Lo3: Review of a Game

The Binding of Isaac is a top down rouge like game. It fits within the dungeon crawler and rouge like genre. The game shows stylistic conventions of the genre as it contains procedurally generated dungeons that incorporate the idea that every time you restart the game it will always be different and contain multiple different enemy’s, sometimes it might be easy and other times it may feel impossible. The game also sticks to the rouge like genre as it is incredible unforgiving, if you are dead your dead, restart the entire game over again, no checkpoints no save states that’s it. The game was heavily influenced by The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past and shows elements of this game throughout in terms of layout and dungeon challenges. 

You are Isaac, a small boy who lives on a hill happily with his mother when suddenly your mother hears a voice in her head, who she believes is god, and it tells her that her son is impure and she must take away all which causes sin. She obliges and takes away his toys, games and even his clothes. The voice comes once again and says that this is not enough, that he must be shut out from the outside world; once again she obliges and locks Isaac in his room. The voice comes once again for the final time and states that she has done well but her son is still impure and must now be sacrificed in the name of our lord. She grabs a kitchen knife and proceeds to Isaacs’s room but through a crack in the wall Isaac sees her and starts to panic. By a stroke of luck Isaac finds a trap door in the floor allowing for him to escape into the basement where you must find and kill your mother. The game informs the audience of the story with a short cut scene before the main menu showing this all in a crudely drawn fashion when you find out that this is just Isaac drawing the events that he is seeing and then jumps into the basement. The story affects your approach to the game as it instantly tells us that the game is going to be somewhat biblical and gruesome in the way that it is told, this allows for the audience to bare what they are about to be surrounded by. The story is originally derived from a biblical story of the same name and will strike as familiar to those that are religious or know of the Christian background and allows the audience to delve deeper into the story of the game. 
The game was produced by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl in 2011 and was created using Flash. The game was heavily based off of The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past and as such the gameplay represents that. The Physics in the game is not really focused on except in drop rate, the mechanics are very simple WASD to move and arrow keys to shoot, items can be used with e or r this causes for the game to be fast passed and exciting.

There are a variety of different playable characters all of which have a reference to the bible (except one which refers to the creator of the game).Isaac: The son of Abraham whom God asked to sacrifice in Binding of Isaac, Magdalene: One of Jesus' friends. Also known as Mary, Cain: Son of Adam and Eve, brother of Abel. Was the first murderer and murdered Abel, Judas: Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus Christ, Eve: First female created by God, ???: Reference to Edmund McMillen and Samson: He was born into the world by God to defeat the Philistines, but had his hair cut off because it was one of the three sources of his power (along with not drinking wine or satisfying sexual desire). He was blinded after revealing his secret. The characters appeal to the target audience as it allows for some unlockability and variation in characters, it also relates to the bible so it has some biblical reference and allows for the audience to see more into their background. There is no real characterization within the game except for the fact that you are playing a boy who feels scared and alone as he plunges into the depths of hell, this is unlike the normal conventions of this genre, you are not playing a hero, just a boy who is scared and alone and when he is close to dying wets himself whenever you progress into the next room. The characters are very strong as the grip you into this arcade style game and allow for you to see them in a traumatic and vulnerable state. 

The challenge in the game is the progression; it is difficult, very, very difficult. Every time you die you must restart the dungeon in a completely different room and it does not allow for you to have any real preparation as all of the rooms are randomly generated allowing for a new experience each time you play the game. Elements of the gameplay that are key to its success are its difficulty, the wide variety of playable characters and its items which are randomly found throughout the rooms. This all adds a good feel to the game and the atmospheric music just adds to the effects. The gameplay engages with the narrative as it is where the story left off, it is Isaac jumping into the basement and sets up a nice and clear story for the audience. The gameplay is constantly evolving throughout depending on the items you find, for instance if you find the item "Little Steve" you are accompanied by a floating ghost the shoots extra tears for you and helps you fight off the hordes of enemy’s.

The target audience for this game is as the PEGI rating suggests +16 this allows for the game to be incredibly dark and constantly challenge the older viewers thoughts. It will appeal to anyone interested in dungeon crawlers with rouge like elements. The indication is the high amount of gore and suggestive themes throughout that sometimes cause you too fell slightly ill, the game throws monster after monster at you until you reach the boos of that one dungeon and then are forced to do it all again on a harder floor until you reach the character Mom in the depths of hell. The game compares to other games targeting the same audience in the fact that it is unlike most other games and does not care about what is political correct or who it might offend it just does what it does to tell a vivid and imaginative story and is unlike any game in this genre that I have ever come across. 

The binding of Isaac was only ever released on Pc and as such is most suited for this platform as it is not available on any other.

Lo4: Concept art

So far Mitch and I have been working and making some concept art that we think would fit well within the genre(minus the dragon, that was just a test)

Mitch

Mine

Presitation feedback

What we did right

1.     The Trailer was good 

2.    The numbers were all good and reasonable

3.    Clear visuals for the game

4.     Nice use of Kickstarter and other funding resources

5.    Good concept idea that needs refining

What we need to improve

1.     Know your abbreviations (as a team)

2.    Why in the tactical 4v4 are they in a box not a Zeppelin

3.    I want to see an in game HUD with other characters in a visual!

4.    Show me a sample map

5.    Work on the Procedural generation aspect to make sure that it is clear how it effects the cost

This can all be easily improved over the next stages of development including some more concept art and 3D rendered models including realistic lighting and maps. The Zeppelin idea is really interesting and allows for another element of customization the only problem comes is that we might have to allow for a sky battles and allow for invasions/boarding on other peoples ships. The abbreviation problem was just Mitch and he messed up on an abbreviation (from a game genre that he plays constantly) we went through it with him previously but apparently he forgot and we will make sure to write it on everything that he owns and drill it into him. The procedural generation aspect of everything can be easily changed and during the presentation there was a mix up in the costing witch can easily be fixed.

