Looking back

What went wrong with The Dressmaker?

The Dressmaker was planned to be the 3rd prototype. The game was going to investigate giving maximum rewards with ideally no failure condition or skill involved.

There were several issues with this game.

Firstly: The game was planned to be a hidden object game where you would have to find several hidden objects within an image. The player would have been rewarded when they have found them all, as well as whenever they complete a dress collection. However, the idea was unoriginal as there are already several mobile games follow the same structure, including Seekers Notes [MYTONA Ltd 2015], and June’s Journey [Wooga 2017]. I could not think of a way to add any originality to this concept.

Secondly: It was almost imposable to make it work unless I had a way to build up a picture in different layers to allow me to place objects in a way that:
A) Made them look natural to the overall picture.
B) Could place the hidden objects behind other objects (like the grapes in the second picture below.
To make it work it ideally needed an artist to make the individual assets to ensure that the objects that were hidden were of the same art style and blended well within the overall picture.

Finally: I did not feel I was learning anything new with this game, I was using Fungus [Fungus Ltd 2014] an application I know well and had used for the Proposition Sim 2000 (Prototype one). Because of this it was not helping me grow as a designer.

Because of all the issues listed above it was easy to decide not to submit it. As for the other three games, all of them I believe have helped me grow as a designer.

Growing as a Designer

It is important to sometimes step out from your comfort zone as it allows us to grow as people. For this assignment I wanted to try to use different ways to make and design games that I would not normally use. I feel I have achieved this in several ways.

I have always shied away from programs like Photoshop [Adobe Inc 2022] always using the excuse that I am not an artist and cannot draw etc. However, as I designed two prototypes that were physical games, I needed to design assets like the cards for Compound Monty (Prototype four), or the money and shares for Kinlang, The Traders (Prototype two). I found I had to use and learn how to use Photoshop to do this. Learning a new skill is always useful and will allow me to grow more as a designer as I further develop my skills within it.

Constraints remove some of the freedom from the design process but can also mean you have to come up with a new takes on things. I found this process to be very enlightening and found throughout the four prototypes it was easier to come up with a working idea. I would have never considered making a game that was just set in one room, or combining the Monty Hall problem with Compound Interest. I hope that this trend will continue as I develop more games

References

Adobe Inc (2022) Adobe Photoshop [Application] Microsoft Windows.

Ballroom’. 2023. Seekers Notes: Hidden Mystery Wiki [online]. Available at: https://seekers-notes.fandom.com/wiki/Ballroom [accessed 13 Jan 2023].

Fungus Ltd (2014) Fungus [Application] Unity.

MYTONA (2015) Seekers Notes [Video Game] iOS, Android.

Wooga (2017) June’s Journey [Video Game] iOS, Android.