upon me. I loved the theme so much I literally copy-pasted it as the title for my game: "Sacrifices Must Be Made!" Immediately I knew I wanted to make it a game where the player is a god with magical powers, but the powers are not limitless, not without the prayers from your loyal and grateful subjects. But, while prayer is a food that can sustain some, it won't sustain you forever. For a time, you provide your villagers with rain, you're happy, they're happy, you even smite a raider or two...but then an army shows up. It wasn't exactly quick work for you, but your reserves are depleted, and you don't know how you can possibly continue to help your loyal villagers. Luckily, you find a food that is more filling, and even exhilarates and refreshes you, empowering you with more powerful magic!

Sounds delicious, am I right? The villagers insisted, and so everything is fine, until you, the silly glutton, start helping yourself! All to help protect the future of the village of course...well...magic is pretty fun!  Anyway, this idea immediately reminded me of Undertale's two main paths of the story, the Mercy and Genocide paths(unless I missed some while playing) and inspired me to create a branching story with two main endings depending on your decisions, which may not be as emotional as Undertale's but I'll try my best!

Post-Ideation Design Process

Now that I knew the idea my game was to be centered upon, next was designing everything else that made the game fun! Through some early prototyping I learned that players love to take in the environment and explore. As this is my first VR game the phenomenon was new to me, but I can see why more attention to the environment will be important. As an extent to this, I wanted to give the player something else to do other than micro-manage their civilization. As the villagers largely take care of themselves, I thought it would be good to include a few puzzles and adventures for the player to partake in. For now, the puzzles and adventures are a big black box(figuratively), and they will be updated every "season" which may be an earth season or 2, or a year, not sure yet, this depends on the popularity of the game.

Attached is what I've come up with so far for my Game Design Document. I'd like to add more pictures and diagrams in the future, especially when I have a better idea of how to go about the puzzle and adventure bit.

...To be continued...