Bitsy Game
An opportunity to challenge my own design skills. Solve problems and improve myself during the game design process.
My Role
Illustration Design
Visual Design
Game Structure Design
Project Deliverables
Character Illustrations
Gameplay Design
Animation and Map structure Design
Tool Used
Bisty Game Maker
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Fresco
Introduction：
I hope I can improve my ability by making a game. I think the game is a unique way to interact, unlike boring text or lengthy movies, players can advance the plot by manipulating the characters in the game.
Inspired by these ideas, I decided to use Bitsy Game Maker as a basis to make a game with high interaction with players. In the game, players can gradually understand the world view and tasks through the interaction between the protagonist and the NPC, and understand the game story in a deeper level.
Because this is not an assignment, this is just a challenge for myself. So I hope to choose the most basic game to start (just like programming generally starts from Java), although the immature game editor will give the game a lot of restrictions, but this is exactly what I want, the time I solve more question, my creativity will be stronger. I want to create a game I expect with limited resources.
Before I start, I have to think about my player group so that I can better make targeted games and give players a better experience. Because this is my first time to make a game, so I plan to set the player group to be classmates and friends around me (a total of about 50 people). These people are people I know better so that I can ensure my game content and some hidden eggs they can understand.
First Step: Initial Design and Sketches
Of course, the game character must be determined first, because after that the game mode can be designed according to the game character.
It took me a long time to determine the original painting of the character before determining the game mode, because the original painting can be used to make the character by using the bisty painting panel. But bisty has a lot of restrictions on painting, so I spent a lot of time to modify it, and finally determined my game character mode.
Also,I have to decide the props or buildings corresponding to each character (you cannot allow a cat to eat bones in the kennel, maybe sometimes it can be LOL).
Next Step: Player Perspective
Player perspective is equally important because it directly determine the player ’s gaming experience. First of all, I have thought about it for a long time in looking down and looking straight
Credited by Levitation (in Bitsy)
I finally decided to use direct view, because I may have to design a maze or find treasure later. Direct view can better reflect the overall layout of my game, and at the same time let players see the effort I spent on designing buildings and characters.
Looking directly makes the game screen look more layered, and the content is more rich.
Final Step: Brainstorming and Decision Tree
After deciding the structure of the game, I quickly entered the most critical part of the game, the brainstorming and decision tree. A game with themes of props and dialogue must have clear logic, otherwise the game process will be a mess.
Take the first stage as an example. Although a scene seems to have only three simple NPCs and one prop, the relationship between them is very complicated. I must find a player that will surprise my players but not too much. Multiple ways to arrange each conversation and lead. Thinking about how to make others interact better is always more difficult than using other people’s designs.
The real structure of this stage
I also tried many stage layouts and obstacle layouts around the game at the same time. As a two-dimensional game and maintaining authenticity, the characters operated by the player must not move as desired (according to Newton’s law) so I need to add a lot of air walls to stop some players with an exploration spirit should not find game loopholes.
Some challenges I faced
During the production process, I encountered many challenges. Although most of these challenges were caused by the limitations of the production software, I still solved them with my creativity.
Map restrictions
Like I mentioned the air wall above, when I am designing the layout of the game, map restrictions and freedom are a difficult parts.
First of all, I have to restrict the player’s rules of action through the air wall and the physical wall (players shouldn’t pass through the wall or fly around in the sky), but this editor has a big limitation: I can’t choose whether the NPC can pass through. This leads a big challenge to me, for example:
Then I came up with a way: replace the NPC with the same shape of the item, which can not only achieve my purpose, but also design more branches (because the editor allows players to get the props, the NPC dialogue changes)
Switch NPC into same shape item
After the dialogue, players were prompted that they enter the back machine,
and the NPC no longer stop players
After solving the problem, I unexpectedly discovered that this not only helped me accomplish the purpose I had previously expected, but also I could realize the changes in clues provided by other NPCs after talking to the main NPC, which gave me a lot of space for development.
Key items and secret entrances
As an exploration-themed game, hiding items and entrances is of course a big element of the game, but due to some restrictions, I have no way to decide whether the setting of hidden items are avaliable with the plot progresses. It means I must find a way to let player can’t find hidden entrances only if they finish the plot behind.
So I figured out a way to hide hidden entrances and items. Because the maps are not very large, I need to find a way to hide them in the right place.
