Final Project Evaluation Essay

Throughout my final project, I have learned a lot. I’ve learned the importance of research,
and that game development is not only very challenging, but also extremely enjoyable and
I’ve learned the significance of feedback. Without feedback, my game and the overall
project would not be at the same level of quality if it wasn’t for talking with friends and
family about what I could add/remove.
As I was doing my project, I developed my skills with Unity and learned coding and basic
sprite animation. I decided to give coding a go because it’s a really helpful skill to know. Not
just for game development. However, out of all the different things I've done while making
my game, coding is one I need to improve on.
I chose to make a game for 2 main reasons, first of all, I am quite interested in video games
as a form of media, I enjoy everything from playing them to making them, and to make one
for college would be an opportunity I wouldn’t want to pass up. Secondly, if I start practicing
making games I will be a lot more prepared for my next course which focuses more on
games development.
My goal for my final project will be to make a short 2D platformer where the player can
explore the level. It will be set in a gloomy, damp underground complex with mirrors lining
the walls. But making a game like this will be difficult, I have very little experience with Unity
and none with C#, learning Unity and C# will be my two biggest challenges.

Part 0: Trying Something New

Before starting my project I decided to try and use Unity Game Engine. It was far more
complicated than what I had used before but I said to myself that if I ever want to become a
game developer, I would need to use more complex tools than Gamemaker.
And in hindsight I am so happy that I did, Unity has given me the tools to make my game so
much better and to push my skills to learn new things.

Part 1: Ideation and Research

Before starting my project I had a couple of ideas of what I wanted to make, I felt like
making a 2D platformer would be a mix of not too hard but challenging enough for a
beginner, so I went with that. But other than making a platformer, I had no ideas of what
the premise would be.
After talking with some friends, and asking them for ideas, I came up with weather being the
main gameplay mechanic. We came up with the weather because after thinking about lots
of different platformers and their plots and mechanics, none of them had weather be a main
part of the game. I went with the weather idea because it would make my game stand out
compared to the rest.
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For example, levels would change difficulty depending on the weather. Clear skies being an
easy difficulty and snow being a harder one and so on. Since not many platformers used
weather, the possibilities for levels were endless.

So now that I had an idea, I started doing some research.

I spent a week and a half doing research for my game, throughout that week I looked at lots
of different games, and at the history of platformers, analyzed some of the best and did
some research on Key practitioners.
I also looked at how the theme mirror could fit into my game, the couple ideas I thought of
were,
1) You have a shield that reflects things that attack you
2) The game takes place in two separate but similar worlds, mirrored worlds.
3) Mirrors are a type of teleportation mechanic, getting you from one mirror to the
other.
Doing this helped me when it came to making my game, I could look at some of the best
platformers and see where they went right and wrong. For example, in Hollow Knight, you
can press jump to do a little hop and hold jump to do a higher leap. This wasn’t something I
was originally going to have in my game but after doing the research and by playing the
game I realized that it's essential to the player's gameplay experience and my game would
not feel as good to play without it.
After doing some research into the codes and conventions of platformers I noticed some
similar gameplay mechanics. When looking at the Mario games, I realized how much sound
plays a part, everything Mario does has a sound effect, especially his jump. His jump has
become a staple of his character with the jump noise being universally recognized.

A big part of my research was looking at Key Practitioners, people who are big in the games
industry and good at coding, art, game design and so on. I looked around for some game
developers that I could contact and landed on Jack Vine.
Jack Vine, the lead programmer from Team Cherry (the team who made Hollow Knight) Me
and Jack started talking and I asked him some questions about his job, how he got started
programming and some general tips when making games.
But one thing he said that really stood out to me was when I asked him “Have you ever felt
demotivated while working on a project? If so, how did you solve the issue?”
He responded by saying that he always ends up feeling demotivated when he’s working on
projects by himself, and when working on projects in general it is common to feel
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demotivated. He also mentioned that working on a project with other people can help with
stay motivated a lot.

