Journal Entry 1: The Design and Planning

Date: 10. 9. 2021
Hours spent: ~5 hours

I might be starting this project a little late with just enough time to finish it before exam, but better late than never I guess. My brain just doesn't function properly without the threat of approaching deadline.

Most games treat falling out of the world as a failure. A while ago I had this idea to treat falling as a new opportunity in a way that the entire level repeats again. However I had some difficulty figuring out how to build a game around it.

Finally I settled down to use this mechanic as a strategic choice. Player is presented with choice to fall down, escaping imminent threat in exchange for greater hardships down the line. Once I had this figured out, I had to come up with the threat and I picked meteors falling down from the sky. The rate of meteors steadily increases as the game progresses. Player can escape being overwhelmed by meteors by falling down an resetting the meteor spawn rate, however, he pays the price as the meteors become faster and more dangerous.

I tried my best to capture all of my ideas in the game design document. I have forgotten most of the tips for a good one page design from the lectures, so I tried to stick with three principles instead - trying to be as specific as possible at the time, using graphics to illustrate game mechanics in a more comprehensible way (but writing the mechanics down anyway) and using simple color scheme to reliably distinguish different entities. Hopefully this helped to create somewhat competent game design.