Completed Mini-Game: A Cumber-Adventure!

After yet another hiatus, I'm posting again!

I do have a couple of fairly decent excuses for my absence; I've had exams and started a new job for one. More relevant to the content of this site is the fact that I've technically been busy making a full-length game to a remit. I say technically, because  it's a) more a collection of mini-games under a single narrative and b) that remit is of my own choosing.

Some background on this latest fare; a friend of mine has quite the crush on the actor Benedict Cumberbatch (you may know him as Sherlock in the titular BBC series, or as that actor whose name you won't remember, but you can say almost anything with a similar number of syllables and people will know who you mean) and her birthday was coming up. As I was struggling to find a suitable present for her, the idea hit me: I would make her a game. Not only could I tailor something perfectly to her, but I could try out some new game building software I had acquired*. So, 'Susie's Cumber-Adventure' was born!

The title screen. My friend totally didn't stroke the screen when she first saw this.

Only the names have been changed, to protect the guilty.

Now, this isn't a game for distribution, as it's both a unique gift for a friend (who has graciously agreed to let me write about it) and it breaks all copyright laws of God and man. With that in mind, if you wish to take a peek, the zip file can be accessed here. You need to extract all the files into one folder in order to run the executable.



The goals of this games were as follows:

• The game needed to be one my non-gamer friend could pick up, play and enjoy. This meant I needed to keep things short, sweet and simple.
• The game needed to include an abundance of Benedict Cumberbatch. Images, sound clips - anything that could reasonably be stuffed into the game needed to be there. This was the whole theme of the game, after all.
• The game needed to be tongue-in-cheek; it's about my friend's slightly ridiculous crush on some actor. I'm contractually obliged to take the Mickey a tiny bit.

To fit this self-imposed remit, I decided on a format of numerous (well, four) mini-games, all themed around Benedict Cumberbatch's film and TV roles. I ensured each game would be played on a single screen (so no scrolling), had a simple mechanic and could be ended easily (either by dying or running out of time). The goal of each mini-game was simple - get enough points to unlock images in your 'shrine'.

Rewards System:

Teaser icons of the unlocked images. I hid at least one deliberately unflattering image in here.

Each game required a set number of points, unspecified to the player, in order to unlock all of the images. Points were awarded for each level, and ranges were added so that a score of zero would unlock nothing; any scores above this would unlock one to four pictures, depending on which range the player's score for that level fell. Points did not accumulate between levels - to unlock all sixteen images required a good performance on all four levels. The player could visit their shrine after each level and see teasers of what they had managed to unlock; clicking on the teaser image would take the player to the full photograph or animated image.

This worked particularly well (after much banging my head against my desk while trying to make it work); my friend enjoyed the images (as well she should, given the suffering I went through trawling Tumblr to find them) and they provided a good incentive to keep playing the mini-games.

Mini-Games:

There were four different mechanics in total:

• Multiple choice quiz
• Simple item collection platformer
• Spot the Difference quiz
• Single Screen Shoot 'em Up ('Space Invaders' style)

Mini-quiz screen. At least three quarters of the questions were sourced entirely from IMDB.

The quiz only involved four questions, to ease the player into the game and allow them to power through once they've learned the answers (which always happens in quiz games).
Alternatives to this method include:

• A larger bank of questions which are randomly selected - this would delay the repetitive nature of memorising the questions.
• A timed element where the player had to answer as many questions as they could within a specified time frame - this would add to the tension by increasing the risk of making silly mistakes.

Don't be fooled by the cute graphics; this is the most tasteless level in the game.

The item-collection platformer (besides being utterly tasteless) involved very simple controls - left, right and jump, all of which were navigated by the keyboard. the player had to collect as many chocolate bars as possible before the policeman enemy caught them. the player had three lives, and once they were gone the level was over.
Alternatives to this method include:

• A timed element, where the player has to collect as many chocolate bars within a specified time frame - this has the advantage of not putting the player in the position where they have to get themselves caught if they are bored of the level.
• Reduce the number of lives to just one; if the player is caught even once, then the level is over - this has the disadvantage of not allowing the player to get much practice in and get a feel for the level.

A very subtle 'spot the difference' game. Apart from maybe the missing picture.

The 'Spot the Difference' quiz was the only time-drive puzzle of the four (all the others were event-driven). The player had to spot as many of the differences in two sets of pictures within a 90 second period. The player also lost points if they clicked on an incorrect difference.
Alternatives to this method include:

• Making differences more obvious - This would have made the level feel less frustrating (more on that later), but would have been hampered by my own photoshopping skills. Any less subtle changes would have immediately become very obvious simply because they wouldn't have looked like they belonged in the image at all.
• Removing the timed element would have allowed for a more relaxing experience, but then the player would be stuck until they found all the differences. A hint system could have been implemented to counteract this, where the player loses some points in return for a clue.

The sad thing is, I'm the most impressed by the particle effects I managed to implement in this level. 

The 'Space Invaders' style Shoot 'em Up was based on the eponymous classic; the player has to shoot as any of the invaders as they can before they are killed. I deliberately kept the difficulty level of this low due to the fact I was making this game for someone who doesn't really play computer games.
Alternatives to this method include:

• Ramping up the difficulty. Ways in which this could have been achieved include speeding up the enemies' movement and firing rate, and reducing the cover available.
• A timed element could have been added to this game as well, giving the player a short set amount of time to score as many points as possible.

My friend enjoyed the game; she was both entertained and amused by it, so it did the job I intended. Still, I took the time to probe her a bit about what she thought about it, and I got some interesting feedback.
The one thing she mentioned finding 'frustrating' was the Spot the Difference game. This also happened  to be the only timed mini-game of the set; perhaps it was a good idea to not make the levels timed? Although the key thing I took away from this is that the difficulty here spiked too high in comparison to the rest of the game, and that would need to be addressed in any future version of such a game. Although I've touched on this above, here are some ways in which I could have addressed this:

• The differences could have been made more obvious, making the whole game experience easier.
• A hint mode could have been implemented to help the player out at the expense of some points; once the player has gone through the level once, they will be able to remember the differences. 
• Another way to alleviate the difficulty would have been to lower the scoring ranges - this particular mini-game had an unforgiving 100% success rate required to unlock every image. Coupled with the fact that the player lost points for any incorrect guesses, this mini-game stood out as harshly judging the player in comparison with the others.

My friend also mentioned that she couldn't play each level separately. I have to admit, I hadn't even considered this, and decided that four quick mini-games would be the best way to go about things. This meant I completely neglected one of the key purposes of the game - for my friend to gawp at images of Benedict Cumberbatch. Making each level replayable on its own would clearly make this task much easier, given that each level had its own set of unlockable photos.

As an aside, I apparently did well with my collection of unlockable images. As this largely relied on me trawling through Tumblr one night, I swiftly found I had far too many images to choose from and it did require some careful excising to narrow it down to sixteen.

On a more buggy note, she couldn't make the playable character jump in the item-collection platformer. I tested this on two separate computers and hadn't been able to reproduce this, which goes to show how important end user testing is. The trick will be to find a way to cover as many different PC setups as possible; no mean feat. I then found an inconsistent bug on this level where on occasion, the game didn't acknowledge that the player had lost all of their lives. this meant they were stuck unless they closed down the game and started from scratch. Again, extensive user testing is an important thing!

For a first 'proper' game I'm fairly pleased how it turned out, and I definitely learned some important things about game balancing that I can take away for later projects.

Oh, and I also learned that Tumblr is a scary, scary place...

* More on this in a future post.