Game Idea Research

After all the research and brainstorming last week, I've finally decided on the game I would like to try to develop. This was a hard choice for me as I was excited about all four game ideas. I really liked the overall idea of a horror game but decided against it due to it possibly being too much of a challenge. I thought the racing game idea was interesting but never really got me excited, so that left the maze game and the puzzle room game. I looked at both ideas and made the hard decision of going with the puzzle room game.  I thought both ideas were strong and very doable, but the idea of making a puzzle game excited me slightly more than designing up a maze and possibly having some horror elements. Overall, I would have loved to do all four but because I have to chose one, it was always going to be the puzzle room game. 

An image of a mysterious door  

Source: Pixabay

Mechanics 

Player Movement: 

The first mechanic is an easy one, its the mechanic of player movement. For my game idea, movement is the basis of everything in the game. The player takes control of the avatar and then searches throughout the room in a first person perspective. This would not be possible without the mechanic of player movement. 

An image of a game avatar moving

Source: Hackaday

For this mechanic I will need the camera positioned In a first person perspective and then have the player be able to move the camera in any direction they see fit, without the avatar actually moving position. This will allow for the player to look around the room. I would then need to be able to have the avatar move when the player wants them to move. This will be controlled by the player, allowing them to move around the rooms to search for the keys. 

Other then these two types of player movement mechanics, I thing that is all I would need for my game to be playable. I did some research online to learn more about basic game mechanics and I came across this article on "Game Design", which talks about the mechanic of player movement. 

Interaction:

For my game idea, interaction is a huge part of the gameplay. I want to add a mechanic for the player to interact with the in game objects, such as boxes and other stationary obstacles. This interaction would be to pick up and move them or maybe to observe them from different angles. The interaction mechanic would be part of the controls that when clicked, would allow you to move or pick up objects. 

An image of a man moving boxes

Source: Needpix

The interaction mechanic would also be used to pick up the keys, open the drawers, to open the main doors and so on, which would allow you to proceed to the next room. This mechanic would allow me to get very creative with my puzzle designs. This mechanic would also be the big gameplay mechanic within the game. The overall idea of my game isn't this intense action packed shooter, it's meant to be a creative puzzle game, so I will have to try and use the interaction mechanic in interesting ways to try and achieve my goal. 

I went searching for information based on the interaction mechanic but couldn't find much. I did find this article talking about the "Designing your game mechanics based in types of players" and based on this, the type of player to play my game would be the explorer, which according to this, love the interaction mechanic, allowing them to explore and interact with the game world. 

Flashlight: 

Within my game, there's not much mechanics that seem to be needed from what I can think. This last mechanic idea is sort of a wildcard to change up the overall feel of the game and make it harder. This mechanic is the flashlight mechanic. So the idea behind this is to add a flashlight to the game, to allow for some interesting scenarios. 

This mechanic would allow me to possibly make a dark room, which the player would have to use the flashlight to find the key. This would be considered a lot harder than the previous rooms the player has searched, changing the game up in an interesting way. It would allow for a difficulty spike and for a different puzzle idea, which I think could be very interesting. I could also implement the flashlight into the other rooms as well, as the player may have to search dark corners in their hunt for the keys. 

An image of a flashlight, in a video game

Source: Flickr

I found this article talking about the flashlight in gaming "The Best Horror Game Weapon is a Flashlight". It was a very interesting read and gave me a lot of insight into the use of flashlights within games. The article talks about its use in horror games but it is still mainly used for exploration, which is what I plan to use it for. 

Overall, these are the three game mechanics that come to mind when I think about developing my game. I may think of others in the near further but as off now, I really like the idea off each of these three mechanics.