Introduction
In general, Dravo Fantasy was born out by 5 people within 1 week, specific for Sheridan’s sprint week 2016. The genre of game is endless runner with some additional features such as evolve, special abilities for each stage of dragon and combo. Originally we planned for more mechanics like enemies and more, however, due to the time limit, we have to focused on the core part of the game, which is the endless runner. The aimed length of gameplay is about 5 minutes, yet player has infinite continues as long as he/she got infinite “coins. We have made 3 different areas, they are forest, Skyland and cave. Obstacles are randomly generated in those areas. Finally, to make player feel there is a progression going along the gameplay, we also added day/night cycle into the game, also gives a variation.
What we did right
1. Core mechanics and visual concepts
Although there are a lot of things we wanted to add but we couldn’t add to the game, such as enemies, I still considered this project as a success. Because we have finished our game without any noticeable glitches. Moreover, the control is smooth and the visual concepts looks stunning. The game’s core mechanics worked smoothly (endless running and evolve) and it is a great achievement for us.
2. Brainstorming ideas/ mechanic designs
In the earl game development stage, we quickly figured out what’s the core mechanic/gameplay we wanted to make within less than 2 hours. Thanks to that, we could focus ourselves on art styles, additional features and assets.
What we went wrong
1. Progression tracing/estimate
We mistakenly estimated the time required to make certain assets (i.e. 3 different dragon models and animations), which caused those assets finished in the last moment.
2. Version control
We used git as our version control tool, however, on the merging stage, it ran into some issues which caused us 3-4 hours to fix. It was a big hit on our progression.
3. Prototyping/ level design
This is the major problem we ran into with. Because I didn’t make a prototype for the game, it caused us had very limit time to do level design stuff. In the end, the game isn’t fun to play with because too randomized. And I believe it is reason we didn’t win this sprint week.
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