Hi everyone! My name is Gabrielle, and I make video games! And today
I'm going to talk about something very important when you start working on something new:
the Project Scope.
Before diving into this episode's subject, here's a quick update about Spectral Blend.
It's a puzzle-game I started working on a few weeks ago, and this video series is about its development.
These past two weeks. I mostly experimented new things with Unity.
I'm trying to wrap my head around new features, and how to program every part of this game the most efficiently possible.
I also added every gameplay elements I needed to create my puzzles!
I added the possibility to separate a secondary color into two primary colors.
I started to work on making different tiles with different effects. For now, there are just the black tile, the classic one,
and the white tile, on which you can't place anything.
I also added black and white in the game, even tho I'm still not quite sure how they could fit into puzzles.
Finally, I tweaked the visuals a little bit in order to distinguish which elements can't be moved.
They're now outlined in black, and this little thing makes the game way clearer.
I'm pretty confident on my ability to meet my end of February deadline, and at that moment,
I will have a first public demo I'll be able to share.
After that, I will focus my efforts on the artistic part in order to give the game an
identity, while improving and fixing the game mechanics.
But enough of rambling about moving circles and fighting with Unity, because today I want to talk about something really
Important when you start a new project:
its scope.
The project scope is basically its size
and what it needs to be completed. This is THE first thing to think about when you start a new project.
And it's also a good way to knowyour strengths and weaknesses, to improve yourself, and in the end, to create better games.
When you scope a project, what's important isn't what you want to do, but what you can do.
What does your resources, your skills, your time, your money, and your potential team, allow you to do?
Because having a dream project too big for us is easy.
Everybody does! Every person playing video games already had an idea for a game.
But is this idea doable? If so, what does it require?
Of course, maybe you want to create an RPG with branching stories, evolving AI, dynamic weather…
But can you do it?
Do you have the technical skills needed to create something like that?
Do you have some writing and design knowledge? If not, can you find people with the skills you lack of?
You need to ask yourself all these questions when you scope your project.
A common mistake from beginner game developers is to scope too large Way too large!
And it happens to everybody! It's something I did myself when I started making games.
The first game I tried to make was way too ambitious for me!
It was a mix between a typing game and a management sim, with a deep and non-linear story.
In the end… I wasn't even able to create a simple prototype!
I had some ideas, but nothing else!
So… What was my first game? What was the first project I was able to complete.
It was a little Flappy Bird clone, with a color-shift mechanic similar to Ikagura.
Yeah, I was already obsessed with colors at that time.
It's clearly not the greatest game ever made. It's not very complex. I didn't earn a single buck with it.
But… People liked it!
I even ended up with a nice ranking in the game jam I participated in!
What I'm trying to say is…
That we all have a dream project. We all have a game we absolutely want to make.
And it's probably something way too big to be made. So, instead of pursuing a chimaira…
Try to do... just a simple game. Do something! Create stuff! Because in the end,
Even if it doesn't look like what's in your wildest dreams, a little game will have more meaning than
a game that you only imagined.
DO IT!
I think there is a game that illustrates perfectly how a good project scope can result in great things.
It's a game born from constraints, circumstances,
and it ended up influencing both mainstream and indie games.
This game is called Gone Home.
Released in 2013,
Gone Home is the first game of the Fullbright Company, a studio created by ex-members of 2K Marin, which made Bioshock 2.
And the whole story of its creation is a lesson about how smart decisions made early in production are the key to successful projects.
At that time, The Fullbright Company was made of four people:
a game designer, a programmer, a 2D artist, and an environmental artist.
They were living off their savings, and even moved into the same house to reduce their costs.
When they knew they wanted to make a game together,
the first thing they did was to sit down and ask themselves what they could do with what they had.
They quickly excluded the possibility of having 3D characters:
they didn't have the knowledge and the ressources to do it with the time they had.
However, their latest project, which was the Bioshock 2's DLC Minerva's Den, taught them a lot about
first-person narrative games, to the point the team now considers this project as the pre-production phase of Gone Home.
For those who haven't played it, Gone Home is the story of a student going back home after a year abroad.
When she arrives, she finds an empty -and kinda messy- house, and you have to find out what happened.
It's a really touching story, but that's not the subject of this video,
so let's talk about why the design of Gone Home is so smart.
What's impressive is that the whole game has been designed around the team skills.
