This is one of my group projects that was completed for my coursework at the end of 3rd year.The specification was given by NHS and Interface 3 to create a game base around how to cope with stress in university life. Our team consisted of 4 artists 3 programmers and 2 designers.
From the spec we decided to create an open world adventure game, in a 2D isometric view, called 'Stress on Campus'. The player can free roam a university style campus, where they can attend classes and socialize within the world. The basic objective of the game is to attend classes and balance your stress levels to pass your university course. When the player attends classes there 'StudentCred' increases getting them closer to there degree but it also increases there stress levels. So the player must balance between the two by going to classes and going to social buildings which will decrease the stress levels. Two buildings within the game contain mini games that can help with the players stress levels.The two mini games shown in the video are the cinema mini game where the player has to avoid the spaceships for a certain amount of time and the other one is like mine sweeper based game where the player has to throw paper at notes to try and get as many green notes as possible within the time scale. The level progresses through the degrees from HND to Masters degree.
Throughout the map there a number of things the player can interact with; There are a number of collectibles to find within the map, when collected, it will give advice on how to cope with stress. Also there are number of NPC's and depending on your stress levels the conversation with them will differ from being positive or negative.
When you enter a building it shows text of a scenario of what happened and how it has effected your game. As seen in the video when your stress levels begin to increase a dark character begins to follow you to show that you are stressed. This shows the player they need to have a break from getting StudentCred and play some of the mini games or enter the building that reduce stress.
Overall it was a really good project although the specification was a tad dull i felt our team made the best of it and i was happy with the end product. It was the first project that i worked on with a number of my friends so it was easy to develop and to communicate ideas. So the final product was a success. The full project took 12 weeks to complete with a large number of documentation and reports to complete to get marks. It was really unfortunate that the games itself was worth only 10% of the final mark meaning our reports and documentation had to be amazing, which they were. Our final document came to about 60 pages long which is mental. Ive still to recieve the marks for the project but im hopeful of a good pass considering the hard work the full team made in creating it.
Have a watch of the game play video at the top which shows the different aspects of the game ive discussed.
Enjoy.
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