This week I’ve created a beat chart for my game Redemption above. According to Filatov (2015), a beat chart is a game design tool where you monitor the progress of your gameplay. You make sure that the player stays entertained by not overloading them with too much information or boring them with a lack of gameplay variety from level to level.
My reason for doing a beat chart was to see the strengths and weaknesses of my game design and figure out what I need to do to make it better.
(Fig. 01) My Screenshot (Relic Raider and Maximo: Ghosts to Glory beat chart, 2020)
(Fig. 02) My Screenshot (Beat Chart Template, 2020)
My beat chart was inspired by these three beat charts above (Fig. 01) (Fig. 02). They helped me decide which game elements are relevant to my game.
My strengths are that the time of day changes as time goes on. The game begins at night and ends at day which is good because it means the game world isn’t static.
My puzzles mechanics change in a logical progression with the scales of justice being doubled in the second puzzle. If I make my future puzzles progress like this, there will be a steady increase in difficulty.
There are, however, areas to improve.
There is a lack of a story beat in the second puzzle. I could incorporate Amy’s fears and flaws into the second and future puzzles. I’ve noted that Amy’s childhood fear was about losing her mother early. Maybe Amy could talk to herself or call her best friend about this fear as it relates to her goal of reuniting families of animals together.
A flaw that Amy has is that she is bad at time management to the point where people don’t trust her. Maybe her flaw can be incorporated into puzzles where you have a limited amount of time to complete a puzzle.
I need to specify what specific food Amy will be using to solve the puzzle since the weight of each item is important in terms of solving puzzles. I need to decide what specific animals Amy will be saving before deciding what specific food Amy will have when solving puzzles.
The colour mapping doesn’t have a lot of variety, the puzzle rooms are currently white which doesn’t look appealing to the eye. I’m going to look into what different colours I could use to convey the clinical nature of the puzzle rooms.
Reference List:
Computer Games
Capcom (2001) Maximo: Ghosts to Glory [Video game]. Capcom. Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Maximo-Ghost-to-Glory-Game/dp/B00005V6B9/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=maximo+glory&qid=1607277065&sr=8-2 (Accessed: 5 December 2020).
Screenshots
Beat Chart Template (2013) [Screenshot]. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/LRAppliedMedia/beat-chart (Accessed: 5 December 2020).
Relic Raider and Maximo: Ghosts to Glory beat chart (2019) [Screenshot]. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/e9wp41/game_design_document_beat_chart_description_blank/ (Accessed: 5 December 2020).
Web pages with individual authors
Filatov, N. (2015) Beat-chart - game designer's best friend. Available at: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/NickFilatov/20150623/246758/Beatchart__game_designers_best_friend.php (Accessed: 5 December 2020).