Video Game Evaluation

Dan Bell

Comparison to Original Intentions• Do your planning documents reflect your final game concept• In my planning I said that I wanted to make a game called ‘Stop Mr. Franks’ which was

to be about a crazy school teacher who kidnaps some children and takes them to his dungeon. You were to play as Andy whose aim was to save them. In my actual production I made a series of graphics that supported this. My game like my planning is in 2D side scroll, it has a sky, a health bar, a floor and a time limit.

• Did you make any changes? Why? I included the specification of what level you were on, this is to make the player aware of where about in the game they are. On my game over screen I decided to include 3 sad children crying to make you feel the need to continue playing the game. For the opening video of my game I decided to make the school just to set the scene and set you underway with your challenge.

Fitness for Purpose• Did you complete your project according to the brief? Look at Task 15 on the Video

Game Brief on Blackboard and compare your work with what you were asked to produce.

• The brief told me that I needed to produce a series of assets for my video game. It also stated that there needed to be a direct correlation between my planning and my actual production. Finally it told me that my production has to reflect professional conventions. I have produced at least 1 asset of all the ones it suggested I complete. There is also not that much difference between my planning and my production, I just made a few small tweaks to make the assets look more appealing, these include the sad children on the game over screen. However I do not feel as though my work matches professional conventions. This is because a professional game would try to make characters look as human like as possible whereas my assets do not look very human at all. I stated that my target audience was 16-19 year old males. Despite all the negatives to my work I do feel as though my game will appeal to them as there is a lot of gore and violence featured and the thought of them being able to use guns will give them a sense of escapism.

Technical Qualities• Is your work technically proficient? Do your graphics and animations reflect

professional conventions? Compare your graphics and animations to existing products.

• Discuss the strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement.• My game is very similar to how Mario would look, however in comparison to Mario

my graphics are absolutely awful. Mario’s graphics are very consistent however there is no consistency at all with my graphics. It does have its strengths however, in that my environment and loading screen (school bus) are up to a good standard as is the box art of the game. However the rest of my assets in my opinion are nothing short of disgraceful. I feel as though I have failed to live up to my expectations and the majority of my assets are very poor. I think this is because I have not been very consistent with my designs, my game is a 2D side scroll but most of the characters are facing forwards which should not be the case. This could be fixed by having a second attempt at my graphics. I would probably do my characters sideways on in order to create consistency and I would make a few more things in the background of my levels.

Aesthetic Qualities• Does your work look good? What aspects of your game’s visuals do you

like? What would you improve? How would you improve it?• Most of my work as stated is of a ridiculously poor standard. The parts of

my work that I did like however were assets such as the chainsaw which was made to look like it was actually moving. I also like the way my box art looks. If I could improve my background I would perhaps include more detail on the back case. In my game I quite like the way level 1 is set up though it is a bit bland. I would include more landscape in this to make it look more appealing.

Generating Ideas• How were you at developing ideas for your game? Did you produce a lot of ideas or could you have

developed them further?• Why was generating ideas important to your project?• What were the strengths, weaknesses and areas for development regarding you idea generation• My ideas for the game were of a good quality and they were easy to follow. An example of this is my main

enemy (Mr. Franks) the idea was to make him look a little bit creepy and suspicious. To do this I gave him a very evil looking smile and the facial hair to go with it. His eyebrows go diagonally to make him have an evil look about it. Another idea which worked was the idea of the scenery getting more grim as you go through the game. As you can tell there is a significant difference in mood between level 1 and level 22, there is a much darker feel to level 22 and the scenery is a lot more grey which suggests that you’re near the dungeon. I think I could have done a lot better on the rest of my characters as I feel that they are of a very poor quality, I could have done more to make all my characters look the same. Barry and Andy are of a dreadfully poor standard. I feel as though I could have experimented with more designs for my characters in order to find the design that I feel would have best suited that character.

Time Management• Did you manage your time well? Did you complete your project on time or

would your assets have improved with additional time?• What would you have done if you had more time to produce your work?• I did everything that I needed to do in the time I was given to complete

the project. I think given more time I would have made the dungeon. The idea of the dungeon is that it is Mr. Franks’ secret hideout but given that you have been following him you find where it is. I would also have made the final level where you have to fight Mr. Franks in order to save the children. I would also have put more detail into the soldiers to make them look more realistic. If I had set myself a time schedule to structure my work I feel as though my work would have been of a far superior quality.