Eggs With Legs Sprint 4 & 5 Reflection

At the end of last sprint we picked our final concept. We decided on Junkpunk, the robot building game, after a lot of deliberation. We spend a number of hours going back and forth on the benefits and challenges of each game to eventually decide on which one we wanted to do. It was really a challenge for us to pick which one we wanted to do, since the entire team loved all of the concepts so much. But, we eventually picked Junkpunk for a number of reasons. Overall, it had the most excitement from the team. We also felt that it was one of the more in-scope games of the three. Also, we felt that it was the most unique game of the three, without many other games like it out there, so we’d be creating something completely unique in the games industry, rather than the other two games which did borrow elements from other games. As part of the process of choosing our game, we also picked our product owner. In the end, we all decided that I would make the best product owner for the group, since I had a good idea of everyone’s work speed as I’ve worked with a couple of them before, and have been able to gauge the others since I got here, plus since, as the other’s put it, I tend to be very level headed and grounded for tasks, so they thought I was a good pick. I’m excited to be the product owner and work on prioritizing tasks and such, and I expect it will be fun.

For this concept, we have three core gameplay concepts. They are: getting to build your own robot, using that robot to fight other robots, and finally, using extra parts to build more robots and make money on selling them, to buy better parts, which will create a complete and interesting gameloop. We’re looking to send a couple of messages with the game. First of all, the main narrative is going to be a bit anti-capitalist (I guess? Those words don’t perfectly describe it to me, but I don’t have better ones) where you’re going to be in a world filled with junk and rubble caused by corporate greed, and you will be the little guy fighting against the powers of the world, as you slowly climb the ladders in robot-fighting tournaments. This is mostly going to be done through the narrative, but there will also be cool level design elements to it, which will be cool for me. I’ll be able to build a bit of the story into the world through my levels, having the later levels get cleaner and cleaner, with less junk for example, to show that the upper society in the world just forces the dirt and junk on the rest of the world, while they get to live in cleanliness. We’re going to be trying to get the feel of relative creative freedom with the game with the building robot stuff, too. We want there to be many different ways to play the game, like with up-close weapons, long range ones, and large differences in those sections too. We want to let the player figure out how they want to make their own robot, but have all of the different strategies be at least relatively viable. This will mostly be up to Max, our Systems and Mechanics Designer, and I know he’s looking forwards to balancing all of the weapons and other variables. For our combat, we want to go with an almost sillier, cartoony sort of combat, which we’re going to try to be doing with Unity’s physics systems, as they can be a bit… janky… at times, but this will actually help us a bit. As long as we can control the jank, it should help us create a more cartoony feeling combat system, which will be quite cool. I know Jake, our programmer, will be able to pull it off. Brooke, our artist, already has a more cartoony low poly art style for a few models, which just reinforces that even further. Finally, we want the shopping to feel a bit more realistic in a world like this. There’s going to be a lot of haggling and stuff going to the highest bidder, kind of like it is in the real world for junkyard sales and such. However, I don’t think we’ll be focusing on the shop aspect of the game until next semester, if our game gets through selection, since we don’t really feel like it is entirely necessary to focus on in the beginning, and we want to focus on getting combat and customization down to prove that our game is worthwhile first. I’m excited to see how the game develops, and what we’ll be able to do with it in the future!