INTRODUCTION
I made this game to stimulate players, with high speed strobe lights and techno music. As someone who loves the disco feel, I wanted to make a game that others who have similar interests would also enjoy playing. This game was built from the same assets from Unity’s Roll-A-Ball tutorial game. The reason behind the decision to use its materials in our game was because, my group liked the simplicity of the play-style and movement of the player and thought it would be a good fit for our game at that time. For our first edition of the game, we were going for a simple, easy game, which would play like Plinko, the player chooses which terminal to drop the ball, which determines which obstacles the ball encounters. If the ball managed to drop in the middle, and collect the coin, they win the level.
The game was still lackluster, after our completion of the first edition of the game and became stale after a few runs. To make this game enjoyable I wanted to add challenge to the mix, and I have done so by making the player have only one chance to move the ball in any direction. That is, once the player presses a directional key, the player cannot move the ball again. This forces the player to make the right move at the right time, which makes the game have some skill involved.
To make the game more of a challenge, the player receives a penalty for hitting an obstacle. In the original version of the game, there were many obstacles, since we were going for a Plinko-like game. This version has few obstacles scattered across the board, since the penalty of hitting a single obstacle would mean the player would have to restart the level. Unless the player has insane reflexes, they must learn the levels obstacle layout through fails, in order to know when to change the balls direction, to pass through all the obstacles.
I wanted this game to be replayable without being the same game played over and over, for once a level is completed the game will randomly generate new obstacles for the next level. But the succeeding levels increase in difficulty; more obstacles are placed, forcing the player to either gain faster reflexes or to learn the layout of the many obstacles in their path.
This game is tailored towards young-adults or teenagers, since the flashing lights may be discomforting for older adults. Even people would not consider themselves as gamers, would get a kick out of this game, since it requires minimal effort to jump into.
RESEARCH
In today's market of games, my game would be classified as hyper-casual. The term hyper casual was coined by app developer, Johannes Heinze, to label games that are lightweight and easy to get into. Hyper-casual games can take a month or even a week to make and depending on how well its day one engagement rate is, the company may scrap the game and start on a new project (Hreninciuc, 2018). Hyper-casual games are made from spontaneous ideas, and easy to make, for why there is so many of them in the market. Since new hyper-casual games are being pushed out, its not efficient for companies to spend resources on holding big evaluations for their games. Instead companies follow concepts around a current trend. Trending games are a good reference to use since it shows what people are looking for in a game (Crump, 2018). Hyper-casual developers focus more on advertising their game than user feedback, since advertising is the best way for their app to get players.
EVALUATION PLAN
Since I am not making profit from my game and want my game to be as enjoyable for the players as can be, I would run an empirical study, for it would be best fit for a simplistic game like this. I would have 4 strangers, within the games tailored age group, participate in a beta test of the game. Participants would spend five minutes playing the game. Since there is not too much to the game, 5 minutes will be plenty of time for participants to provide suffice feedback for improvements. Prior to the participant playing the game, I would encourage them to speak out whatever was on their minds while playing the game, since I wanted to know what the player feels when playing the game. Feedback would be noted throughout the evaluation; whether their feedback was about the art-style or the functionality of the game, if at least 3 of them say the same feedback, I would implement a fix for that. My next run of an evaluation would consist of 4 different people and would run the same way.
Play it for yourself! https://github.com/cybergear791/Unity_Ball_Game
References
Crump, T. (2018, September 27). How to Come Up with Hyper Casual Game Ideas. Retrieved from Build Box.
Hreninciuc, I. (2018, October 5). Hyper-Casual Games 101: How To Get The Most Out Of Your Players. Retrieved from Game Analytics.
