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I created a simple story board for one of the two gameplay loop ideas detailed in the previous post, while I'm not 100% sure that I'll be sticking with this idea it was helpful to create a very simple demo of how some of the core gameplay might function.


For this idea the colour palettes and vibrance of the scenes is very important to me, I wanted to show how the visuals of the present are strikingly different from those of the past, so I created a colour board contrasting the two.


The weather of the present is also an important factor to creating the desired atmosphere, as such the past should be overcast and dark, as a form of pathetic fallacy showing the feeling of a depressing present, so commonly associated with nostalgia, conversely the past is bright, sunny and warm.

Updated: Jan 25, 2021

A gameplay loop is the heart of what your players will experience, there can be multiple simultaneous gameplay loops at differing levels, i.e. minigames and sub mechanics.


In essence it is a description that ties a player’s motivation, the risks they take, the satisfaction they feel in the rewards they receive, to an activity the player completes in the game.


A typical gameplay loop consists of

  1. Activity and risk

  2. Reward

  3. Opportunity

  4. Loop


For my game concept I generated two possible ideas for gameplay loops, based off one of the ideas we shared with the class last week.


I chose to do this around my first idea, of using 'second hand nostalgia', essentially using projection to allow a player to experience the feelings of a fictitious character.

  • Activity: you explore someones old PC, possibly your own old PC, finding their messages and diary entries etc, you see what they were doing when they stopped using the PC x years ago. You have to unlock the various segments of the pc by going through their info to find passwords / locations etc.

    • Risk: Missing out on some important information that gives knowledge of the characters or facilitates progression.

    • Reward: You find out more about this person, you experience their joy through their recorded experiences and feel nostalgia for this time before which you are exploring

    • Opportunity: You unlock new parts of the PC as you go through

    • Gameplay may be similar to A Normal Lost Phone



  • Activity: You explore your childhood home, its large and rambling, you get lost easily, when you find yourself at an obstacle you flash back and remember yourself as a child playing in that area, you adventure through this section, your childish imagination realised in gameplay and fantastic adventures. By completing the childhood memories you remember how certain aspects of the house work or where to go.

  • Risk: Being unable to complete the puzzles and adventures of the childhood memories

  • Reward: you experience childhood imaginary adventures, learning about your characters childhood, personality, and the house they grew up in.

  • Opportunity: you unlock new areas of the house to explore and remember

I

worked through the unity learn tutorial, 'Creator Kit: Beginner Code' over the course of the week. While some of the concepts it covered had already been taught to me last year, it did give me a better understanding of these things, especially functions and classes.


I found the tutorial to be surprisingly confusing, further highlighting my weakness in this area of expertise. While it did teach me a lot about the concepts of scripting for unity, I still felt very under equipped to start work on any of the aspects of my end goal project. As such the next tutorial I have chosen to work through, beginner scripting (https://learn.unity.com/project/beginner-gameplay-scripting) looks to be more oriented in building scripts from scratch.

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