Capstone Game Post Mortem: King of Mystic Mountain

Game Summary:

Title

King of Mystic Mountain

Genre

RPG

Platform

Android

Revenue Model

Free to Play

Development Tools/Language

Unity

MonoDevelop: C#, JavaScript

ORK Framework

Team

Raymond Sinwich

Eric Murphy

Copyright/Reference

King of Mystic Mountain © 2015 Raymond Sinwich

Backstory:

Sound Bite

“A lost King... A mysterious mountain…, and…Timmy. Play as Timmy to help the King of Mystic Mountain.”

Game Description/Executive Summary

King of Mystic Mountain is a mobile RPG game where you play as a boy named Timmy who wants to help his king return to his castle. The king has fled to the local mystic mountain because he lost his family heirloom that claims his right to the throne. Timmy will have to complete quests, collect, buy or sell items, and fight through the evil forces that roam the land in order to help his king.

Inspiration

The inspiration for King of Mystic Mountain comes from classic RPG’s that were made during the 1990’s. The idea was to make an RPG that has different ending according to the different quests that you do in the game.

Ideal

Ideally, King of Mystic Mountain would be a full RPG that would take more than 10-30 minutes to play and beat. The story would be much more in depth and with better character development. This would give room for more levels, more enemies, more items and more characters.

Demo Screencast:

The Critique: What went right:

Design & Aesthetics

I feel the music turned out to be a major part of King of Mystic Mountain. The music chosen for each level and its smooth transition between each, I feel went very good with the game.  I think it helped to create an atmosphere for each environment.

Project Management

Setting up the project milestones and keeping track of progress helped me to make strides with King of Mystic Mountain. Doing this gave me more time to fix bugs I encountered and address issues my instructor had. I was also able to make more improvements in between each milestone.

Development

Making an RPG gave me a lot of development to do.  The part that went best in my opinion was the quest system. This allowed me to link quests together and make different endings as result.

Testing

A lot of the play tests went very well. Because of them I was able to identify and fix problems I did not know existed.

The Critique: What went wrong:

Design & Aesthetics

The art was hard to find and did not turn out exactly how I wanted it. With the help of my friend Eric, we were able to find art good enough to fit what we wanted.

Development

A lot of development issue arose when I would get feedback. Most of it would require me to backtrack through milestones and fix issues that would be found. One of the main issues found was the player control. This was fixed by allowing the player to slide their finger from button to button to change direction.

Testing

One of the issues with tests for me was that I had to approach strangers at my friends store to get new people to play it. This involved awkward conversations and sometimes, awkward feedback.

Other

Using the ORK Framework was a disaster at first. I was not able to get anything to work, and when I did, something else went wrong. It took me a bit to get the hang of the framework.

Summary:

King of Mystic Mountain has satisfied my goal to create an RPG. Though it is not as big as I want, it does show that I can do it. In the beginning it was fun to watch come together. With each level I would find the right music, test sprites, add blockers and test, test, test. Then it came to designing characters stats, items, and abilities. This is when work stopped being fun. It took many frustrating nights to get everything in place and working. It wasn’t till I got my first battle working that I began to celebrate again. After that I did my best to celebrate with each success.

References:

Sinwich, R. (June 2015). King of Mystic Mountain. Raymond Sinwich.