Game Designing Old School

December 13, 2020

Because sometimes the long way round is where you need to go.

Pandemic living has not been easy. My silver lining is that now all cross sections of my life have converged in my home, not only has my child gotten to see me work, but she has become involved in it in a very deep way. Growing up, the only time I ever witnessed an adult at work, outside of school or a service sector job, was that one day a year for "Take your Child to Work Day." That's an aside for another post.

When I got the opportunity to pitch a new game to a publisher, not only did she help brainstorm ideas, but once I signed the deal she wanted to help me design it.

I have never developed a game for console play and I needed to wrap my head around a different form factor. To date, my experience has been in mobile and VR; console games, especially party games, are an entirely different beast. I could not easily design in engine nor in wireframe. So I decided to go old school and prototype in paper. This suited the kiddo perfectly!

We printed sheets and sheets of assets - all the while talking about design. Each level would have its own themed design. Should the scavenger items in that level also be themed?

We talked about the player's Point of View first because of the camera operation using a joy stick. She and I discovered what was comfortable for ourselves, which was very different, by using a tablet to reframe a scene we had built. This was a big time saver once we started building the game in engine because we didn't need to test lots of different camera mechanics, only a few.

Point of View was also important when we discussed level design and topography. How much visual information do we want available to the player in any given frame? Which led us to question, what is fun about the discovery process? Also, predictably, we had different answers to those questions. By working through those differences we defined a game that is more fun, for both of us.

At first, it seemed like prototyping in paper was a step back in productivity for me. In reality, I needed time to clarify the form factor of the game. The split screen of a party game HUD design is crucial. Designing in paper literally gave me the frame of reference I needed to build a game that is easy to understand at a glance.

Key take aways. Sometimes you need to slow down to find answers before engaging in a speedy iterative development cycle. Plus it was just fun to hang out with my girl to talk, think and work on a project together.