Beginning Phase 3:

If I am to follow my passion, which naturally has been very ambitious, I would look to prototype and later develop the multiplayer hide and seek game. However, due to an abundance of limitations and additional challenges that I would face during its development, I have decided to put that project on the shelf. Out of the long list of ideas remaining, I had a clear understanding that doing an abstract game was not something I would be comfortable with. My new goal was to create something that would be effective as a portfolio piece - showcasing my skills, whilst being a fun short game with movement being the core mechanic of the game. To assist my eventual selection of which 3 games to take forward, I created a small questionnaire [see here].

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To summarize, the top 3 were:

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1. Nuclear Reactor (35.3%)

2. Playing as an animal (23.5%)

3. Maze game (17.6%)

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Out of all the options I provided, I personally thought the nuclear reactor idea would be most interesting. I was a little disappointed that playing as an animal came second - it doesn't feel super imaginative. To add to this point, I feel that once you get familiar with the movement of another animal, it will be tricky to upkeep the player's interest. I feel as people, we have a wide arsenal of movement capabilities, when comparing to popular animal choices such as cats and dogs. I also feel that creating a game which explores animal movement too soon after the release of the game "Stray" will only hinder me. Another challenge which the maze game shares with the animal one, there is no clear sense of direction. Within my questionnaire, I attempted to dive deeper into what would be fun for the player to experience, and for the majority of the responses they mentioned different features. Adding lots of different options, customizations, complex puzzles, rotations etc is very complex to develop. Hence, I'm leaning towards not taking ambiguous ideas forward.

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I have decided to prototype the following ideas:

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1. Nuclear Reactor

2. Prison Escape

3. Animal Parkour

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I selected "Nuclear Reactor" 1st as I have the clearest vision as well as I feel good / invested in this idea the most out of the possible options remaining. My second is one that I did not put on the quiz as I felt it was a safe game idea; that I can also visualize. Furthermore, after discussing it with people from varying age groups (11 - 42) they all agreed it could be an interesting concept to develop into a fun little game. I was then left with my 3rd and final choice. A maze or animal game were my two possible choices. My final thoughts before selecting animal parkour was that, it can be argued, every parkour game features maze-esque features (multiple paths which branch off and might not lead you to the "end"). The definition of maze is slowly changing and being modernized as there are less real authentic mazes existing within the real world. For that reason, puzzles inspired by tall bush/hedge surrounded paths are becoming digital abstract interpretations but still put under the same category of "maze".