A Hero Through Time

https://trinitycommdepartment.com/~jmeyer1/Hero%20Through%20Time/

Game Design Document:

Overall Vision:

• My game is titled A Hero Through Time where the player has 30 seconds to defeat a dragon. The Player can encounter and fight enemies to gain gold to increase strength armor and reset the 30 seconds. The player has to fight through waves of enemies to get to the final dragon and defeat him before the timer is up
• The game is a fast-paced action RPG
• The target audience is everyone.

Mechanics:

• The character has to touch enemy sprite to engage in combat. The player then has to press spacebar a certain number of times, depending on the enemy, to defeat them and gain gold. With that gold, the player enters towns to spend it on strength and armor to get stronger. Eventually, the dragon spawns and the player must defeat him.
• The character can move with arrow keys and press the spacebar to attack. The player can use left click to buy in the shop
• There are multiple strategies in how to spend gold, some may want armor so they don’t have to buy health as much while some will buy strength to defeat the stronger enemies faster to gain more gold and fight more enemies. There are choices to how the character wants to spend gold or play the game. Some can play safe and refresh the timer often while some will use it all the way up before refreshing to get the most gold possible.
• They can get swords Armor Health or Time and it’s accessed through the shop. To access the shop the player has to walk to a city icon on the map.
• Strength Armor health and time all have to be managed with Time being the most important.

Dynamics:

• The player needs a computer. They will use arrow keys to move and space bar when in combat. When the player is in the shop they will use the mouse to click on items to buy. In combat, an icon with the spacebar is presented so the player knows what to do in combat
• To become proficient at the game, the player not only needs to hit the spacebar really fast but also be able to manage their time. There are many strategies to use in the game and finding on that works for the player so they can stay strong and keep resetting the time is best.
• Gameplay data is strength, armor, health, and time. Enemies also store data for how much gold they give upon death and how many spacebar taps it takes to defeat them. The enemy’s stats are kept a secret from the player until defeat where the player can see how much gold is earned. The player can see through icons and numbers at the top where a UI bar is how much strength armor health and gold they have. A giant timer is ticking down in the top middle of the screen.
• The player hits Spacebar to start and reset the game after death

Aestheics:

• The game has a very fantasy RPG feel to it with character stats to maintain and multiple enemies to fight in a fantasy world
• The game uses pixel art while very bright colors and a big map with different terrain. Enemies are all pixel and there are 76 different kinds of enemies to see
• There is background music that is very western-fantasy. I picked it cause it sounds like it’s from an RPG and its fast-paced which fits the pace of the game.
• A dragon is coming to destroy the world in 30 seconds and you are a hero that can manipulate time. You must train in order to defeat the boss and save the world in 30 seconds.
• Stress. The game is very stressful as you see the time ticking down and the player makes last-minute saves by resetting the time.
• Its very rewarding to beat the game. Although stressful while playing the ability to breathe at the end of the game makes it very rewarding.

Credit:

• The music is called Killer Tracks by Three Crowns that I got on Youtube for free.  The background hex tiles are made by CuddlyCloud and I designed the map layout. Monster sprites were created by neoriceisgood through DeviantArt.

Reflection:

I had a good time creating this game. After my last game, I knew the struggles of making games on a bigger scale so I decided to make something simple yet addicting. Arrays saved me a large amount of time due to their usefulness. Besides that, the rest of the code was very simplistic and easy. The biggest challenged I had was changing layouts so many times. I could not destroy the player because it would lose all its stats but I could not make it a global variable or it would show up in layouts I don’t want it to. To get over this, I basically disabled the player character. I made the player invisible with disabled controls and get rid of collisions or else it would be stuck in the shop or sometimes on enemies. Another large trouble I had came after I finished the game where I had to balance it. It’s very easy making the game impossible and too easy, but very hard to make it challenging and fun. I messed with the math for the player strength and armor many times and tested to make sure I could find a balance of it being fun and challenging. I feel like keeping it simple helped me a lot and saved me time. By this project I feel like making things in construct 3 takes little time. Implementing code goes by very quickly once you know how to deal with it. Problem solving also became easier as time went on. I loved making games and i cant wait to continue making them in the future.