Game-Play Development

Over the last couple of days I have been tryin to finalise the game-play and mechanics of my idea, to start preparing it to be presented within my GDD website.

Below are scans of all my development and ideation work, using mind-maps, drawings and questions among other techniques, I have created a wide variety of mechanics or rules which I believe will help to finalise the design of my game.

Major Game-play/ mechanic ideas

A list of the main ideas I had thought of during my ideating/ developing process. Along with the ideas I have also added what pieces of research influenced certain ideas, to show they are informed designs

Different mechanics such as players having to mix colours to form the colour of a character to heal them
Colours can’t be used at the same time
One player can only hold one colour
Same colour not associated with different people
Players absorb colour onto their character forming gradients of colours on them
Colours are resources and players have to collect the resources – Overcooked influence
Players have to collect colours from the environment – Colours are at specific locations – Linking to 3D colour mapping systems
All players can do the same role – No structure no leader – Panic as there is no guidance – Overcooked influence

One player is control of amount that is healed, one control of who and one control of how long – Multiple tasks to do one job – All have to work and communicate together otherwise there will be arguments
Chain of heals – One player collects the colours, one player puts it in the right place and the other heals with it – Passing the resource from one to the other – Overcooked influence.

Objects in the environment that damage enemies – Players have to heal those to complete the level.
Players have to be a set distance in order to heal – MMO healer research influence
Players have to be stationary when healing – MMO healer research influence
Danger zones
Players constantly lose health

What will I take forward?

Different mechanics such as players having to mix colours to form the colour of a character to heal them – Forms a task that involves more than 2 players and so it is harder to coordinate multiple players at once, as there are more people who have to understand what they are doing. Which means that more stress is created, better fulfilling the purpose of the game

Colours can’t be used at the same time – Chosen to ensure all players are working within the team – As players will rely on certain colours that different members have and so all will feel included and useful within the team – fulfilling team based element to the game.

One player can only hold one colour – Limited resources – players have to utilise what they have – stop the healers from being overpowered – ore challenging and cooperative.

Same colour not associated with different people – This was chosen to ensure there is cooperation in the game, as with if a player needs to be healed they can onyl rely on the person with that colour. Meaning that the members certain players rely on change throughout the game, ensuring the players work as a team.

Colours are resources and players have to collect the resources – I chose this as it adds an extra set to the healing with players having to collect their resources before healing. Inspires by the cooperative game Overcooked, I felt this would be useful in adding greater pressure to the game, as the player can’t simply heal someone straight away, they must locate the colour and then go and collect it. Which adds more time to the healing process and more uncertainty as to whether players can be healed in time.

Players have to collect colours from the environment – I wanted to have my environment influenced by the Gamblin colour system, because this places colours in certain locations, meaning players have to travel across the map to collect specific colours. Helping to fulfil the games aim of producing stress, as the large distances between colours causes a feeling of uncertainty of whether a player can collect a colour and heal the player in time before they die, and therefore creating stress.

Objects in the environment that damage enemies – With players only being able to heal, there had to be another way that the enemy could be killed. I felt the best way was adding in objects to do that for the player, to ensure the healing mechanic is still the prominent one. Stress is also added to the game through the objects, because they will loss health when hit, so now players have to focus not only on their own health but also the objects. Adding more tasks to handle, which I learnt was vital in creating a cooperative and stressful experience within my cooperative research.

Players have to be a set distance in order to heal – Inspired by my research into healing classes in Star Wars: the Old Republic MMO, I add a limitation to the healing by making players have to stand within a small distance of one and other in order to heal. I added this to ensure the healing mechanic wasn’t overpowered, as if players could heal anywhere, there would be little stress as players wouldn’t need to move around the map constantly or coordinate where to meet with other members. Thus making the game too easy and not stressful enough, so I added this limitation to solve that.

Players have to be stationary when healing – Inspired by my research into healing classes in Star Wars: the Old Republic MMO, I add a limitation to the healing by making players have to stand while they are healing. I added this to ensure the healing mechanic wasn’t overpowered, as if players could heal on the move then they could easily avoid attacks from enemies and could move onto the collecting other colours quicker. Therefore standing still helps to create more stress due to the players seeing the health of other heal mates drop though they can’t help as they are having to be still while healing. Meaning that pressure and tension is building up creating stress.

All players can do the same role – I chose this because I felt that it helped to add more stress and need for cooperation with the game, due to their being no set role or structures for players, they have to work it out themselves. SO players have to communicate with one another to decide who will be healing who and when. This idea was influenced by the game Overcooked that uses this same mechanic which I found to be effective in creating stress for those reasons. Thus I decided to take it forward.

Danger zones – Danger zones have been added to help create panic in the players, by adding more elements to concentrate on, which I found to be an effective tool in creating stress within my cooperative research. Therefore not only do players have to keep any eye on who to heal but also where they are positioned and where is best to heal. – Adding difficulty and complexity to the game.

Players constantly lose health – Players will constantly loss health in the game to ensure that they need to be healed, as players could, if skilled enough, avoid the attacks/ danger zones produced by enemies. Which would mean that there is no cooperation element as no player would rely on the other. So this mechanic helps to ensure there has to be cooperation in the game.