SUMMARY
Type: Videogame / Game Jam
Completed: Released
Acquirable: Itch.io (Windows 7+)
My Role: Programming, Art, UX and Quality Assurance
Time Frame: Part-Time 3 Days
What is Quest Quest
Quest Quest was a 3 day game jam for the keyword 'town'. The goal was to create a game of sorts that features or is set around a town.
Quest Quest was a 3 day game jam for the keyword 'town'. The goal was to create a game of sorts that features or is set around a town.
At its core, Quest Quest is simply a fetch quest. It's gameplay loop is talk to a NPC, gather objects and then return to said NPC. In a large project, it is common sight to have a quest log, quest trees and whole menu systems based around this but typically these aspect are just part of the game, not the entire game of such a small scope such as Quest Quest.
UX Design
Some of the UI is used to display environment states to the player. In instances where a quest is available, an exclamation mark will appear above an NPC's head, if nothing is available the symbol will disappear. The idea is to communicate what is and isn't available without a string of dialogue.
When a player forgets or is unsure of what they need they most likely will do one of two things, run around until they remember which is possible due to the core UI elements popping up over interactable items if they're needed and the other is if the player is idle. When the player is idle, the constant UI on the screen depicting the needed item, expands out to show more information on the quest.
Idle and near a quest NPC
Moving and near an unavailable quest NPC
Level Design
This project is locked perspective in the sense of the player cannot controller the camera, the camera is simply tied to the player character with a slight delay. With this in mind, I was able to plan exactly what a player would see and guide them to areas of interest.
Objects at environmental choke points point to the desired area for the player, using juxtaposition of objects to frame the scene. An example would be when I used buildings as a large, hard and simple object to draw a line towards the point. I used fence lines starting where the player is to draw the players yes towards a destination and I used a different ground texture to make said area pop out - in this example I used a muddy ground to pop out from the green grass.
Some NPC's are scattered out in the middle ground to draw the player to the right area, giving a more apparent reason to progress via NPC interaction.
Level composition of an area in Quest Quest
Quality Assurance
As this is a game jam with such a short time frame, I had to work with the assumption that some things would get past. I essentially had half a day of effective QA for this project. Using the desktop I developed this for, a controller, a laptop and a Macbook I tested how the project performed and felt.
In this instance I found that when using a controller, the movement animation doesn't begin instantly at full speed as opposed to when using a keyboard, so the audio timing would be out of sync as it was timed to a random float time instead of distance.
