Forest Flash

https://trinitycommdepartment.com/~aramire4/Games/ForestFlash/

Overall vision

• Summary: In my game, you are a disgruntled blogger mad at those who do not believe that you saw monsters in the forest. However, you have a plan to set out into the forest and catalogue all of the monster it has to offer
• Genre: I would place this in the adventure genre, as in my game you have to explore the forest to try and find all of the monsters in it
• Target audience: I would say this game is meant for the 12-25 age range, though I tried to make it mass appealing with the commedic monster entries

Mechanics

• Character Goals: The character is trying to photograph all of the monsters in the forest and escape the forest with these photographs

• Abilities: The character can move in 8 directions, sprint for a short time by holding the space bar, take photographs of monsters with WASD, and see the monsters they’ve photographed by pressing the ESC key

• Obstacles: The monsters in the game can kill the player if they hit the player too many times, there are also some light puzzle elements through the totems. Destroying a certain number of totems makes the last monster appear on the map in a given area

• Items: The character collects photographs of monsters in the forest, having a certain number and escaping the forest wins the game

• Resources: The player has to manage their health remaining, along with the amount of sprint they have left in the event that a monster gets too close to them.

Dynamics

• User Interaction: keyboard is needed to play this game. Specifically: WASD, arrow keys, space bar, enter key, and the escape key. There is a control screen that shows the player what keys they can use.
• Proficiency: The player needs to have quick reflexes in order to take a quick picture of the monster, and then run away.
• Gameplay data: Health, amount the player can run, and the monsters the player has found are all displayed for the player to see. Health and amount the player can run are both located on the UI layer at the bottom. The monsters photographed are located on the pause screen, moving through it will show the player bios of the monsters and add a little bit of story to my game.
• Controlling the game: The user can pause the game by pressing the ESC key, and resume the game by pressing the ESC key again. 

Aesthetics

• Overall: My game has an adventure style similar to a game like the 2D legend of Zelda games. 
• Game Art: My game uses 16 bit pixel graphics for the majority of things in it, however due to not being able to find certain monster graphics on itch.io or open game art.org, I had to mix game art styles for a few of the monsters. The wraith and phoenix come to mind and they are realistic and 8 bit respectively
• Sound: The game has an ambient soundtrack of soft-blowing winds, with the occasional haunting sound when certain actions happen (player breaks a totem, player loses a life). I want to put more sounds in this game to correspond to given monsters, so that the forest feels more lively.
• Plot: You are a blogger for the city’s best and only blog for all things mysterious. Your name has been slandered though, as internet trolls call you crazy for believing in things like ghosts and goblins. Your public demands proof, and as a reputable journalist, you take your camera and your courage to the haunted forest in order to photograph monsters to prove the haters wrong. 
• Emotional State: My game tries to provoke a sense of wonder, to make the player want to find all of the monsters the forest has to offer. At times it also tries to convey a feeling of suspense, however I feel like my game is lacking in that emotion at the time of writing this.
• Fun: One thing I set out to do with this game is create a collect-a-thon gameplay mixed with horror. I feel like the collecting aspect of the game is solid source of fun, especially with the journal entries with each monster. The map is also very big, to make the player feel like they are in a winding and confusing forest. Fun can come from this feeling that you are lost and exploring the forest. A little extra source of fun is the camera ability. I tried to pick a shutter sound to go with the camera “attack” that made it feel satisfying to use. In my opinion, these all these things accumulate to make the game as fun as it is. The only thing I might add to increase the fun is to add more monsters (currently I have 14), add some more puzzles, and also make some of the monsters feel distinctly different.  

Credits

I found the assets for the environments from finalbossblues ashland tileset from itch.io (https://finalbossblues.itch.io/ashlands-tileset). I got the asset for the character, the exit arrows, and character death from Maytch’s 16×16 8 directional characters on itch.io ( https://maytch.itch.io/free-16×16-pixel-art-8-directional-characters). The ambient sound and the sound that plays when the player interacts with monsters was from spicyoverlord’s “scary ambient sounds” on itch.io https://spicyoverlord.itch.io/scary-ambient-sounds. The other sound I used was a camera flash, which I got from camera-sound-pack from calltheforest on itch.io  https://calltheforest.itch.io/camera-sound-pack. The enemies were taken from a variety of places. Elthen’s pixel art shop on itch.io gave me the sprites for the totem, imp and leaf elemental https://elthen.itch.io/. E bros assets from itch.io gave me the wraith sprite https://e-bros-assets.itch.io/top-down-rpg-enemy-2-animated-8-directions. I got the goblin sprite from William Thompsoj on opengameart.org https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-goblin. I got the wartaur sprite from Evert on opengameart.org https://opengameart.org/content/wartotaur-4-directions. I got the ghost/rogue sprite from zBlogger on opengameart.org https://opengameart.org/content/animated-rogue-extra. The phoenix sprite I got from chaser gaming on itch.io https://chasersgaming.itch.io/pheonix. I got the scarecrow sprite from isMartal from itch.io https://ismartal.itch.io/2d-animated-halloween-characters.The red demon sprite I got from markiro on itch.io  https://markiro.itch.io/red-demon-sprites. I got the skeleton sprite from Jesse Munguia on itch.io https://jesse-m.itch.io/skeleton-pack. I got the zombie sprite from finalgates Studio on itch.io https://finalgatestudios.itch.io/undead-sprite-pack. The heart UI sprite was taken from gpway on itch.io https://gpway.itch.io/2d-pixel-heart. The background were taken from itch.io. One was from ansimuz  https://ansimuz.itch.io/mountain-dusk-parallax-background and the other from digital moons https://ansimuz.itch.io/mountain-dusk-parallax-background.

Reflection
Making this game taught me a lot about Construct and the game making process. I learned about utility that construct has that I previously was unaware of, like the functions system. I also learned from the articles to make the game is steps in a way to keep it playable through development. This kept my project organized and testable through all stages of development. I also learned how to effectively modify my project to suit my needs as a developer. I scaled my project down from the initial gameplay and story, to make Forest Flash, a forest exploring adventure game with collect-a-thon aspects in it.