Research – Inspirations, Survey and Final Idea

In this section of the blog, I will talk about inspirations (games, movies, characters…) that influenced my partner and I when it comes to deciding on our final idea for the project. I will also briefly mention the survey we created for the purpose of this project and to get information about what users want and how that too, shaped our final idea. I will include images, screenshot and drawings to give better explanation of what I am going to talk about.

INSPIRATIONS

In this document I will be talking about mobile/ computer game, that had influence on my idea and very much inspired me for this project. I will talk about design, genre and why it is important for me to have a game with good story line.  In this document I will talk about:

• Child of Light –  platforming role-playing video game.
• Looney Tunes – series of animated comedy short films.

• CHILD OF LIGHT

Child of Light was the first game that came up to my mind when I started thinking of what kind of game I should make for my project.  As someone who plays games, It is really important for me that game I play has a good story and design and Child of Light is definitely one of those game.

The game’s story takes place in the fictional land of Lemuria. Game’s main character is called Aurora and the game starts when she wakes up in Lemuria after dying from a mysterious illness. Her objective in the game is to bring back the sun, the moon and the stars that are all being captive by the Queen of the Night in order to return home. On her journey, Aurora is accompanied by many different characters like Rubella, girl who is searching for her brother and many more. As you play a game, you also get to see Aurora growing up, which I really like about this game because it is also a coming of age story. Another interesting thing about this game that some aspects of it are based on reality. For example, Aurora is Austrian princess and her duchy is located in Carnoila and earthquake that hit the Carnoila on Easter Sunday in 1895.

Child of Light had a huge influence on me and my project, mainly because of its very well developed backstory. It is almost like an animated painting, very simple and colorful. Its soft music makes player think that he/she is living a modern fairy-tale while playing a game. Game is made for children, age from 10 to 17, but is also made for adults. As creator of the game said, ‘’ .. it is also made for fans of classic console RPG games…’, who are now adults. That is another thing I would love to achieve with my game – aim for players of every age to play It and enjoy it.

• LOONEY TOONS

Inspiration for my game character I found in Marvin the Martian, Looney Tunes character.  For my game I am planning to create a character called Sergio, grumpy Guard which is highly inspired by Marvin. What I like about the way this character is drawn is that we can’t see his full face, just eyes, and his eyes are usually very grumpy or annoyed looking. It gives us the impression that character thinks everything that is happening around him should be done differently and that he knows a better way of doing things.

SURVEY (Research part )

For the purpose of gathering user information and requirements for project we have created an online survey in Google Forms. At the beginning of the survey, it is explained to the participants what it has about and gave them instructions on how to answer it. The Survey required from participants to watch two short game play videos of our inspirations for the project (Child of Light and Never Alone) and answer questions based on the videos they watched. The Survey started with easy and basic questions about their age groups and their gaming history, and then moved onto the questions about design and ones connected to the videos they have seen.

Information we got from our survey is that:

• From survey we could conclude that the most of our participants (potential game users) fall into the age group between 18 – 24 (we were not able to get information from people who are below age of 18 due to ethical reasons).  Followed by people who fall into the age group between 24 – 35 ( we found this information very interesting)
• Out of 12 responses that we got for on survey, 62.5% of them do play games.
• When it comes to how often they play games on scale from 1 to 5 (with 1 being Not Very Often and 5 being Very Often), the results were equal.
• When it comes to on which device that play the game, 62.5% goes to PC, and it is followed by 37.5% for Mobile Phone.
• On question “What type of games you enjoy the most”, most common answer was Adventure games, followed by Action games.
• They prefer Single player games over Multiplayer games.
• Referring to their answers about two videos that they have watched, most of them said they enjoyed Child of Light game play more than Never Alone game play, as (according to them) game art is better, there is more sounds, seems very mysterious, bright colors and the only critic of this game was that is has too much details.
• 87.5% of participants said that story of the game is important to them, also the soundtrack.
• 62.5% of participants said that game art is important to them, also the same percentage of participants said that they would love cinematic sequences to be included in the game.
• 62.5% of the participants said that they like games which challenge them, meaning that they don’t like getting hints for solving tasks in the game.
• When it comes to multiple main characters our research indicated that it was 50%-50%, which leaves us undecided on this game mechanic.

FINAL IDEA

For final idea, we agreed on creating is a 2D adventure – fantasy game called Final Saviour created in Unity 2D mode. Game is set in a magical and mystical forest called Glorious Forest and follows the story of grumpy, but yet funny forest guard Sergio who has a task to protect it against the dark and evil forces and bring back The Forest Light, thing that makes it magical.  On his way to save the forest player will have to control Sergio and help him defeat the dark forces. For this game we also created very detailed storyboard.

On the image above, we can see the first page of the storyboard for this project. Story is set in the magical forest called Glorious Forest (Drawing 1, top left corner), hidden far away from people. Everyone is living very happily there and no one is worried that something might change that. Thing that keeps forest alive is Forest Light, blue fire that makes everything magical. Forest Light is kept at the top of the castle tower and is guarded by Sergio (Drawing 2, middle top row), grumpy but yet funny forest guard. Sergio does not like his job as much and he believes that it is pointless, since nothing ever happens in the forest and how he has better things to do. But one day, dark spirits escaped the underworld and decided to steal Forest Light and rule the world (Drawing 1, bottom left corner). Once when Sergio fell asleep, Evil Spirits crawled behind his back and stole Forest Light (Drawing 2, middle bottom row). When he woke up, he could not believe what he saw, Forest light was gone and Glorious Forest was dying slowly.