They conveyed a huge part of the narrative through the environment: the documents we can find, of course,
but also the way the house is setted up,
decorated, which objects can be found…
Telling stories through the environment is something called "Environmental Storytelling":
it's one of the hardest, but most effective, way to convey a story.
It takes a lot of subtlety, skills and iterations to work perfectly, and building a game around it is extremely risky.
But… That's the strength of The Fullbright Company:
they knew they lacked skills in a lot of areas,
but they also knew they excelled in environmental storytelling, especially when they work together.
So they decided to build a game around it, and finished it in less than a year and a half.
The rest is history:
Gone Home came out and became one of the most influential games of its generation,
and opened a door in which several talented
developers got in. It's because of it that games like Firewatch or What Remains of Edith Finch exists,
and it's the proof that scoping your project efficiently is the most important thing in the early stage of game development,
if not in all the development of your project.
Besides saving you time and money,
project scoping is a way to know your strengths and weaknesses, and to build your game around it.
In the end, what Fullbright Company did was just making a game according to their skills.
And it's the hardest part of the job, as it requires a lot self-critique and knowledge,
and it's something even game veterans struggle with.
So, what about Spectral Blend? How did I scope this project ?
The first thing I knew is that I wanted to make a game
I could show the development of,
so I had to make a gameplay-driven game. If I made a narrative-driven game in this configuration, I'd risk to
spoil the whole game while showing you its development.
And, at the beginning, I had an idea that I thought was a good fit for this project I
I wanted to make a tactical-RPG about high-schoolers killing each others, and condemned to live the same day again and again.
It would have been focused on tactical combat, but also on evolving relationships, in the same manner than Shadow of Mordor.
Because, even if everybody dies at the end of the day,
they would live this day again and again with all their memory intact.
They would remember everything: the acts of kindness, the betrayals, the despair…
It would have been a weird mix of XCOM, Shadow of Mordor and Undertale.
It would have been great, and I hope it'll be my next project!
But, in the end… I ditched it.
The thing is…
I wasn't totally sure I was able to make this game.
There were too many unkwown varaibles, and I think it was a little too big for what I can do right now.
So… I
started to think about what I could do instead. And what I couldn't.
First, I am making this game alone for now. I'll find a 2D artist and a sound-designer later,
but right now, I'm on my own.
So I immediately excluded every genres heavily focused on these parts. No rhythm-game, no visual-novel.
I didn't want a 3D game either.
I wasn't confident in my abilities to create a gameplay adapted to a three dimensional space.
So… I had to think of a gameplay-driven game in 2D I could and WANTED to make.
That's when I remembered this little concept I had.
A puzzle-game centered around blending colors!
I started scoping a project with this concept. Turns out… I had the resources to do it!
I already made 2D game, including puzzle-games,
so that's something I'm comfortable with, whether it's on a design or a technical level.
The biggest part of the project will be to add content and variety, because the very basis is actually…
Relatively quick to make.
I think having the core elements of the prototype will take me…
Maybe one more month.
After that, I'll start working on making the game good, but at that point, I'll already have something functional.
And it's something really important when you work with very limited resources,
because it means you can release your game
whenever you want! Of course, releasing it too soon would mean having an ugly and unpolished game,
but in some cases, it's enough!
And it's a configuration way easier to manage than working on a game that doesn't work properly
the month before its release.
It's something common in some genres. Games with a lot of different systems, like RPGs, are prone to this.
The reason is pretty simple:
creating two mechanics takes more than creating a single mechanic twice,
because you have to assemble them.
For example, if you have an economy system in your game, you have to make sure it doesn't break the combats.
If you cannot buy anything, your game will be too hard,
but if you can buy everything after a few hours, your game will be too easy.
You have to take the time to balance these systems together, in order to make the whole game works. And it's something incredibly time-consuming!
Having a single game system was mandatory for me, because I simply don't have the resources to work on something bigger.
And the idea I had fit this condition perfectly! Take a look at Zachtronics games: their mechanics are very pure,
but the level-design is deep and complex!
That's what I'm aiming for: a simple to play, but deep puzzle-game.
And I think that's something I can create with the resources I have!
Anyway, that's the end of this episode!
The irony is that I talked way more than expected, and I screwed up the scope of my video.
See you in two weeks
Thanks for watching this video! If you liked it, don't hesitate to comment, like, share and subscribe!
See you in two weeks for more adventures into game development!
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