The Concept sprint is to define your project's vision clearly, understand what you need, and decide how to get the project done.
TIPS FOR BEGINNERS
Creating a high quality Experience is easier when you set design limits that fit your skill level:
First project? Create a single player game to reduce complexity. Multiplayer networked requires intermediate knowledge. See Creating Gameplay for more information.
New to creating in 3D? Change the camera settings to create a top down or side-scrolling game to make your project easier to build.
New with logic using Game Maker (or any creative tool)? Make a plan for a shorter game with less interactive logic and/or a smaller world. This increases the likelihood of completing a full working game.
Write down the names of your teammates and what roles they'll have in the project (e.g., creative director, producer, asset artist, animator, level designer, narrative designer, etc).
Goals
Audience - Who is it for? What existing content appeals to them and why? What makes your game concept fun?
Goals - What is your goal date? Do you plan to launch to LAND, mint assets, and/or submit your Experience in a Game Jam?
Risks - What are each team member's strengths and weaknesses? How does this affect your creative priorities? How will you adapt? (e.g., if no team member can animate, you can purchase assets, use templates, and keep animations simple to finish the project on time)
BRAINSTORM: What is it?
Explore Your Concept
Diverge - Brainstorm as many wild ideas as possible with an open minded approach. This is not the time to filter ideas, but to expand your creative potential with "yes, and" thinking. Keep this list - you may use it to modify your concept later or make another game!
Converge - Combine interesting ideas into a fun and feasible game concept.
Refine Your Concept
Vision - you'll refer to your project vision many times to be sure you're staying on track:
Write a short description (0-140 characters)
Create a bulleted list highlighting the most interesting and fun things about your project as if you are pitching it to a player
GAME FLOW: How does it work?
GAMES ARE EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
Players learn by taking action, observing the results, making conclusions, and experimenting with new understanding (facing the same challenge or the next one).
Draw a diagram and write out the player experience for 30 seconds of gameplay. Include:
Core loop - What is the main repeating flow of your gameplay?
Secondary loop(s) - How will secondary loops motivate or help players to complete the core loop? Do you need to add any feedback loops to balance the game positively or negatively?
Label with meaningful decisions players will make (which make it interesting, challenging, fun, etc.)
PROTOTYING: Is it fun and feasible?
Test Game Loops
Without building anything in Game Maker, create a paper prototype to roughly "play through" the core and secondary loops of your game (use board game pieces, dice, rough sketches, etc).
Write down your reflections, discuss modifications, and test new ideas to refine the gameplay. Modify your Vision to take these things into account.
Test Logic in Question
USE LOGIC AS INTENDED
Innovation is exciting, but playability is most important. An Experience using logic beyond the intended purpose:
may not function consistently in the current version of Game Maker
may become difficult or impossible to play when future updates of Game Maker introduce new features and make changes to improve performance
Create simple test logic in Game Maker to verify interactive content you aren't sure how to build yet. Explore alternative logic if needed or simplify logic by modifying game loops or narrative.
Optional
If you have time, you can create an extremely simple "vertical slice" of your game, which is usually focused on one play area or quest. This can be useful if you plan to pitch for funding or partnerships, but may not be best for a Game Jam. Use time wisely depending on your situation.
2. CREATIVE CONCEPT
GAME WORLD: What is it all about?
Define Your Theme
See Worldbuilding to learn about various approaches to designing your world.
What is the time and place of your world? Who lives there? How does the player fit?
Spreadsheets are excellent for tracking quest text, dialogue, assets to use, and props!
Use your game loops diagram to create a focusedStoryboard
Plan Quests and Characters
Use your storyboard to begin planning characters and dialogue, including related quests
GAME ART: What does it look like?
Art can take up much of your project time if not prioritised carefully.
Define Your Art Concept:
See Experience Art Concept to learn about mood boards, art style, and planning a visual hierarchy.
Create a Mood Board to collect references for your Experience's art direction relevant to your narrative choices (use AI to generate ideas if needed).
Take notes on your visual hierarchy plan to begin prioritising assets and settings related to the 🟦Look & Feel of the Experience.
Your visual hierarchy will be a helpful reference to stay on track so players will also focuse on the most important aspects of your Experience.
Curate Your List of Assets:
See Asset Curation to learn about listing and tracking all of the assets in your Experience.
Spreadsheets are excellent for tracking assets you need to create or purchase.
Create a list of visual element types to include in your Experience and add a general priority level.
Begin listing assets you'll need in each visual element section. Start with high priority assets needed for your narrative from Mission 5. Add other assets and set priority per asset based on your needs (this is different from the priority for each category).
PRIORITIZING ASSETS
Set a higher priority for assets the player will interact with, medium priority for assets players will notice, and lower priority for assets that fill remaining space.
GAMEPLAY: What does it "feel" like?
Plan Your Gameplay Logic:
Open notes from Mission 5 narrative planning and note Game Maker quest types. Add two columns to check off items as you build logic later:
Added text (yes/no)
Logic functioning (yes/no)
Review your game loops diagram from Mission 3. Create a list to track Rules needed in your Experience. Consider Presets (pre-made rulesets) to save time and what custom rulesets you'll need to create.
See 🔷Game Rules documentation to learn about the Rules system.
See 📗Game Rules Guide pages for details about applying commonly used rulesets.
Note Avatar settings needed for your Experience such as block damage, oxygen, etc.
Think ahead (take notes):
How can you make the game more fun with variation, surprises, etc?
How will you design logic so it can't be broken if triggered out of the intended order?
What logic will you need to test to ensure you can deliver the Experience?
