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Design Drafts
Before starting development, I drew up design plans and ideas in a notebook. These plans really helped me paint a better picture of what I wanted the final game to look like. A lot of the elements used in these mock ups made it into the final game. The program I used to develop this game was RPGMaker MV which uses JavaScript as its programming language. RPGMaker MV is beneficial to the game I wanted to make as I wanted to make a turn-based RPG from the get go and the program used is ideal for this type of game.
Other software I used to make the game was SublimeText to edit certain JavaScript files, Adobe Photoshop for making sprites and Audacity for creating sound effects and editing some music tracks.
Level Flowchart
Turn-Based Learning
Before the player engages in combat, they first must choose a level of difficulty which will determine how difficult a question can be but also determines how much damage the player will do that turn depending on that difficulty.
The reason I designed it this way was not only is it a simple to understand system, but there is also an element of strategy involved. By choosing a hard question, the player will do more damage but it’s a risk whether or not they get the correct answer as answering incorrectly will result in the player missing their attack, dealing no damage which will let the enemy get an easy hit in, punishing the player.
The opposite is also true by choosing an easy question, since it is easy to answer, it will almost always do damage but the damage it does is minimal but is a much safer method that picking any other difficulty.
Testing
When testing the game, I tried to follow the testing strategies as closely as possible to how they do it in in professional studios. As such, the testing was incremental and was tested as I went along. I made a new prototype for the game every week to not only show my client the progress I had made, but to also make sure the new elements I added did not conflict with ones that were already there so testing was done weekly and extensively on Friday afternoons. My client personally played through each new element of the game I added myself and played the final build to get his approval.
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I wanted people who had no knowledge on how the game was programmed to both play through the game normally and to purposefully find bugs. This was done by two students who were assigned to me to achieve this task. I had chosen them myself because they initially helped me gather questions for the game, so I knew they were not only enthusiastic about the project but also avid fans of games. I gave them the basic rundown of the game and nothing else as I wanted their experience with the game to be as fresh as possible as I did not want to give them any hints were bugs that could be found as they might have focused too much on those elements. In the end however, nothing of note was found wrong with the game, I asked each student to play through the game multiple times, doing different routes to ensure this but luckily nothing fatal was ever found besides some minor text mistakes such as incorrect spelling or formatting.
Reflection
Overall, I am very happy with how the game turned out. My two main goals that both myself and my client wanted to achieve was to make the game fun and engaging while also being informative. I think I have managed to accomplish this as evidence from the two students who were assigned to me and helped with testing. They helped to mould the game into something that their whole class would enjoy so my communication with these students was very impactful and improved the overall product. My client also gave approval and encouragement throughout development and by the end of it, he thought the questions I put into the game were relevant, informative and would stand the test of the time because of the new syllabus being recently updated.