Roadmap

The current state of the project and my roadmap forward. 

Current state of the project

Concept Design one-pager - Postponed

Goal: Make a one-page document explaining the concept. This document can contain a mantra about the UX, design pillars, summary of the game, key features, target platform, target audience, game layout, interface, art direction, music/sound and development plan. 

Result: I am working on this, should be done this week. It had some dependencies that I have been working on first. This will make the creation of the one-page much easier. I think this task should have been under Prototype from the start, reason is that I would have more time to spend on the core mechanic breakdown, references and research.

Reference Games (Design) - Done

Goal: Find games that reflect my game design direction, level design direction or puzzle design direction. Once I have a some games, I should play them and to motivate and inspire myself. Once I have played those reference games, I should keep them in mind while creating parts of my game. 

Result: I found some games that have some mechanics, design direction and puzzles that reflect pretty well on the things that I am working on and towards. Here is the list of my reference games for design:

• The Witness
• Rime
• The Turning Test
• The Talos Principle
• Discolored

Reference Games (Visuals) - Done

Goal: Find games or art pieces that reflect my art direction. When I have several references, I can make a moodboard that is reflecting my overall goal and direction for the visuals. 

Result: I found several references, they are games, art pieces and personal projects of other developers/artists. Now that I have those references for my preferred visual art direction, I can make a visual moodboard. Here are my references for the art direction:

• The Witness (Game)
• The Sojourn (Game)
• Human: Fall Flat (Game)
• Lowpoly Temple Islands (Asset Pack)
• Stylized Lowpoly Game Level (Personal Project by Lara James)
• Lowpoly Stylized Environment (Personal Project by Emek Ozben)

Paper Prototype Puzzles - Postponed

Goal: The goals is to create several puzzles with paper, to see if I can design puzzles with my intended game mechanics. The creation of a puzzle with paper should also be much faster than if I did it directly in Unreal. My goal is to create the puzzles first with paper and test the puzzles by letting other people play it. If I notice that the puzzle is working as intended and I am satisfied with it, I can implement it in Engine. 

Result: I have created around 3 puzzles, which are not at the highest difficulty, but they are showing the mechanics and the functionality of the puzzles. One of the things that I found, is that they are much easier to solve, because the testers have a clear overview of the puzzle, while in my game concept, the player is playing the game in first-person. Therefore, the paper puzzles should be much easier to solve than in-game. This is something that I should keep in mind.

Image of my paper prototype

Blueprint Fundamentals - Done

Goal: The goal is to learn some fundamentals of Unreal Blueprinting. When I started this project I had 0 experience with blueprinting. I want to learn some of them at the start of the project. Learning and understanding the basics of Blueprinting. 

Result: I have followed several really good tutorials. The tutorials were really basic, but that was excectly what I was looking for. Getting used to the Blueprint fundamentals and basic functionality. Which will make the progress faster when I start working on the prototype in Unreal. Here is a list of some of the tutorials that I have followed:

• Tutorial - Blueprint Essentials
• Tutorial - Blueprint Fundamentals
• Tutorial - Endless Runner
• Tutorial - Level Creation in Unreal

Core Mechanic Breakdown - Postponed

Goal: The goal is to make a document that is explaining the key features of the game. Writing down the rules and the restrictions of each mechanic, to get a clear understanding of what I want and what is needed. The reason this is so important is that it really makes me think about what I should do, how I should make it and what the best approach is. Once I have finished this document, I want to show it to some programmers. With the goal that they can push me in the right direction in making the best working system for my core mechanics. The system should allow me to easily add additional mechanics to the core.

Result: I have a start with the document, but it is not finished yet. It got postponed because I was working on other tasks. However, this task should have had an higher priority, so I am going to do my best to finish this at the start of the new development cycle towards the Prototype milestone.

Visual Moodboard - Done

Goal: The goal is to have a visual moodboard of the games and art pieces where I get my inspiration and motivation for. I want to have a wall in my room covered with reference games and inspirational art pieces.

Result: I have finished this task. I found the right references, printed them out and placed them on the wall behind my working station. 

Image of my wall, using it as a visual moodboard

Setup itch.io page - Done

Goal: Setup itch.io page, I will use this platform to make my personal project public for a couple of reasons. First off, it acts as some sort of motivational platform where I can keep updating the page when I finish some tasks. Besides that, it will act as some sort of positive pressure. I have made a planning between the day I started on this project until my presentation (June 17th). 

Result: I have setup the page on itch.io. I am learning how to use it, but the page is setup and live. It still contains a lot of placeholder images and banners, but I will fill those in when I made some progress on the matter. Next milestone, the prototype milestone, will probably have some images that I can place on the placeholder art. 

Puzzle Design Research - Added

Goal: This task got added because I didn't anticipated on it. Creating puzzles is difficult, especially when your puzzles are in three-dimensional space. Getting some advise from other people, by following an informational talk during GDC, or a tutorial video on YouTube will probably help a lot. The difficulty is more on how to start this progress and how to keep an overview of the puzzles. 

Result: I have created puzzle pieces from paper, so I can start building puzzles with it. There are some things that I have learned from it, what will hopefully increase my speed in creating puzzles. I also took some inspiration from the talks. I am looking forwards in  creating the puzzles and share them here on my itch.io page. Here are some talks/tutorials about puzzle design:

• Level Design Workshop: Solving Puzzle Design
• The Art of Puzzle Design | How Game Designers Explore Ideas and Themes with Puzzles and Problems
• How to Design a Puzzle Game in 5 Steps

Thank you

The reason why I am creating those devlog is to log my work publicly. To give a sense of pressure to myself. However, I am always open for feedback and constructed criticism. If you have a question or feedback, feel free to leave it below! Thank you again for reading!