Project Update: SynthWave Video Game

It has been a week since I presented my pitch to the Games Design Students. A lot has happened in such a short time, there is much to discuss, so lets get cracking!

How did the pitch go?

Monday the 28th of February I met up with

my assigned team to pitch my game idea. Feeling confident and excited I instantly got acquainted with my group, Jacob Blanch and Jack McClenaghm. Strai

ght away I could tell this project was going to be a lot of fun, both boys were incredibly enthusiastic and excited to work on the plan put forward. Expressing both the positive and negative thoughts behind my plan, we settled on a perfect project idea.

The game will be as planned, a high score styled online racing game. The psychedelic nature of the game will be kept in-tact with the world revolving and distorting. We came to a few technical solutions to some of the ideas (a lot of which I cant remember the name of or what exactly they did).

Overall I think the Pitch as effective, they were behind the idea's and concepts to my game. Excited to work on the visual aspect as I wanted "weird and whacky" (I think they are big fans of that 80's synthwave visual style). I felt a little unprepared, not having a perfect plan laid out for them to follow but in a way I think that worked to my advantage. Due to me having to explain most of my idea's and thoughts to how the game should be, they were able to see my thought patterns and follow the concept well.

Where has the project progressed to?

Within the space of one week, It has come a long way! All because of my awesome team of game students, yesterday (6th of March) I was able to play a demo version of the game. Within one day I was sent this GIF of the game being played.

From that moment I knew this project was going to turn out great. The playable game was still pretty rough as it didn’t feature a very good car / car controls and the world was a bit rough and bulky. Although being at this stage after only one week, incredible. I believe it was the only playable game at the demo which is a great sign. One little hitch, that I haven't been updated on is if the game is playable in a web browser.

Reflection:

Mostly very positive thoughts. I have a few worries with the project, I.e. the game at its current state is unable to be "web-friendly". This is a bit of a worry as it might mean the game will need to be stripped back before it has even reached a point of completion. I am mostly concered with the end result of the game not feeling cohesive. A main goal is to have a working game that gels with the music and feels cohesive.

The Communication between me and the group has been inconsistent but thorough. I notified to the games student that the week the project started I would be a little difficult to contact due to my focus on the current pieces of assessment. I wish this wasn’t the case as I would like to be a bit more involved with the process but the outcome has been highly impressive none-the-less. Now that my initial assessments are out of the way I have put more attention into the game project.

They will update me on the outcome of the "web-friendly" build once they have a result. I am currently sending through my final mixes of the songs.

Thanks for tuning in!

#Games #Project #Update