The Project

06 February 2020 - 3 mins read time
Tags: Games Design Personal Final Project SHMUP

After selecting the initial idea I tried to think of a way to scale it before I began to plan it. Seeing as I had 2 and a half months realistically with which to develop this game I didn’t want overwhelm myself with an enormous amount of work so as to allow myself to fully develop and finish something. Planning for this went down a couple of routes but I ultimately decided upon was creating a vertical slice prototype of the game.

I’ve chosen a vertical slice as it seems the best route to take for a University project and especially for a game developed by 1 person. A vertical slice is a piece of work which showcases a game as a piece or fragment of an idea to convince studio heads or publishers to fund or take interest in the project. It’s like a taste test before selecting the meal.

Vertical Slice

A vertical slice is used with various meanings in multiple areas and is oft associated with agile workflows or corporate structures in which they aim to break a project or piece of work into individual slices or pieces of work to help decompose and see how it all might work as a wider whole before digging into the whole piece. (Green, P., 2013)

In the context of games, vertical slices are a proof of concept which showcases a bunch of aspects of the game in short form. This helps everyone gain a better idea of the work involved for a full production as well as helps to display the core ideas and experience to others.

A vertical slice is both a good and bad idea. On the hand, it offers me the chance to scale back development of the game to merely a product of showcase and not have to worry about extra and in-depth details such as having everything fleshed out and perfect. On the other hand, some games really don’t fit the format of vertical slice and it still requires that all of the core gameplay functionality, sound, effects etc are all in place even if in basic form. It’s a step up from a prototype and can be a task in and of itself to scale a game back to showcase the “fun” of it in a short piece. Designing a game is a largely iterative process and to try and place its development into such a short, linear piece can be detrimental. (Gilbert, R., 2011)

In my case, the cons aside a vertical slice still sounds like a better move for my personal goals. Having read an article from Matthews, D., 2015 he talks about Ninja Theories usage and defence of vertical slices as well as looked at them from my perspective. A vertical slice whilst generally linear doesn’t have to be so.

As I am a single entity and my focus of the game is to showcase design work and the core idea, I can feel safe to iterate my ideas in the safety of my limitations for the games length and aims. This will allow me to spend time working in more important aspects.

So, to sum up! I’ve finally come up with my plan. I’m going to be creating a SHMUP vertical slice to try and showcase my design skills in several key areas such as Level Design, Game Balance and Narrative Design. It’s going to be interesting trying to make a game and showcase it’s several stages but I’m excited.

Till next time.

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