Bouncy Bullet Game Development and Alpha

This month in my Game Design class we have been tasked with creating a simple game in GameMaker.

We got paired up in the class with another student, one was to be an art student and the other a programming student. Each student in the group was also given the title of either producer or designer, where designers try to work on the overall game feel and play while producers are concentrated on the due dates being met and work being done on time.

My role was to be the programming designer and my partner the artistic producer.

The game mechanics for the most part were my idea. I thought it would be cool to make a 2-D platformer with bullets that randomly bounced off the walls of the map. Making the game was extremely fun, and I kept finding myself spending hours on the development.

My partner came up with the design for all of the characters, items, platforms, and ground of the game.

Here is a link to the .exe of our Game: Bouncy Bullet

For the alpha version of our game, our main question for users is: how do you feel about the use of only one bullet and the bullet physics?

Many of our peers in the class said that it was quite difficult to see the bullet, and making the bullet more visible would help gameplay. I agree with this completely and plan to make improvements on this by adding a outline to the bullet.
Some said they disliked the speed of the bullet, but I feel this adds to the difficulty of the game.

Screen Shot from Game Alpha

Video Game Lab

During our game lab in class, I got the chance to play the games This is the Only Level, Jurassic Heart, BoardGame Online, Canabalt, You Have to Burn the Rope, and Wizard Wizard.

These games were all unique in their own way, yet two stood out as being similar in many ways. The games Wizard Wizard and This is the Only Level, have mechanics and goals that made me realize the two have a connection in the way the game is played and progresses.

Wizard Wizard

Mechanics At the start of these games, the mechanics are almost identical. The played is able to move their character with the arrow keys. The difference between these two is that as a player goes through This is the Only Level the mechanics change forcing the player to figure them out as they progress, where as in Wizard Wizard they relatively stay the same besides new obstacles to avoid.

Goals In these games the player has one goal, that is to reach the end of the level. Both games have a different way that you must unlock the door before entering. As mentioned before, the games differ in the fact that in This is the Only Level how the door is unlocked and how a player get there character to the door changes, where as in Wizard Wizard players always must get the key then go through the door.

This is the Only Level

I was able to watch my partner in class play Wizard Wizard before playing, and it helped me to better understand the game and it's mechanics. After watching my partner, I was able to advance through the levels much faster than he did. Observing the game, can be more or less enjoyable than playing yourself. Sometimes when you haven't played a game before, it can be nice to see someone play for a little to better get an idea of how the game works. On the other hand some games are extremely boring to watch, like BoardGame Online, where players must take turns that involve a lot of reading.

Design of Wizard Wizard was rather simplistic, yet the gameplay was addictive and made me want to keep playing until I finished. To interact with this game, players use their keyboard(specifically the arrow keys). The source code was rather easy to understand, only two scripts were used in the entire game. The part of the game that looked like it too the most time to design was the various maps, other than that the rest is easily implemented.