Toy Kingdom 1:Post-Mortem Reflection

By Leonice Brown-Young Jr, Designer, Programmer

Begin with project overview

Brief Overview of Project

Toy Kingdom™ is a relentless first-person exploration adventure game that places players in a world full of toys, magic, and chaos. The objective is to collect ten protons to upgrade home tile and create a shield that prevents the Terror Rex from reaching the player.

Design Overview

The design of this project was focused on creating a player movement that felt fun by itself, and the entire game centered around that. This was also a personal challenge to complete the game in 30 days of production, which was a lot of late nights. This led to the increasing speed via leveling as well as boots, as well as the implantation of an energy mechanic to create a dynamic resource. The fruits were implanted in order to increase the leveling of the energy mechanic. The use of simple AI such as the fireflies to reduce the energy poses as threats as well as the swamp energy reducer. The main threat, however, is the Terror Rex which immediately signals game over upon reaching striking distance of the player. Also the objective of the design was to create a randomizer where each time you play the game there are different tiles so that it feels refreshing and repayable.

Project Start

January 11^th, 2021

Project Finish

February 11^th, 2021

Product Purpose

The purpose of this game for MoonRift Entertainment and for Leonice Brown-Young Jr was create a base product that can be improved upon significantly with newer versions and major updates in a DLC format but more of an Episodic Release. This objective was accomplished.

Intended Customer

PC/Desktop frequent users who play and test out new independent games. In particular itch.io account users.

General Information

Opening Sentence

Toy Kingdom is a fast-paced, relentless first-person survival game full of dangers, magic, and toys.

Three Descriptive Sentences

-You play as an action figure that has landed in a mysterious toy world.

-You must discover and collect all the powerful protons, if you hope to survive the night.

-Enter a colorful and deadly world with various environments as you discover your speed is your greatest ally.

Final Compelling Hook

-Play your way, at your own pace; but do not linger for long, nightfall brings terror.

Key Features

-Relentless Exploration:

No instructions. No hand holding. Toy Kingdom is a universe waiting to be discovered.

-Randomly Generated Environments:

Each game is a new map! Your luck will play a factor into how generous or unforgiving Toy Kingdom will be.

-Speed is your friend:

How fast can you get?

-Items will help you survive:

Glowing things are usually good for you.

-Outrun and outmaneuver the dangers

Your wits shall be tested.

-Your home awaits.

From rags to riches, so you begin at nothing.

Can you survive in Toy Kingdom?

Document what went right

1. The movement mechanic was a huge success, it feels great running around and moving inside of the game
2. The audio implementation throughout the game, makes the player feel immersed and satisfied when events happen (Terror Rex and Items)
3. Level Randomizer was a huge success, and now modularity is available
4. The leveling system is good
5. Basic layout and toy kingdom themed tiles are successful
6. ShieldMaker8000 as well as home tile improvements are satisfying
7. Main menu and other UI buttons success
8. Got the game loop to work!
9. Different difficulties makes the game even more repayable and friendly to all types of player levels
10. The Terror Rex is scary.
11. Self-Project management, scoping, rescoping, testing, and retesting.
12. The game works functionally very well with little bugs.

Document what went wrong

1. My greatest challenge was the fundamental mistake of not planning enough time for marketing, especially trailer production
2. The loading takes a bit of time and doesn’t match with Loading Screen when it hits 100
3. The outside world is still bland and looks like a basic unity project, for example the sky, ground below level, etc.
4. The terrains and tiles look a little basic and could definitely use polish
5. Marketing a few days before the game launch and building up to it on social media platforms
6. Once again not putting enough effort into the trailer was a huge fault
7. In project management, need to balance out the days and be more lenient so as not to have all nighters.
8. Need to get more feedback throughout development.
9. Reaching out to other devs for feedback
10.  Working on the project and main pieces up to the last day, should finish much earlier on major tasks

Assess your risk management

                Some of the risk that were taken was trying to do a procedural generated 3D map. Very glad that this turned out nice. Other risks were trying to finish and ship a game in thirty days and doing the entire process solo. The biggest risk of all, is betting on myself post-graduation and desiring to build games independently as a career choice versus seeking out employment.

Assess mid-project changes

Towards the end of the project, feature creep was beginning to become an issue. Earlier in the project in my project management style, I had single assignments that could be entire weeks of work. For example, tiles were completed in one day/night based on schedule rather than focusing an entire week on it. Fireflies were a huge bonus to the game, that came about as a small idea mid-project. Swamp and Terror Rex combination became deadly.

Draw meaningful conclusion!

In conclusion, want to have a full week of marketing, which means for future versions only 75% of the effort is in actual development. Focus in on creating a few mechanics very well versus having a bunch of mediocre visual items. Focusing on the visuals and the trailer for sure. And last, no matter how good your game is, if no one buys it, they won’t know it. So marketing, marketing, marketing.

Take Action

Next action plan is to read and detail out Toy Kingdom 2 Story (written story based on the Toy Kingdom Universe) and start to hash out the mechanics and desire for the future for Toy Kingdom 2. Thank you for reading, this has been a great learning lesson and I will continue to develop to become the best game developer I can possibly be; aiming for my 10,000 hours.

Project Details

Additional External Support:

Youtube Channels

Brackeys!

DanisTutorials

Comp-3 Interactive

Interactive Fireflies - Mirza

Holistic3d

Probably Spoonie

Audio Help

Hadwin Channel

Heartbeat SFX provided by MrSnooze

Early Morning - Dyan John

3D

Fruits - Rem Storms

Glen Harris - Boots Model

ERGT - Hands Model

Sprites

TK Logo - Jade Nelson

Scroll - WallPaperAccess.com

FreePik

Website

Xavier Brown

Texture

Shield Maker Metal - BarbaraALane

Carpet - topntp26 freepik

Font

Toy Block Maestro - Goma Shin

GameButtonsSounds Pack - CCHUB