Blog Entry #7

Repeat homework 6, applied to your own team's game. The analysis is individual and done on your blog. Address the following issues:

1) the Tetrad
2) Balance
3) Emergent properties (check the book out)
4) Interest curves (check out the book)
5) Explain the reasons you like or dislike the game and relate this to Game Design issues. 

Tetrad:
STORY: You wake up in a mysterious warehouse with no memory of who y0u are, and after a few altercations with some plant zombies you discover that you are an android. You must go out into the plant-zombie infected city and find and recruit survivors, finding out the origins of the zombie virus and, after a number of missions are completed, you must enter the laboratory of the mysterious mad scientist and put a stop to the vicious AI  that is orchestrating the outbreak.
MECHANICS: The player starts out with just the android, but as they collect more characters they can play as them as well. The characters will have a variety of attack depending on who they are. The game is set in an open world city, with new areas of the map unlocking throughout the game. The player will navigate to safe houses scattered throughout the city where they can heal, organize inventory, select missions, and choose the charaters they wish to bring with them on each mission. The missions will have a time restraint element, as the player will ideally want to finish the mission before daybreak. Since the zombies are plantlike, they are much more powerful during the daytime. Health items will be scattered throughout the map. The player can attack, change characters, and interact with certain objects, such as doors and levers.
ART: The art will be dark and acidic colors to keep with the tone, and low poly. The music will be industrial, for the android, city environment, and science, and woodwind-y and reed-y  for the plant zombies. The android and AI will be voiced using robot-speech programs (Microsoft Sam, etc.)
TECH: The game will be played on PC, and made using Unreal Engine. Most of the games assets will be made on blender, makehuman, or found on blendswap.

Balance:
The attack power and health of the zombies will start small and increase as the player gains more characters, and as the variety of player characters increases, so will the variety of zombies.

Emergent Properties:
The player will ideally have their own choice of which characters they bring with them on mission, and the variety will allow them multiple ways to finish each mission. For example, at the end, the player can choose between taking a stealthy route or a frontal assault route into the laboratory, and can choose their characters accordingly.

Interest Curve:
As the player progresses, the enemies will become relatively more difficult to defeat, and the missions will become more complex. Furthermore, more details about the AI, the scientist, and the android will be revealed throughout the game.

I think the game is a very interesting, fun concept. I think it has potential for a lot of gameplay variety.

This week, I continued to work on character design and animation, as well Kelly. Abbie and Thomas continued to work on level design and coding.