How the presentation went

Overall it could have been a lot worse, we left out a few things and we should have opened with our trailer rather than close with it. We tended to focus too much on the costing and everything for a bit too long. The map images were good but it would be good if we added a character into it. They seemed happy with what we presented and were fair with their criticism. We forgot to mention a few things and the person who explained our game modes panicked a bit and did not mention all of the features, we had an aspect of gameplay however the code was not completed in time and it was not in anyway presentable. 

Lo4: Production Plan

Date/Week	Activity	Time Required	Resources required	Deadline	On Schedule (y/n)	Completed Date
Week 1	Come up with a concept, basic concept art, decide story	12 hours	Pen, pencils, paper	January 28	Y	January 28
Week 2	Concept art + Research into other games	6 hours	Pen, Pencil, Paper and computer	February 15	Y	February 15
Week 3	Concept art+Research	6 hours	Pen, Pencil, Paper and computer	February 24th	Y	February 24th
Week 4	Research + Survey	6 hours	Computer	March 5th	Y	March 5th
Week 5	Research, Analyse market trends	12 hours	Computer	March 16th	Y	March 16th
Week 6	Start to prepare Presentation + Concept Art	12 hours	Computer	March 28th	Y	March 28th
Week 7	Presentation + Trailer	20 hours	Computer	April 19th	N	May 2nd
Week 8	Presentation + Level Design + Collect Data	10 hours	Computer	May 7th	Y	May 7th
Week 9	Final Touches before presenting	5 hours	Computer	May 28th	Y	May 28th
Week 10	Present	10 min	Computer, Projector, Speakers, confidence	May 28th	Y	May 28th
Week 11, 12,13,14.	Correct flaws + respond to feed back	30 hours	Computer, Fuse (software)	July 18th	Y	July 18th

Lo4: Initial game concept idea

The main concept of the game is that it is a FPS online battle arena using free running and voice commands. The game consists of multiple game modes and focuses strongly on realistic physics where we will be using Nvidia PhysX. The game is centred around the theme of materialising weapons and armour by speaking so if you are in a close quarters engagement you might want to have a shotgun so you would say materialise shotgun.

The games story is that the world has been thrown into a downhill spiral through a corrupt government that has forced the world to split into three factions (names still undecided) These factions constantly go to war and fight over territories only using their most elite men because no normal man would stand a chance. The military prior to this had developed a new device to allow for any materials within your armoury to be spawned in front of you, these factions have managed to get their hands on this device however it is rather unrefined and can only summon a certain amount per battle. The factions will be at war constantly one upping the others trying to gain leeway in this war for world domination.

The game consists of these three factions

Faction one
This faction spawned from former Russia and Ukraine and spans across the idea that all parties should be treated equally and spans from the original Idea of  Communism however like most of the world human greed corrupts this idea and makes it so the faction falls into the poorer of them having unrefined military weaponry.
 Pros
- Fearless military
- Strongest (physically)
 Cons
-Corrupt government
-Weak weaponry

Faction Two
Spans from the Americas and has a strong sense of military concepts however drugs and murder are a strong aspect within their society along with having conflicts within the areas formally known as South America and North America. The North is far more stable and has less of a drug problem however the faction is massively in debt and has little to no funding for anything other than military. 
Pros
- Strongest Weaponry
- Most Resources
Cons
- Will often end up fighting people within your own faction
- A huge drug problem meaning that often you will be docked resources due to being caught in possession.

Faction Three
This spawns from the Asian side of the world however it only includes the countries that were able to survive the first blitz witch include Japan, China, North Korea and South Korea. This faction differ each other from their countries and run under similar  governments to what was previously in their countries. they rely mostly on each other for trade and have minor disputes between each other but mostly on a governmental level. Due to the war they lost most of their military aspects and population and as such have the smallest army.
Pros
-Economically Stable
-Most advanced technology
Cons
-Minor disputes which can end with a docking of materials for war
-Smallest army.

Lo4: Budgeting for the game

Lo4: Most successful competitors

The two most successful games that are in our competitor list are Titanfall and Borderlands 2.

Titanfall
Current Sales: according to recent figures Titan fall has sold around 700,000 copies at $60 per copy. This would give them a revenue of around $4200000 however according to more recent sources the sales are expected to be much higher.

Borderlands 2
Current sales: Borderlands 2 have sold around 8.5 million copies and have been sold at a stock price of $30 this means that they have a net profit of around $255,000,000 making them one of the most profitable games of all time.

These two are our biggest competitors in the market at the moment. This means that for a small indie company that we will have to improve on what they have fallen flat on such as gun mechanics. This all makes our task a lot bigger but as we are working with a much smaller budget and on a much smaller game. The team that are working on this will only consist of seven people both of these games have a massive team of over a 1000 people.