Capstone Game Post Mortem: Derwood the Dashing

Capstone Game Post Mortem: (Derwood the Dashing)

Game Summary: 

Author 

Dustin Bridgewater

Title

Derwood the Dashing

Genre

Infinite runner

Platform(s)

Android

Revenue model

Free to play. Initially intended to have microtransactions, but it would be inappropriate given the target audience.

Development tools/Language

Unity 2D engine with C# scripting. 

Game audience

The intended audience is for younger children but also appealing and challenging to everyone. I wanted to have the game be challenging but not overly so, especially for kids.

Team

Development Lead/Designer/Developer – Dustin Bridgewater

Artist – Matthew Glaister

Copyright/Reference

Derwood the Dashing ©2015 Dustin Bridgewater

Backstory:

Sound Bite

“They thought giraffes couldn’t run. They were wrong.”

Executive Summary

Derwood the Dashing is an infinite runner for all ages. In this game, players control Derwood as he patrols the ‘Animal Kingdom’, watching out for danger and running around as fast as he can. Players earn upgrades to help them out and can unlock costumes to really make Derwood stand out!

Inspiration

My main inspiration for this game is an older infinite runner called Canabalt. I played this game for hours and hours on end, and always thought it would be fun to create my own infinite runner style game.

Ideal

My ideal version of Derwood the Dashing would be a fully polished, tightly tuned game where players had the feeling of accomplishment and every failure could be their own, not a gimmicky or cheap death. Players could also choose from a wide range of upgrades to customize their game into a version that was uniquely their own.

The Critique: What went right…

Current Derwood

Design & Aesthetics

I set out to make this game simple to play, and have a clean overall art style. I view this as being a great success as it’s simply one button to control the entire game (tap anywhere on the screen) and the art looks very bright and consistent. I also wanted to have a clean UI that looked professional and was easy to get around.

The art and sound was a bit difficult, but after finding some royalty free tracks and also creating my own sound effects, the sound design would also be considered a success.

Project Management

I set week long goals and set them up in enough bite sized chunks that development went along smoothly. I felt accomplished because of the smaller goals I set each week, and it was a real treat to see how far I had come in each development sprint.

First Concept Art

Development

The code was setup to be very object based and nothing should have been jumbled together where it shouldn’t be. This made programming super simple especially in the later stages of development since I knew exactly where I needed to go to change something, and it only needed to be changed in one spot.

The piece of code I am most proud of is the random terrain spawn script. I looked online and looked at multiple algorithms, and then pieced them together in my own creation. This makes for a really random layout of terrain, but everything was spaced and pieced together perfectly.

Testing

I had a very big testing group that were eager to help me out, though a couple things truly helped me: my younger cousins and my wife’s cousin who is in the game industry.

My cousins really gave me the best raw feedback since they are both in the target age (one 8 the other 10). It really made me smile when I saw them fighting over my phone to try and beat the score of the other, goofy giraffes truly have a certain appeal to the younger audience.

I was also able to get great critical feedback with Bryanna, my wife’s cousin. She works in the game industry at Volition and warned me that she wouldn’t give me false feedback and would be completely honest. This honesty helped shape a lot of the later development of the game, changing Derwood from a flat and boring runner to really dynamic game. I love getting real feedback and this was invaluable.

Business Model/Plan

I am absolutely happy with this being a completely free game. While microtransactions would be a good revenue, I don’t feel right having real money transactions in a kids’ game. Yes I had purchases in the development stage, but this was truly to test my technical merit, and on full release these are being taken out. I never aimed to make money with this, just obtain great experience.

The Critique: What went wrong…

First 'major' playable prototype

Design & Aesthetics

I have learned that balancing a game is one of the more difficult aspects to accomplish. The majority of development time has been dedicated for finding a good balance of skill while minimizing luck with a random system, and that turned out to be a very difficult task.  What ended up happening was a mix of precrafted levels mixed with random terrain generation to ease players into the game while also providing challenges at later stages of the game

Back to work! In game enemy.

Project Management

The main problem I had with project management was just juggling a busy schedule and trying to get out the best product I could. I admit I thought that I could get a lot more done in the time given to me, but thanks to both life and programming issues what I do have done, while I’m proud of, pales in comparison to what I planned to have done.

Another issue was getting the art assets in on time. My artist was full on ready to do all of the art, but because of work piling onto him, we didn’t get in the art as soon as we could, and not as many animations. I can’t fault him, because Matt did a fantastic job with the art he did do for Derwood, I still laugh at seeing a giraffe with a knight helmet on.

Development

Going into this project, I wanted a fun, fair, and engaging infinite runner. I knew that I had to have random elements in the game, and because of giraffe height, I was a bit limited in coming up with obstacles. It’s quite the goofy object to work around! The randomized terrain was the first thing into the code, and it was a literal random number generator deciding what prefab to put down, and making sure if was out of the camera view. Previous distance was taken in from the last platform placed so everything would meld together nicely, creating gaps when needed and long stretches of flat terrain as well.

The problem with this is was mentioned in the design section: balance. Balancing the game is still ongoing and will continue on for as long as I support the game. This was truly the main development problem, and it’s been a great learning experience. I’ve gained so much game design experience from all of the trial and error needed to test what a balanced game looks like.

Testing

The main problem I had with testing was getting people to test it in person. Most of my testing was done over Skype, and I would have liked to have more face to face testing.

Business Model/Plan

The original business plan was free with microtransactions, and this was working perfectly. However I always felt like it was wrong since this was intended for a younger audience. After some feedback, I happily got rid of the microtransactions and it is now a fully free game.

Summary:

Overall I’m very happy with how the game has turned out. I wanted a simple yet fun game that was easy to pick up and play and truly feel like it belongs on a mobile platform, not just a game trying to fit on mobile.  Going back I would have cut down the expectations and focused less on extra things such as character upgrades and truly build a fully balanced terrain randomizer.  As it stands now, I feel the game has come a long way and I am proud to call it my first full game.

References

Bridgewater, D. (2015). Derwood the Dashing [Mobile Game]



EDIT
Screencast here