My Evaluation

The game that I am making for this project is a quiz based game that tests player knowledge on various things such as locations, famous people and events. The player must narrow down the options over time by answering questions. The more questions the player answers, the more tiles are revealed. With this, the player’s objective would be to answer more questions in a quick fashion so that they could get more pictures, thus upping their score.

Keeping this in mind, there are a few things that I have to remember to keep consistent.

For this project, I needed to get references from the various styles of games that are available, so that I could see the amount of different styles which games use for their heads up display so that I could create the design for the game. The HUD that is used during the games really varies, which is why we had to get research for the game. A game’s HUD can make the game feel drastically different, so it’s important to get it right. Especially when the game is a game that is completely question based, because you’ll be staring at it a lot.

Some games had very dark and gritty heads up displays, to mirror the game's atmosphere. This could include an attempt at an "immersive" HUD, where there would be no bars/indicators, but the HUD would be built into the game itself. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you had games that were very vibrant and colourful, and which wanted you to know that you were playing a game. For this project in particular, the game was a quiz show style game, so to fit with this style I tried to make it as colourful as possible.

I found the traditional drawings to be easy, simply because HUDS are composed of very simple shapes, and I feel that the more complicated that the design gets, the more the HUD can obstruct the player during the game. There have been a lot of games over the years, so having references to go by certainly helps when you're trying to make a HUD that both looks good, and is helpful to the player as they play. Every idea must come from somewhere, because every idea has probably been done before, so what better reference than the HUDs that have been made in the past. A HUD needs to be both informative and easy for the player to access, while also having a clean look, so that the player doesn't get confused. I feel that finding the middle ground between the two is very important due to the fact that you can overload the player with too much on screen.

For this project, I felt most comfortable using Photoshop out of all the things that we had done, simply because I already had my traditional work designs completed, which allowed me to try to re-create them, while also having room to experiment with them. I felt that I learnt a lot more about Photoshop in this section of the project than any of the other projects. This is probably because we had to use tools that we previously wouldn't have had to, such as the vector tool.

I found blogger very useful during this project as it allowed me to actually see how my progress was updated for the duration of the course as opposed to last project where I wasn’t sure what I had to do at times. If I had one complaint about blogger as opposed to Moodle, it’s the fact that it’s very hard to format things in a way that is actually useful from a navigational point of view. A lot of the things that are present in your work can easily get moved around without you meaning to, so the overall presentation of the work can be hard to figure out within the overall context of the work.

I thought it was important to distinguish the colours of my platform, to show that it is a raised area, instead of just one 2D solid shape. This allows it to stand out; compared to everything else that is 2D. I decided not to go with anything being 3D, as you can overcomplicate the look of the game, which can detract from the game’s actual challenge.

Part of my audience are younger people who can use this game as an fun, educational game which teaches them about the past. This would range from the 4-16 age where that part of my demographic may not know about things that involve the past. They're also much more likely to show currently play games because of their age. The older part of my audience may not play games as often, but I feel that this game would appeal to them because of the lack of twitch based skill you need to play this game. If you can point and click, then you can play a touch screen puzzle game. I feel my game appeals to both genders, as there is no entry barriers that would make it harder for a certain gender to enjoy the game.

I tried to make my game as bright as possible, without having the colours clash as a way to draw the audience in. I feel that the HUD of my game is very clean, which doesn't distract from the gameplay aspect.