A Prototyping Master's Module Post Mortem

After a game a week for 5 weeks, I have some points of reflection.

As a quick summation of the module as a whole. The projects I felt I had the toughest time with were the initial narrative focus theme: illusion of choice as well as the theme: small scale large scope. On reflection, my game for illusion of choice was rushed and had no substance. I didn't know where to start with it, so I ended up spending almost all of my time ideating trying to make the perfect idea. I tried many different ways to ideate, but at times the best way is to just pick something and run with it which is what I did in week 2. Using Twine was something I'm happy to have done as it is a really efficient tool to prototyping narrative. Narrative will be something I will focus on going forward.

for small scale large scope, I set myself a time limit to come up with an idea; I gave myself an hour to mind map and once that hour was up, I had to develop a game based on what was on there. I came up with Box RPG, a full rpg set in a box with levelling systems and a dialogue system. This scope was just way too much for a week, I tried to make everything myself, it didn't go well. I took this thought process into week 4 with It's All Pear Shaped, for these rapid prototypes, there's just no need to make systems and assets that are readily available.

Week 3 was such a success because I looked at my first 2 games where I went wrong and utilised methods to reduce any headaches. Using Experience Pillars helped with the ideation process, I incorporated my time-limited mind map because I found that helped speed up the ideation process. I switched focus to a more agile approach for my last 3 games which was the main factor in having minimum viable products for those 3 games. I was previously using a waterfall approach but after the switch, I managed 4 iteration cycles with the week 3 game and I think the game is at a point where it just needs artistic polish.

I'm very happy with my paper prototype and week 4 games because they had the most iteration. In my 5 games, I used 3 different tools for prototyping with Twine, Unity and Paper Prototyping. In the future I want to try new methods like making a folk game. All in all, I am happy that I can more confidently playtest, it's something I've been focusing on improving throughout this module and I have used different techniques which have all improved the games I implemented feedback with.

Defining my agile workflow more is something I will work on, preplanning my tasks and creating bite-sized tasks that will cater to the iterative workflow I enjoy, as well as honing in on the feedback loop trying out differing feedback lenses.