For my gameplay goals of the game it was to create a game that I find challenging to make that I would gain a lot of experience from. After exploring what I was capable of doing with Construct 3 I decided I wanted to make a combat based game where you go through stages or rooms and fight of enemy AI that will lead you eventually to the boss where you fight it and rescue your wife. I had chosen to do this kind of game because I thought a platformer game was too simple, which was my original thought but after thinking for a bit the only base mechanics of that kind of genre (but not limited to) is jumping. With that in my mind I wanted a bigger area of player movement where they go around the map. For the aesthetics I explored some royalty free textures. I found a group royalty free from a website called kenny.nl and I was able to work with the textures and models that were provided. From the character models that were shown I knew I was going to go for a Dungeon styled RPG kind of feel because some of the monsters that I found were ghosts, spiders and skeletons. From there decisions I made for the game was based on the idea of what best suited the feeling of a creepy dungeon. The walls for example I thought were a good fit for the theme I was going for as a dungeon doesn’t have detailed walls and are a simple brick patterns so I thought it worked out well. In addition dungeons are known for being dark and spooky. I got the spookiness from the monsters but for it being dark I got the background color to be a very dark purple which I thought suited the game rather than just a black background as that would do dull of a color. After that I felt there was a lot of empty space outside of the playing area, so to further incorporate the dungeon feeling I added some dead tees and filled up some extra space with some rivers due to the song I chose had some water dripping noise so I thought it would be a great fit. With the music I chose it enhanced the feeling of the game being a dungeon themed one as the music was very eerie.
With incorporating class concepts I learned, I made sure I had the 3 C’s done first. I had my character model picked out first which I though best suited the style of gameplay as it added to the spookiness as it’s a faceless protagonist. For controls I used the arrow keys for the movement as that’s a straight forward self explanation and for the camera I made sure the playing window followed the character as they navigate the map. In terms of mechanics I was able to incorporate a couple for my game. Firstly I used action and control as you have to avoid the monsters as they come up to you and shoot them before they touch you. Another mechanic I was able to incorporate was progression and feedback in the sense that you are going to room to room and go through multiple waves of different monsters and then finally the boss.
The final product of this game is the result of play testing to make sure systems are working correctly and efficiently. The first issue while play testing is that the hitboxes were to big. This resulted getting stuck on “invisible walls” which is just the wall with a big hitbox. This issue happened with the character and monsters as the monsters would kill you by touching you but since the hitboxes were big they would technically kill you despite the pixels actually never touching each other. Another issue on play testing was the boss’ turret mechanic would shoot at me as soon as I spawned which resulted in spawn kills. So I had to make the bullet it shoots cancel on hitting the walls so I don’t get killed at spawn. Another issue that came up at playtesting was the respawn mechanics I was trying to employ. To do this I used set position so the player would get set back to an area. But once I would get set back to the position I set it would sling me across for a second. So I created a small barrier that would block you so that you didn’t get slung.
