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2D Side Scroller : Brainstorming


The Musical
(Not a musical)


Death intoxicates,
Percy John Delf Smith

For the second part of the interaction module, we have been tasked with creating a retro side scroller. I have a variety of ideas that I want to ruminate on a bit before committing to one, in the meantime to help evaluate them I wanted to make a list of criteria that each idea must be capable of achieving. This will help me manage my time better as I should be able to eliminate some ideas right off the bat, no matter how good they are, for being too complicated or time-consuming for example.


  1. Strong Narrative Element: I want my games to have some element, even if it's non-verbal, that communicates a story. I feel that using narrative to help guide the player and frame their experience is one of the most important aspects of constructing a compelling play experience for the player.
  2. An aspect of comedy: I want to experiment with comedy in my games. It's something that I feel doesn't get used often enough in games and when it does it's usually rough because having enough control to pull off a good joke is next to impossible without removing player agency.  
  3. Solid mechanics: The game should have a clear and concise set of mechanics that interact in a way that easily produces fun and/or engaging play.
  4. Mechanics that don't conflict with the theme or narrative: I want the mechanics of the game to reinforce the theme/narrative. I don't want to create a game that has two sides effectively, one of the story and one of the play, that come into constant unintentional conflict.
  5. Reasonable scope: This is more of a hope than part of the criteria but I want a game with clear developmental stopping points, that isn't going to need 15 different systems supporting it to make it work. It should stand on its own.
I'm going to use these criteria to filter out my initial ideas down to 2 or 3 and then explore those a bit with rough prototypes before committing to one to finish.


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