Week 2- Prototype 2
Concepting
For our second week of production, we decided to begin again with brainstorming, keeping the extra ideas from week 1 as a backup. A lot of those ideas were rather similar--two-player asymmetric competitive games. We wanted to make something different for the second prototype and really wanted to challenge ourselves. After spending a lot of time debating until one idea stood out, we realized that we were all very interested in alchemy and potions, so we decided to make a game focused around potion making.
Potion Seller
Potion Seller is a 3D platforming shop management game. Playing as an alchemist’s apprentice, you must keep the potion shop running while figuring out a cure to return your master to normal after he turned himself to gold in the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone. Needing to make potions quickly and accurately, the player must balance the customer’s requests while searching for a reversal potion, all while keeping the shop from getting shut down. It is a game of responsibility and exploration.
While the game idea itself is not difficult to implement, we chose to make the prototype in Unreal, and engine that most of the team has had little to no experience working in. Our programmer was very nervous for this prototype, only ever having worked in Unity, but Unreal has a great art pipeline and tools for level design.
My contributions:
Concepting
Screen visualizations
Controller layout
Level design
Placing art assets
Audio
In the end, the game had only potion making implemented. The player could move around the multitiered level, collecting ingredients and dropping them into the cauldrons to create a potion. Although we were not able to implement any of the shop management aspects, the team worked really hard and the prototype looked good for what we had.
Final Thoughts
With most of the team unfamiliar with Unreal and visual scripting, we all pulled together and worked hard, helping each other however we could. We did not get a lot of the mechanics that we wanted implemented, but we took a risk and I think we succeeded.
