Categories
Virtual World Building

Llama Drama Dev Blog – Brainstorm

After presenting our individual ideas, we then had to decide groups to work in and what project to work on. Colin, Jamie and I decided to work together and create a new game idea with elements from our individual ideas. We created a Trello board (https://trello.com/b/HDvGRJQv/llama-drama) where we could add ideas, research and concepts to.

Trello Board

It was decided that we would make a narrative game with a frustrating llama and machine learning somewhere. Where exactly to be decided later.

We all assumed we’d just do all the jobs in the group when needed, resulting in all of us working on animations different points for example, but that’s not very professional of us. So we came up with a list of roles for each person and any extra things will be done by any of us/external help if needed.

Project Management
Colin & Jamie & Will

Design
Colin – Level & Environment & UI
Will – Llama

Narrative
Jamie – Story of game

3D Modelling
Jamie – Office environment
Will – Llama

Programming
Colin – Fabricator & Item Mechanics & Anything Else
Jamie – Narrative Objects & Anything Else
Will – Llama State Machine & UI & Anything Else

Animation
Colin & Jamie – Non-Procedural
Will – Procedural

Whilst Jamie worked on the narrative of the game, Colin and I started researching office environments. Colin’s research to design the layout for the game, mine to see what examples have been made before and how they turned out. I also researched how to make a cute game character for the llama. Didn’t need to research the llama since I’d done that for my individual idea.

After finishing the narrative, Jamie started working on modelling some equipment for the office environment.

Desk Model

After researching, Colin has worked on designing the items the player can use in the game and writing the proposal document.

more items
Item Designs

The llama padlet has our design portfolio for this game.

Categories
Virtual World Building

Frustration Game

For our final major project we needed to come up with an idea and present it before making groups and creating an idea to then make.

My individual idea was to make a frustration game where you would be… frustrated. I got the idea mainly from watching a YouTube video by Valefisk (Valefisk Crypt) and I thought it would be fun to torture people with a game of my very own making.

I went to jot down my initial thoughts about how to make a torturous game but they were heavily influenced by the video at the time and I didn’t like that.

Frustration Game Notes After Watching Valefisk Video

In case you can’t read my terrible handwriting, the image says:

FRUSTRATION GAME

Key Bindings } Bad/Wrong/Strange

Tooltips } Bad/Wrong/Strange

Fals Advertisement

Lack of Tutorial

Narrator

Companion

Maze

Puzzles

Disappearing/Reappearing Items

Meaningless Clues/Items

Sadistic

Pedantic

Technicalities

Common Phrase Voice Commands

Maze

Dead Ends

Long Corridors

Hidden Areas

Puzzles

Pictures

Items

Randomness

Unrelated Items

Inspiration

Crypt – Valefisk

Animal Crossing (Mr. Resetti) – Nintendo

The Frustration Game – Jeremy Wang (Disguised Toast)

Jump King – Nexile

Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy – Bennett Foddy”

I decided to go for a more frustration based approach than straight up torture as no one wants to play a game that isn’t fun. Torture isn’t fun, but frustration can be, so I researched frustration. Games, characters, mechanics, whatever I could find.

I collected a bunch of game examples that had frustrating elements to them (https://artslondon.padlet.org/whobbs0120191/fmp_inspiration).

I browsed forums and articles to find opinions on game mechanics that are frustrating. The image below is of my notes.

Research Notes On Frustration

During my research I found that Bennett Foddy came up quite a bit, so I looked into him. Turns out he is quite the frustration game master, having made multiple titles, some of which I have played unknowingly. Foddy has a website where he posts about things and games he’s made, and there is an article written by him about frustration (https://www.foddy.net/2017/01/eleven-flavors-of-frustration/). I found this article particularly useful to help decide what kind of frustrations I might like to add to my game.

Moving on from frustration, I needed to figure out what type of game I would make, and the setting of it. Before I’d done the frustration research I had kinda gone towards a puzzle game, so i collected some info about puzzle games (https://artslondon.padlet.org/whobbs0120191/fmp_puzzle_games).

While looking at puzzle games, I remembered about the Tomb Raider series and thought it would be cool to have an ancient setting. Cue me trying to figure out what kind of ancient setting I wanted. One day, a friend and I were talking about movies we liked when we were younger and The Emperor’s New Groove and The Road to El Dorado were mentioned. This began the idea for what setting I wanted – Inca. I researched the Inca and collected a few notes about them (https://artslondon.padlet.org/whobbs0120191/fmp_inca_empire).

The Emperor’s New Groove influenced me quite a bit, to the point I wanted a llama companion for the player in the game. So time to research llamas and how people have made them cute (https://artslondon.padlet.org/whobbs0120191/fmp_little_companion_buddy).

I ended up changing from a puzzle game to a platformer game idea and created the following presentation about it.