When I was making my game I felt demotivated a lot, for example, because this was the first
time I had done any major coding when something just wouldn’t work and I had no clue
how to fix it I would feel really demotivated and down, but after talking with Jack and how
he dealt with feeling demotivated, I would try his advice with talking to friends about my
work and asking them for help or their opinion on certain things. Just talking about my
project with other people helped a lot and I wouldn’t have known that if it wasn’t for my
interview with Jack.

Part 2: Practical Skills

All through my project, I had learned lots of new skills, from learning Unity and coding in C#
from scratch to developing my pixel art and animation skills.
Like I mentioned before the reason I chose to use Unity is that knowing more complex
software for making games will help a lot when I go onto my next course level 3 Game
Design. So learning it this early will benefit me a lot for my future projects.
The main problem I had with using Unity throughout my final project is that I couldn’t make
my game in college, (because the admins blocked Unity on the college computers) so I had
to make my game all at home, at the beginning I thought this was a bad thing, but looking
back on it, it was a good thing. I could work on my game without distraction with everything
I needed on my home computer, and I could also work on weekends since I didn’t need
access to the college computers.
Compared to gamemaker I feel like learning Unity was a better decision for making a
platformer, because Unity being fundamentally more advanced than Gamemaker, allowed
me to add more complex features like lighting. Even though the lighting doesn’t seem that
important, seeing my game before I had lighting then after it, the difference is night and
day.
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Before Lighting After Lighting

Throughout my final project ive learnt lots of new skills, but one of my most valued one has to be
learning some C#, although im not the best at C#, knowing the basics has opened so many
opportunities for me even outside of game development.

Part 3: Reflection
From the beginning of my project I have frequently updated my website with progress on
my game, this has been useful in many different ways, for one when it comes to marking my
project, examiners can look back and see what I thought about my work at the time of me
doing it, this is useful because when I'm looking back on my work I can see some ideas that
at the time sounded good but looking back weren’t that that good. Another reason is that
having a lot of evidence of my work lets me reflect on it easier.
Although I had to do a lot of work on my project and didn’t manage to get all the features I
wanted, I feel like for what I've had to do, I've managed the time quite well
Just before I added lighting to my game I was feeling quite demotivated because I felt like
my game wasn’t that good, the sprites were okay but everything looked flat and didn’t have
any life to it. Because I blogged about my work I could reflect on it and see what I can
improve.
When I started adding lighting my motivation for my project came back, I had so many ideas
for my level and how I could make it better, and I could look back at my work to find ideas.
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For example, near the beginning of my level, there are lots of mirrors you walk past, I always
thought that they were just boring background objects, but after I added light to them,
making them glow. It made them stick out and it caught the player's attention as something
interesting to see in the level, not just some background decoration.

Part 4: Final Product

Overall I am happy with my final product, I feel like it has lots of good things going for it,
good original background music, simple, easy-to-learn gameplay and some interesting level
design.
If I were to do it again I would spend more time on the art side, I feel like the background
sprites are too uniform, you notice the pattern quickly when you know what to look for.
Comparing my final product to my initial vision is very different, I wanted to have the
weather be the main mechanic but because of time limitations and me being a beginner
when it comes to Unity, I just couldn’t do it.

I've learned a lot from watching people play my game and hearing what they like and dislike,
this had been helpful because I can improve and change features if players dislike them. But
from everyone I've talked to who has played my game, they said they enjoyed it. Some pros
I've heard mentioned multiple times are, “the music is good” and “the portals are fun”.

Part 5: Conclusion
At the start of this project, I had no experience with coding or using Unity, and little
experience making pixel art. Now 6-7 weeks later, I’ve come out of the project with
knowledge of coding and have learned how to use Unity, I've also got much better at pixel
art. Moving forwards I would like to improve on my coding skills and try and make more
projects in Unity, I feel like pixel art is not one of my strengths so improving my skills would
greatly benefit me in the future.