Overview
Gnomify The World was a game I made alongside four other classmates for our Game Modification Workshop class. I primarily took on the role as one of the game designers for the project, primarily in charge of fine tuning the scoring system, adjusting the spawners we had to control the people and objects that would scroll towards the player, and working with the artist and sound designer to get every visual and auditory asset needed to bring our game to life.
As we were bringing life to this game, we wanted to make sure we were leaning into the wacky and whimsical concept we had decided on. As such, I found myself frequently working alongside and communicating with our artist and sound designer to implement the things they would create and figure out what other things we would want to add to enhance the experience for the player. I would also work and communicate frequently with the programmer to try and solve technical issues that was causing weird issues with the flow of the game so that we could keep the player engaged with the game.
Progression
We had our earliest build about halfway through the class. Many of the core systems and assets had made it in by this point. I had gotten the scoring system built and implemented and created various groups of people for the spawners to spit out at the player. I aimed to create a large enough variety to keep the player engaged and avoid issues I had seen from previous classmates projects. However, no matter how many varieties I put in, those issues were still present.
In the next build, I focused on adding the extra elements that the player could interact with, namely the mailbox and fence. The problem was that I couldn’t just spawn them in on their own since these are items that would be in front of the houses, so I had to get in the logic that would spawn them in with the houses at a random rate, but also get them to move at the same speed as the houses.
An additional thing that I continued working on was trying to make the people being spawned in more believable. On top of adding some more spawn variations, I also included some logic to try and make the people face the direction they were “moving” in on the screen.
By our third build we were reaching the final stretch for the things we wanted to do for this game. After all this time spent messing around with the spawner for the people, I decided to create a second one specifically for individual people. This way, I could have a single person get mixed in with the premade groupings as a way to offer more variety to the player and better hide the groupings.
Additionally, I started looking more into the balancing of the officers, specifically messing around more with their size, speed, spawn rate, and time to appear on the screen from the warning. It felt like the officer kept bouncing between being too quick for the player to react to and being too easy for the player to evade.
For our last build, we aimed to make the final adjustments and add in the final features that we haven’t been able to get in yet. For myself, I added in the logic and UI elements to show off the high score to help offer more reward to the player for playing our game.
Additionally, this was my opportunity to implement the final pieces of art assets and sound assets, specifically implementing the floating police officer to add an extra layer of challenge, as well as implementing the logic and assets to allow the objects and houses to become more “gnomified” as the player gnomifies more people.