Post mortem: O’VERDRIVE
In the future, all crimes have been successfully wiped from the streets.
Bored, and in fear of losing their careers, the future cops built a time tunnel using the magic of science. Into it, they put all the past crimes.
You are Max O’Verdrive, a future cop of the clan O’Verdrive with a passion for justice and a cool car.
It’s time to keep the street clean. Of crimes.
This is the introduction to my latest game O’verdrive, now I say latest game but it was technically finished around April this year I just hadn’t made it public yet. First a little backstory of the game.
Backstory
For those who haven’t read my blogs before, I’m a student at SAE Qantm, during my spare time last trimester I had a couple of goals:
· To make an endless runner
· To make a mobile game
So, after some planning I came up with the initial concept, a multi-dimensional endless runner based on 80’s nostalgia. The plan was to have it finished to show at SAE open night which was about 6 weeks away from the start of the project.
The initial intent was for it to be made first as a pc game then modified to become an app, however time constraints limited this.
Why O’VERDRIVE?
I made a pitch to my teachers and after bouncing ideas off each other, the game became more and more ridiculous. Eventually ending in a Scottish future cop.
What went right
1. Design / planning process
In the past I’ve suffered from something I like to refer as “developers’ enthusiasm”, getting caught up in the wonder and idea of the game and just wanting to make that thing a reality, by starting development straight away. With O’VERDRIVE I took the slow approach for once, I spent the first two weeks just planning everything, the game design, the systems design and the aesthetic without laying a hand on unity or visual studio. I then took these ideas to other developers I quickly identified issues before even beginning. Honestly this was the best decision I made with the project and resulted in far less issues than previous projects.
2. Style
I always knew that I wanted 80’s nostalgia but what did that look like? In the planning stage, I spent a heap of time collecting pictures, influences, fonts and color palettes to decide on the style I wanted to portray to my audience.
Even creating an attract mode for the introduction to reflect early 80’s arcade machines.
Overall, I was very happy with the success of the intended style as it was picked up by most of the players on release.
3. Release
This went off without a hitch, I had a working version by the time of the event (relatively bug free). I had a section with multiple computers set up and monitored for the event and overall the response I got from both the game and the time frame it was built in was very positive. Multiple people commenting on the art direction
What went wrong
1. Scope
The initial intent for the game was to have multiple vehicles with separate abilities that you unlocked in a progressive format, however considering the dead line of this project and the fact I was doing it in my spare time after all my uni working. Things had to be cut for the release date, currently there is only one car (which was intended to be an end game vehicle).
2. UI
This is something I’ve always approached near the end of the project, because this was left as a after thought having correct UI for different screen sizes is something I definitely need to focus on for future projects. I’m making this game for all sorts of different screens and computers and need to take that into consideration.
Conclusion
I have mixed feelings about this project, I’m proud of the design process I used to make O’verdrive and it resulted in a working game by the deadline but I can’t help but feel like it could be so much more. I was happy with the feedback too, I think that was by far some of the most important information I could use for future projects.
Should I continue working on this? Let me know in the comments below
Development stats
· Developer: Ben Walker
· In Game Music: Brook Wakeham, Jack McBryde & Riley Guerin
· Release date: April 2018, P
· Link to game: https://walkies3.itch.io/overdrive
· Length of development: 5-6 weeks (spare time)
· Development tools: Unity, Photoshop, visual studio, audacity, MagicaVoxel
