Keeper Sprint 3: The Decision

My team decided to try and challenge the prototype phase during the next class period, as we feel we should begin working toward our end-of-semester goal sooner rather than later. After considering our concepts, we feel that our gardening game Keeper should be developed due to the high level of interest in it between team members as well as an already clear idea of which direction we would like to take the game.

Our concept Astral Protection had a sound gameplay loop and core mechanics, but seemed too within scope to be a final project. While we no doubt could have used the extra time to achieve an impressive amount of polish, we felt the systems were too remedial and idea too unoriginal to support fully.

It was the opposite problem for Small Dog, Big Bone, where we had come up with a clever context for which to base our game, but lacked a clear direction as far as gameplay. We knew we wanted to be a dog fighting skeletons, but we weren't sure exactly where we would go from there, and what additional mechanics we might implement to enhance the core loop.

So finally it comes to Keeper, the obvious favorite among the team because of its artistic availability and appealing subject matter. In addition, we have brought on a narrative designer to help implement story elements over the course of the players' experience. It would seem this game is the easiest to progress with as well, due amount of work the team had already completed for this project compared to the other two.