Intro:

For this game, our approach to the game was to build a mobile game where it does not contain violent action or environment. Furthermore, we decided to have a theme of fantasy where the player can explore the world of floating islands. Since our group was determined to eliminate the combat system, we particularly wanted to implement riddles as the main obstacle of the game. 

With that approach in mind, we decided to create our concept as an exploration of a dying world and help weakened God unlock 3 ingredients to help revive the world. Within 3 ingredients, we added 3 riddles along with puzzles to unlock them. Amaranthus was inspired by the calm ambiance of Oxenfree, and environment design of the game Labyrinth. 

Everyone in our group contributed to coding and concept design, but JustinaY was more focused on environment design, Nicole Polidore focused on dialogue and sprites and ysong focused on character design.

What went right:

The visuals in our game were what we wanted to achieve. A very simple environment with a strict color scheme. The ambience and mood of the world came across to the player very clearly as abandoned and mysterious. The gameplay of the riddles was another component that went according to plan. We wanted the main part of the gameplay to be solving riddles in order to unlock the ingredients and we were able to successfully achieve that. Also adding in the notes of the past villagers was a success because it gave the player another thing to look to in the world as well as to give them a backstory on what has happened in this environment. 

What went wrong:

Some things we didn’t achieve well was the UI. The inventory box seemed out of place and separate from the world. Rather, it should blend in. Adding darker colors or make it have more of a contrast will allow the UI to look aesthetically and visually comprehensive. Furthermore, the movement animation isn't as smooth as we wanted it to be. Through tweaking and polishing, we would be able to make the walking animation stop when it gets into contact with walls and other objects. With the ambience, we could’ve also made it continuous and play throughout each scene rather than it restarting everytime you go to a different scene. Sourcetree also proposed a lot of issues as we couldn’t work on the same scene like what we have done with Unity Cloud. We had scenes deleted, merge conflicts and confusion that didn't allow us to be as productive as we wanted to because we had to figure these issues out first. Since we weren't allowed to work on the same scene as well, it was harder to collaborate within Unity at some points. 

Next Steps:

In a future iteration, we would definitely develop the story further, since we have a straightforward storyline. This will improve the short playtime and grab the player’s attention. Another thing we would like to add is more obstacles and detailed decorations of the game. Due to time constraint, we had to eliminate some obstacles and decorations, so adding more details to the game will enhance the visual element as well as the experience of the game. Since this was our first time building a mobile game, we did not encounter that the main character would look smaller in the phone screen. Therefore, for the next step, we will size up the main character to make it stand out. When we develop the game further for the future iteration, there would be more items to pick up, therefore adding the advanced inventory system will help the player to organize the items. Lastly, We would like to improve the animation of the main character.

What we Learned:

Sourcetree was a new software and way of source control we all had to learn. It was very confusing and frustrating at first, just like many new things, but after a while, it started to become easier to incorporate into our workflow. Moreover, creating a mobile game was a new platform we built on. It presented new challenges however, we were able to learn from these challenges. For example, figuring out the resolution, how to program and figure out player movement on the phone, and build around the small screen the phone provided us.