Talking

Week Eight

(or Do Not Panic: We are Training Professionals)

Last week I mentioned that I had to make big changes to the game design doc again following a longer pivot than expected. I spent the weekend following that post doing exactly that; adding in a handful of mechanics to help flesh out some thin areas in the games design. The most important flaw in the game's design was the heuristics.

Heuristics, when used in context of game design, is referring to how the game communicates with a player so they can learn how to play it. One of my professors, Jay Little, teaches that a good game needs "tell" the player 3 key things: who they are, what they do, how they win. So how does this apply to AIM<?

The previous AIM< build was a very bare-bones approach created with the goal of allowing the team and play testers to get a look at the key components without anything distracting from potential design flaws. Our initial approach was a solid start but I discovered via play tester feedback that the game was lacking anything that would communicate player progress. This is where heuristics come in. The AIM< prototype told the player who they were but left what they do, and how to win up to them to figure out. Letting players figure things out is a good thing but there should be a balance. Players need as much information as they need to have fun figuring out the rest of the game.

AIM< ver 0.1 - Drone Spatial Cue Issue

One example of confusion players experienced was while they were controlling a drone. Currently the placeholder drone is a simple sphere with a cylinder attached like a gun barrel. When players navigated into darker areas of the map, they had difficulty seeing the drone's orientation in the environment. Players experienced disorientation, which disconnected them from the game. It was a distracting enough issue that some play testers had difficulty looking beyond and giving feedback on other important mechanics.

A solution we are going to test is using some sort of underglow light effect that will reflect off of surfaces beneath the drone and tell the player where they are "sitting" in space. Eventually the effect will probably become the light from the drones thrusters. We will also be adding a head light mechanic that players can switch on and off at the cost of some energy.

This week wasn't all just game design document work. I mixed down a couple sounds created by our sound team. It was a nice change of pace that allowed me to focus on a different aspect of AIM< that hasn't seen much work yet. The two sounds we made were created to guide players to sources of energy and power-ups.

Lastly, I worked on a little bit more concept art. Our art lead asked for some complex pipe shapes so AIM< won't just be populated by a bunch of cylinders. I'll add the image to the gallery below. I should have some more images done this week after I brush up on my skills by watching some Pluralsight videos.

That's it for now. Have a happy, safe weekend!

Pipes by Aram Wahler