Critical Analysis: Gravity Switch

Critical Analysis

The design of Gravity Switch started off as a concept of being able to manipulate all sorts of elements such as water, fire, air, etc. We then came up with the idea of gravity and being to manipulate it. From there we decided that we would allow the player to manipulate the gravity of themselves and the objects around them to solve puzzles and manuever around the level in a new and fun way. The main mechanics of the game that we wanted to incorporate were gravity inversion, which allows the player invert their own gravity. And wall walk which allows the player to walk up vertical walls. Another part to our game was being able to shoot a gravity pulse to invert an objects gravity. 

In order to manipulate gravity, the player would have to collect gravity orbs to fill the gravity bar in order to use the gravity inversion and gravity shot. Each of these mechanics use up the gravity orbs which in turn gives the player motive to collect more orbs so that they can continue to move through the level.   

As group we wanted to make sure that the main mechanic(s) were solidified and worked nicely before we moved onto secondary mechanics. 

The definite strong points to our proof of concept would be the main mechanics which were the gravity inversion and the wall walk. These two mechanics make our game. The gravity inversion allows us to switch our gravity so that we can move around the map appropriately. It allows the player to progress through the map, avoid enemies and hazards, and solve puzzles. Same thing applies to the wall walk mechanic. It gives our game more depth into gravity manipulation. So rather than just being able to walk on the top part of the level we are also enabling the player to walk on a vertical wall. This opened up many new puzzles and level designs for us because it gave us a whole other dimension to work with. We created new puzzles and areas that you couldn't do with the gravity inversion solely which kept our concept fresh and kept the players who played wanting more. 

In previous versions we wanted to create a mechanic that allow the player to swing from one point to another. Kind of like a spider-man mechanic. We scrapped this idea because it really didn't fit into the the whole idea of gravity manipulation. It also was way too hard to implement properly with the time we were given plus the mechanics we had already decided on and started to create. However if we had more time I would've like to have implemented this sort of idea which gravity manipulation in mind because I think that we as a group would've came up with a really cool mechanic for a really cool game. 

Another change that we made to our game was not having two different types of objects. We stuck with the one object which was the invert-able box. The object that we scrapped was the regular one. The reason for this was because it felt like it was just there and doing nothing much of anything. The only thing that it was useful for was pushing it, using the players force, over top of the door switch. We also felt like we could just use the invert-able objects more and more effectively rather than having two types of objects. 

We had a really cool design for the gravity bar that we unfortunately had to change. The gravity bar had really cool mask that made the bar look very mech. However it ended disrupting the players view of how much gravity they had in the bar so we removed the mask.

Map size was another thing that we changed quite a bit. At first we thought that the level was too small. But once we allowed other students to play our proof of concept they thought that the level was too long. So we ended up cutting our original level in half so that it wasn't too long but also had enough content to showcase our full concept. This was harder than expected because we had the level all planned out to gate the player and showcase our full concept. However, getting the feedback from the the other students really helped us. It made us think on how we could condense and scrap certain areas to make concept short and sweet.    

I am very pleased with how our proof of concept turned out. We were able to implement all of the mechanics we wanted into our game cleanly and effectively which made our proof of concept so much more appealing and fun to play. The art assets also were done exceptionally well which gives the overall concept a nice feel and look.

But the mechanics and how we used the mechanics really sold this game to me. Being able to solve the puzzles and manuever the map using the gravity manipulation is very clever. And as the game designer it really makes us think how we can incorporate the gravity manipulation into a new puzzle or vice versa. I think we made a fun and novel concept that could be turned into a really fun game. I know that I would certainly love to work on this concept further and publish it either on itchio or steam.