Story of Development

​

The Brief: 

I made Ball In A Hole for the game jam unit Rapid Game Prototyping at Manchester Metropolitan University. This was the second brief where we would be given a new theme each week to create a game. This weeks theme was revealed to be "Scale" with the modifier stipulating we had to implement monochrome elements. Choosing to focus my time and energy onto the main theme more I simply created the game with a monochrome colour palette whilst working on an interesting gameplay loop that featured scale as a core concept

Research:

I decided to create an endless wave demo of a combat system for a roguelike game and thus began my research into this genre, notably the highly acclaimed bullet hell title of Enter The Gungeon. A specific weapon of this game caught my attention with its unique parry mechanic, giving players the ability to reflect enemy projectiles. I decided to use this concept as the foundation for my game, whilst taking note of other important features to develop such as the dodge roll/dash

Design Decisions:

Focusing the idea of scale into this concept proved troublesome at first, I could simply add power ups to make the player bigger, however I felt this wouldn't fully embrace the theme into the game fully. To blend  scale into the core of the game I designed the parry to work dynamically with the scale of the player. By successfully parrying a projectile the player becomes smaller and harder to hit, rewarding the player, however this also increases the difficulty by making it harder to parry projectiles as the area of effect around the player that deflects is now smaller. In tandem with this effect whenever the player is hit they become larger having the inverse effect. This creates a satisfying loop for the gameplay where the state of the player is constantly changing and players must adjust their actions accordingly.

Development and Skills gained:

I used this week to further enhance my abilities using Unity and C# to quickly prototype ideas to demonstrate a design idea, creating a game with more interweaving features. It was also a fun yet challenging design process that improved my skills at creating interesting concepts that flow together to create better games.

​

Scripting

• I scripted the functionality of all the elements for the game

  • Dodge - trigger animations, invincibility, movement

  • Parry - trigger animations, reflect projectiles back to the enemy that fired them

  • Enemies - Animation, AI, shooting

Design​​

• I designed the initial concept when brainstorming following the brief being released

• I designed a difficulty curve through the use of different enemy types, that activate at different stages of play