Game Genre: Side-scrolling, platform, action, adventure.

Target Audience: Teenager to Young Adult

Platform: Wed based PC flash game

Summary: 

Tanuki (racoon) is a ninja on a mission to retrieve the Secret Scroll that was stolen from his ninja village. Tanuki will embark his journey in enemies' territory, facing multiple obstacles such as monsters and traps. He is now the only hope of his ninja village, can he achieve his goal? 

    This week, we started to do some research and explore the existing games to study and obtain inspirations. I started off by looking at some of my favorite 2D game and some concept arts to study and observe. These are what I have found: 

 The concept art that I have found online, some are more suitable for 3D games, but the environment design can be used as inspiration. Also, I have found some character designs that I can use as reference to develop my style in designing characters. I have figured that the game that I create for this semester can be games with simple yet interesting art.

I have decided to go for silhouette art style for my game art. Reason being because it seems to be popular art style for side-scrolling games. Also, judging from my game, which focuses on Japanese ninja concept, I think it should match quite well. 

     I have collected a lot of references in order to create my character and the monsters. I decided to go for simple, cuter art. Because why not------- I was inspired by several games and also art style of some artists, therefore I had fun playing around and come up with something. The concept art I have done so far are all in black and white as I am still deciding whether to add color to them, even if I do, I will only choose one color to avoid complicate them. 

This is my prototype for the maps so far, I will be doing environment sketches digitally and go into the details of how this game works. 

Feedback from Lecturer:

- The game can have options for either stealth or combat when the player attacks the enemies, but the overall game play is still straightforward combat type. 

- Can add more traps or puzzle-solving.. The ending can have the ninja achieving his main goal > Final boss come up > Defeat the boss > Portal opens up/ Ninja escapes.

- Can add more traits to the ninja and slightly show it out during the gameplay, such as the ninja being a clumsy guy/ failure (add more to backstory), then probably at the end can show how his other fellow ninjas are changing their views on him being a failure ninja.

- Play around with the colors/ grey scales (Can have 2 color tones too), put the characters together with the environment to see if they are matched. 

I decided to use different color scheme for different level as it looks more interesting that way for a game that goes with silhouette art style. Different color scheme can also represent different environment too. 

First level - The Forest: Orange, Green.

Second level - The Ruin: Green.

Third Level - The Cave: Purple. 

Final Level - Deep In The Cave: Blue. 

For the final level, I was inspired by Super Mario Bro, where at their final boss stage, they have to walk a distance and that level itself is the boss fight. 

I added few challenges to the gameplay by making the platform (wooden logs) small. I also added some spikes below, so if the players fall, they lose health. I initially made it so that the players will immediately lose the game if they fall. But it might be too hard for some people, especially when the boss itself is hard to beat. So I made the spikes 3 damages to the players per hit. 

In the end, the some minor changes are made to the map design as I continued to develop the game. 

All the characters were illustrated in Adobe Illustrator and animated in both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, I have animated idle, run, jump and attack for the main character. Other than that, I have animated both walk and attack for the monsters, but we ended up only need the walking animation for the game. 

I animated the character frame by frame in Adobe Illustrator with the help of art boards. Then, I exported each frame into PNG and bring them into Adobe Photoshop. In Adobe Photoshop, I go to Window > Timeline and arrange the PNG properly in there. I play the animation to see whether it is smooth before I bring them into Unity. There is no need to export anything from Adobe Photoshop as I already have the PNG files. 

The above are the other assets that I have done for the game. 

1. Player's HP : 10 HP. For the player to view how much HP they have left during the gameplay. 

2. Destroyable Pillar: An obstacle during the gameplay. Player can destroy it in order to proceed their gameplay. 

3. Collectable Coins: For player to collect.

4. HP Bonus Items: For player to consume in order to increase their HP. 

5. Portal: For player to proceed to next level. 

6. Secret Scroll: The final goal of the player. It is in final level and game ends once the player reached it. 

7. Traps: They are everywhere in level 1, 2 and 3. Player needs to avoid them, otherwise their HP will be decreased by 1 with each hit. 

The traps that I have illustrated was inspired by the game called Ninja Arashi. I did not give much thoughts to adding traps to my game till I saw the gameplay of Ninja Arashi. I like how they used red color on the traps to make them visible to the player, adding red to it is so important as the traps and the ground are black colour. I use red on the traps as they look natural too, like showing that it's 'blood' on it, also indicating that it is dangerous. 

I made a few changes while making the game itself in Unity. I removed the idea of making the character climb ivy to go up and down, and instead, I arranged some floating grounds for them to jump around. I figure that this will be more suitable for my gameplay, as the main character is a ninja, and he should be agile. I think it is more fun this way too. 

Four screenshots I have taken in Unity..

When I exported the web flash game, there were several problems such as the canvas being too small and such, which is why I kept on exporting. Even after I finished exporting well, the contents would still look small in full screen mode. Also, the players still need to play the game in full screen, if not they cannot gain full view of the game, and will miss out the player HP life bar, which is essential in the game. That is why I added a statement in 'Instruction', "Please play in full screen mode!". I think one way to make sure the player read it is to either put it on the main menu (which makes it look less appealing..), or to put the entire 'Instruction' before the gameplay starts. That will ensure the players to read it. 

Reflection: 

I spent a lot of time on doing the game arts and the coding. As I followed the tutorials done by my lecturer for the coding, I hardly had any problem. I had more problem with the software itself, which is Unity. However, I managed to solve most of the problems by myself which made me feel proud. I asked help from lecturer when I really can't solve the problems by myself. The another problem I faced was exporting, which I spent about 8 hours on just exporting and fixing and exporting again. But that is solved too and now is all good. Another thing I can't solve is the enemies keep walking into objects and never turn back, I think players may notice it and find it weird too. Therefore I think there are still a lot that can be imrpoved. Nevertheless, I am satisfied with the game as it is my first time making a game too.