Goal Setting

To begin with, I set a bunch of goals for myself. This was just to have something for me to refer back to when making decisions to ensure I was always steering towards the goals I set out to achieve.

Game Rules / Goals

• Basic control scheme (clicking / tapping)
• Minimalistic art style
• Basic and balanced gameplay mechanics
• Replayability 

Brainstorming

I chucked down any ideas that came to mind. I ended up mainly writing down my personal experiences as these are what I know the most. Here are some of the things I wrote down.

It was important to not be afraid to write WHATEVER came to mind. That way, you get all of the bad ideas out early and these bad ideas can sometimes spark new ideas you may not have thought of!

• Trying to find a job, networking, finding work
• Student life, money, studying, partying
• Bullying
• Dinosaurs in business meetings
• Limited communication
• Money management
• Walking in a park
• Running away from home

 Breaking Down Ideas

I started at the top of the list, which was networking, and begin to list things to do with networking that could be turned into game mechanics, such as business card creation / approaching groups of people etc. Then I got a mental block so immediately moved on to the next brainstorm, which was student life.

 As I was hungover and had been to a night club the night before, I was inspired to make a game relating to the experience of night-clubbing. I thought it would be quite funny, and something a lot of people (mainly stereotypically women) could relate to.

 Gamifying the Idea

So now I was getting excited about turning the nightclubbing experience into a simple comedic game. I asked myself "what is involved in nightclubbing?". Well, there's dancing, drinking, and music.. I also listed things that were annoying about nightclubbing too, like getting blisters on your feet from wearing high heels and losing your voice because the music is so loud. Now that I had listed as many as I could think of, it was time to pick my favourite ones that I would carry through into the first version of the game.

 Refining the Mechanics

I picked my favourite 'key parts of nightclubbing' notes and added them to post-it notes in order to turn them into game mechanics. I ended up with 4 game mechanics that I wanted to follow through with, and 1 mechanic that I decided I would cut for now (purple post-it note). 

Overview of brainstorming notes in Realtimeboards

The mechanics I chose initially were;

• Wacking away wierdos
• Health bar system
• Rubbing feet because of blisters
• Tapping notes to keep dancing

 As I continued to brainstorm past this point, I came back and added / removed mechanic ideas as I thought of them, as sometimes I'd just randomly think of a new idea that was better than a previous one. I ended up added Request a Song mechanic and removed Balancing and staying upright

Visual Mockups

I actually began to open up Unity at this point, keen to begin coding up some of these mechanics. Then I had to stop myself! When I get excited by an idea I just want to start creating, but if I wanted to try and save time - I thought it would be smarter to make some visual mockups within Realtimeboards (a great visual tool!) first to get a better sense of how the game would look and work.

Placeholder Images

I knew I wanted the art style to be super simple, so I headed over to Pinterest to begin collating some inspirational images. I want to focus more on the programming, so I decided I was going to use any existing art I could find to use as placeholder art. Realtimeboards also has a great built-in icon finder so that you can find placeholder imagery on the fly. 

What matters more to me right now are the overall mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics (fun-ness) of the game. This is also referred to as the MDA network, something that was covered at a games design workshop I attended at GDC.

After typing night club illustrations into Pinterest, I came across a series of these images that give a cool wireframe neon night club vibe. 

I copied a bunch into Realtimeboards and just cropped some of the characters and icons to use in my visual mockups.

The images are actually what sparked inspiration to add the Request a Song feature, as one of the images had a music deck and what looked like a DJ.

Visual Mockups - Mechanics Overview

I quickly shoved a load of images and icons onto a blank rectangular shape to form a mockup of how the mechanics might look and work. It felt like brainstorming again, adding notes as ideas sprang up in my mind.

Visual Mockups - Detailed Mechanics View

After speaking to friends as well as designers in my network about the idea to get some initial feedback, I made some small changes to the mechanics and created visual mockups for each specific mechanic. That way I could begin thinking about what the dynamic elements of each mechanic would be and also, I'd be able to see what functionality each mechanic would need to have.

Feedback

I think it's quite helpful to get feedback regularly at various stages throughout your brainstorming and development phases. When you work on an idea, after a while, you begin to sort of get too biased towards the ideas you're coming up with for it. It's good to get a fresh set of eyes on it. Try not to ask friends too much too - unless they're quite good at being honest with feedback, just because most of the time they feel too awkward to tell you an idea is crap. It's better to get a good mix of people for your feedback. 

The feedback I got so far was;

• You'll probably need a lot of play-testing to get the interface right, there's potentially going to be a lot going on at the same time which fits the scenario but could mean the UI isn't clear
• Red color for healing musical notes seems like something that would damage rather than heal, consider changing the color to a more friendly one
• There's a lot of different mechanics, make sure you introduce them slowly over time or make a tutorial at the start that is skippable
• The art style is good and fits the theme (but is placeholder)
• Enjoying the comical side
• Add funny voices when the weirdos are punched away
• Would be cool if there was a horde mode for the weirdos to all attack at once