Entry Gold: Week 12

Reflection:

This week, my team and I have begun working on the final project for class. On all the other projects so far, I have worked alone for them so I hadn't truly gotten a more realistic sense of what to expect. However, for this assignment I have gotten to see how a lot of the elements we have learned, throughout the readings and such, form together. With each of us having our assigned tasks, the art design of the world and characters for one of my teammates. Creating the prototype and play testing it, going off to another teammate. While, I work on the overall vision and design of the game MDA, as well as writing the GDD, and so forth. We have come together several times already to brainstorm and figure out what we want as well as what works and what doesn't. Having other people that also have a deep understanding of games, to be there and notice loopholes and possible issues, is what I have found most important from the experience. Especially, since I am having to oversea all of the parts and make sure everything gets done the way it needs to.

Being that one day I want to make my own games, I think all of these experiences are important. Because, we have to find a way to make sure everyone is on the same page and that the overall objectives for our game are being completed. Plus, while I do best in leadership positions I do understand this won't be handed to me, as it will have to be worked towards. And in making the GDD, it is expanding my mind even further because, with the last one we did, it was on a game that already existed. For this one though, it is on a game concept that does not yet exist and therfore takes a lot more to have to consider. But, still, I am excited for this, as the more I learn the better I become as a game designer.

Experience:

This week, I played Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (the demo) on the Nintendo Switch; this is considered hack and slash. While I don't have too many games in this genre it definitely isn't a genre that I dislike. On top of this, this was my first play experience in the series. Being a huge Legend of Zelda fan, I was really excited to be able to play as the female characters, something that I've been complaining about forever. I started it up and was immediately launched in a cutscene which gives context to what is happening to Hyrule and about the Guardian. It afterwards throws us into the action, where we start off as Link, per usual. The controls are relatively easy to follow and they do slightly change for the different characters, as I got to also play as young Impa.

While, I overall, think the game wasn't too bad, I couldn't help but notice myself getting rather bored pretty quickly. While, of course, it was the demo, I found the gameplay to be rather repetitive. I understand that in a hack and slash, there is going to be a lot of--well, ya know, hacking and slashing; however, the main issue I had was that I didn't really feel it. Comparing to some other games in the genre, there was a lot more aggression put into the character's actions as well as more dramatic elements added that caused each hit received and given, to be more impactful; something, I did not feel with this game however. On top of that, there isn't any real challenge, other than a sea of mindless enemies that die almost instantaneously. I think the main problem here, which I want to carry over into my games is that, they made the game too much of its genre. I feel like they tried so hard to make it a hack and slash rather than more than that, that the story and the characters fall short and the game feels flat. Yes, we are killing in a sense, just a sea of enemies but making it so obviously so without even trying to add more differentiations or challenge to these kills completely ruined the experience for me. Enough so, that I couldn't get myself to continue the demo nor purchase the game.