Overview
The prompt for this week was dial. My first thought was a volume dial, which is the idea I kept. The game simulates a house party with dancing. The player controls the volume dial that adjusts the music. The louder the music, the more guests dance. As the night goes on and the music gets louder, the guests dance faster and faster until they eventually collapse. During this time, the DJ starts to get nervous, and an angry neighbor comes over to yell about the loudness. The game ends when all the guests are exhausted on the floor.
Analysis
This was the silliest game I’ve made so far for this project. Interestingly, Jack and I both made games like this. Given the constraints remained the same and both of us have a tendency to make emotionally evocative games, it was simply the prompt that changed the feel.
Both of us felt that our games were more like toys. They were something to play with, but not an experience to be won or lost. You can argue the definition of games versus play all day, and many people have. As the creator, I did not make this as something to be considered a game. I did have ideas on how to further it, including more dials and complicating balancing needed to make everyone happy. In that case, I would have considered it more of a game.
Our weekly discussion over these games was amusing. We didn’t have a deep analysis to go through, since these games didn’t have much of a message to convey. One notable part of this experience was that this was simply fun to make. There were a few bugs that ended up being highly entertaining, so I left them in. I accepted mistakes in this project because it was lighthearted and meant to stay that way.
Methodology
I approached this game in a similar fashion to the last one. I identified the main mechanic that was representative of the theme I wanted, and built around that. In this case, that was the dial adjusted music volume, which impacts other aspects of the game. I decided to use images of hands to indicate volume level, which ended up working nicely with my theme.
As usual, I had one significant technical growth. This time, I used the Unity animation system for the first time. I stumbled into it by accident and, while the functionality is somewhat annoying, enjoyed the simple animations I could add to my game. I’ve been using Fungus as a visual scriptor, and found the animation system easy to understand as it works in a similar way. Using the system required that I learn more about the sprite editor as well. Overall this was a useful and fun thing to learn.
I also used the particle system for the first time. I only played with this a little, but intend to do more in future projects. I purposefully didn’t use it much here because literally I would have been distracted by the shinies.
Next Steps
I like the idea of building out a game about a house party, and would use time as a factor. I doubt I will actually build this in the future, but it would be about the experience and stress of hosting a party, including managing rowdy guests, monitoring music, and keeping food and drinks coming. Ideally it would be chaotic fun.
Next prompt: conversation.