Final Game

For your final game, you will be working in teams on an idea selected from our suggestion box.

Your goal is to start with a fork of the game6 base code (or, really, any of our base code), and develop a new game which will be released to the public at our our Friday, December 9th Final Game Release Party.

To get there, there are a few steps:

Idea Selection + Team Formation [In-Class, Thursday, October 13th]

We will select ideas from a list of suggestions (created from responses to this form). Selection will proceed in two rounds:

1. Culling round. Ideas will be shown one-by-one. If any member of the class votes "keep" on a card, that card will be kept. Otherwise, it will be discarded.
2. Selection round. Ideas will be shown one-by-one. Any idea with 3 or 4 votes gets made (by the folks that voted for it). Any card with more gets put on the bottom of the stack. Any card with fewer gets eliminated.

Bonus Ideas: The ith game of n games will receive n-i bonus ideas. Bonus ideas will be taken from the pile of unselected themes. The team is able to integrate or ignore these ideas at their option.

Planning [In-Class, Thursday, October 13th]

Make a copy of this google docs planning document and fill in details about your team members and game idea. Please make sure your copy is shared with course staff.

Don't worry if your plans for Vertical Slice and Build Out are a bit sparse -- you'll be revising this document after every checkpoint in the final game.

Prototype (5pts) [Due Before Class, Tuesday, November 1st]

The prototype demonstrates the key gameplay idea of your game. At this point, assets can be placeholders, and the plot or theme can be minimal. The key is that the core mechanic of your game is playable.

Your game must be playable because we are playtesting in class.

Vertical Slice (5pts) [Due Before Class, Thursday, November 10th]

The Vertical Slice is going to show a whole level or area of your game with near-final assets. The idea is to carry over the key gameplay idea from the prototype but place it in a setting and a theme that match your finished game.

We'll be having a "trade show" in class to view the demos, with each team holding a 5min scripted "keynote" (including a demo) followed by a "show floor" playtesting experience.

We may award a "Best of Show" ribbon.

Build Out (5pts) [Due Before Class, Thursday, December 1st]

Quite simply, the build out is where you build out the rest of your game. Finish your remaining levels, assets, etc. You shouldn't need to make much new technology and should be focused almost entirely on asset production at this point.

The result of the build out should be a finished game, playable from start-to-end, with completed assets, gameplay, and sound. We'll be swapping builds at this point so that we can all hunt for bugs in each-others games.

Polishing and Presskit (5pts) [Due Before Class, Thursday, December 8th]

A finished game isn't finished until you've created a web page, selection of promotional screenshots, and so on. Also, this time exists so you can fix the game-breaking bugs your classmates will discover while playing your game.

At the end of this sprint, you should have built a web page which hosts screenshots, a description, and -- possibly -- a gameplay video of your game; along with up-to-date builds for MacOS, Windows, and Linux.

Launch Party (0pts) [Friday, December 9th]

On Friday, December 9th, we'll do an in-person event where we invite everyone to celebrate the last day of classes by joining us to play the fresh new video games y'all have developed. There will be many free cookies. We may also (or alternatively) run a livestream of all of the final games created in the class with example gameplay, team interviews, and audience questions.

The inspirational music for this final game project is the entire Jimike album Manse.