Postmortem

POSTMORTEM:

Success:

The successes we had for developing this crazy mummy mystery adventure game were that the different maze scenes had good navigation, creativity in its obstacles and traps, and also had a meaningful narrative style design where the player could learn about the game just by experiencing each maze level. Some successes included how we successfully developed logic and design for the spike traps where if the player gets hit by the spike traps, the player has to restart at the beginning of each level. Also, the swing traps were successfully developed and designed to be automatically moving and decrease the player's health whenever the player makes contact with the swing traps. The poison dart traps on each level were successfully designed and developed so that the darts are automatically thrown and the darts decrease the player's health whenever the player is hit by poison darts. The sleep darts trap was also successfully designed and developed to automatically be thrown and have the player paused from motion when the sleep darts hit the player. The mini map was also successfully developed to help the player be aware about surrounding enemies and be more prepared to navigate around other maze obstacles. Also, the logic for the health bar was a success because whenever the player would be hit by one of the traps, the player's health decreases. The lighting emitted from the player and developing a dark setting for the game was also a success to match the theme of the game and to increase difficulty for the player by not giving the player full visibility of all surrounding obstacles and traps. Throughout each of the maze levels, the player was successfully designed so that they had to collect different keys before being able to unlock the doors on each level. The player also was successfully developed to maintain health by avoiding obstacles like traps and following enemies that would encourage them to maneuver better throughout the maze levels. Also, another success was designing the scenes so that the players had more motivation to explore the entire level because of how the keys and walls  were placed all around the maze levels. The player’s surroundings helped give hints as to how the player should move towards collecting keys and every level required different navigation skills from the player so that the player would be able to avoid obstacles and traps. 

Setbacks:

The challenges for this crazy mummy mystery adventure game was designing each of the smaller traps and automatically following enemies and having it mesh well with the player’s ability to navigate. There would be obstacles that would interfere a lot with the player’s overall game experience because designing the maze with obstacles and other traps or barriers would make it more difficult than intended. Also, developing the swing traps was challenging because during testing,  some of the swing traps were not restarting the player as expected. The poison dart traps on each level was challenging to develop because sometimes during testing, the darts would not be thrown automatically or did not decrease the player's health. Also, it was challenging to fit the maze level design into the mini map because whenever we tried to make a larger area maze level with more maze walls, traps, and obstacles, it would not be seen correctly in the mini map because the area of the maze level was too large. We had to adjust the maze level's area by changing the position and size of many of the maze walls so that the maze level could be smaller so that it fits within the view of the mini map. It was also challenging to develop the logic for collecting all keys to unlock the door because the player would sometimes be able to go through the door at the end of a level as if the door wasn't there and even after the player did not collect all of the keys. and it was also challenging to determine how many obstacles or traps should be placed near the keys so that each level maintains its expected difficulty. 

Lessons learned

We learned that continuous testing of this mummy maze game was necessary because many of the different spike, swing, poison dart and sleep dart traps would be designed well but its functionality would not work well during initial testing by users. Sometimes, the spike and swing traps would not properly affect the player's health and the poison dart and sleep dart traps would not be throwing the darts as expected or the darts would not affect the player's health. Also, testing showed how changing the visibility of each maze level was important for the game's narrative of having mystery. From this, we understood how important the lighting was for this game because the player should not have full visibility of their surroundings to add more difficulty so that following enemies or traps can more easily decrease the player's health and affect the player's ability to finish the level. Also, we learned that having too many automatically following enemies that instantly tried to attack the player was not the ideal scenario for users because having too many instantly following enemies often had the enemies collide with each other or too many enemies were trying to collide with the player at the same time, and this created too much crowding, interfered too much with the player's ability to navigate around enemies, and created too much distraction for the user during gameplay. When too many enemies would instantly follow the player, the player would be frozen or stuck as many enemies were trying to attack the player at the same time.  Instead, we decided to put different types of enemies where one would by the instantly following enemy and other enemies that would only follow and attack the player when the player came within close range of that enemy. This decreased overcrowding of enemies on the screen and improved the gameplay for the users who could more easily navigate around the level and around enemies. 

Next Steps: 

Possible future revisions for this crazy mummy mystery adventure game include adding more features to the player’s surroundings including animations related to the player’s health. Also, another revision would be having the keys be in hidden areas where it is not initially visible by the player. Another revision would be having secret doors and disappearing obstacles in the maze where players would have the opportunity to find easier routes around the treasure hunt maze levels. Players would be able to try and pass through barriers and obstacles directly instead of having to navigate longer paths around the obstacles. Another revision for this game would be adding more visible text feedback for the player when they cannot get through obstacles, take too long moving through the levels, and when the player reaches the doors at the end of each level. Also, another revision would be adding a time factor to each of the maze levels where the player would have to complete each maze level in a specified amount of time. Other revisions would be changing the placement of specific harder obstacles like the following enemies and keeping the doors on each level further away from keys.