Aletheia Cox, Jaron Graham, Taylor Radley

Brain Blaster

Game Design Document for Final Game VVA 6640 and ITP 160 2015-2016

Team Work

Aletheia Cox – Creator, co-writer, background music, English questions, documentation

Jaron Graham – Level design, programming

Taylor Radley – co-writer, documentation, backpack sprite, pencil sprite

Game Design Document Page 1 High Concept Design (10 points) Brain Blaster

Aletheia Cox, Jaron Graham, and Taylor Radley High Concept Document for Final Game ITP 160 Intro to Game Design & Development Fall 2015

Basic Idea To create an entertaining slider/shooter that educates the player on basic English skills and cre- ates a system rewards for players who successfully demonstrate their knowledge. The game is built with a Space Invader for the classroom vibe. The twist of the game is that your score is di- rectly tied to your ability to move forward. And if you fail, the game itself does not reset, only the level you are on.

Audience and Target Market The target audience for this game is for students in the 3rdgrade. It will focus on being an educa- tional game that encourages to learn from mistakes by only allowing them to move onto the next level once they successfully reach a minimum score on each level. The game will have an E rat- ing and will built for the PC.

Character Georgie the Backpack (protagonist) is a backpack who has been brought to life after being struck by lightening. The main purpose of this character is to fire pencils at the right answers to correct- ly answer your homework questions.

Game Design Document Page 2 Game Play The player character, Georgie the Backpack, sits at the bottom of the screen and can move left and right using the Left and Right arrow keys. You press the Space Bar to fire pencils at the answers that rain towards the player. If you hit the right answer, your score increases by 100 points and you are given a new question. If you fire at the wrong answer, your score decreases by 100 points. Until you reach a minimum score of 300 points, you are not allowed to proceed to the next level.

World Design The setting is in space that is posing difficult questions. The perspective is from top down. The current backgrounds. When a player shoots a word an explosion will occur to maintain a sense of fun.

Story (20 points)

Back Story When lightning strikes your backpack it comes to life and seeks to solve all your homework. However, so did your English homework has come to life as well! Now the right words have gotten mixed up with all the wrong words and are flying through space! The only way to solve this problem is to use your backpack’s arsenal of pencils to sort out the right words to all the English problems you have left!

Flow Chart or Story Board

Game Design Document Page 3 Character Design (20 points) Main Player Character: Georgie the Backpack

Georgie the Backpack is the protagonist fighting to fix your English homework. Georgie is your backpack that has come to life after being struck by lightening, and helps get your mixed up homework in order by firing pencils at all of the wrong answers.

Drawn by Taylor Radley

Secondary Character #1: Words The first secondary character is the words in your English homework. They rain down on you. All of the wrong answers are the antagonist. If a wrong answer is hit by a pencil then you lose 100 points. If the correct answer is hit with a pencil then you will gain 100 points.

Image created by Taylor Radley

Secondary Character #2: Pencil Ammo The second secondary character is the pencil. Georgie the Backpack has a large supply of them to fire at the incorrect words raining down. The pencil helps Georgie complete the homework when it collides with the correct word

Drawn by Taylor Radley

Game Design Document Page 4 Game Play Core Mechanics (20 points) The game is a combination question and answer game as well as an interactive arcade game sim- ilar to asteroids. The player scores points by successfully hitting the right answer and loses points for hitting the wrong answers. A minimum score of 300 is required to advance to the next level. The player earns 100 points for each correct answer. This way the main threat to the player is getting answers wrong, but even if they fail a level, they can retry it an infinite number of times encouraging the player to learn from their mistakes. Wrong answers are mixed in with the right answer to create some level of difficulty in addition to the questions that become more and more difficult. Each level focuses on different types of English questions, such as possessives, verbs, and homophones. You win the game when you have completed all three levels.

World Design (10 points)

Game World The world location takes place in space and may go to other areas depending on game development time. Game Resources/References (10 points)

Backpack sprite Pencil sprite Space backgrounds Explosion Sound Background Music English Questions

Characters, Animations or Sprite Sheets Backpack sprite – drawn by Taylor Radley Pencil sprite – drawn by Taylor Radley

Backgrounds Backgrounds – created by Taylor Radley Title Screen – created by Taylor Radley

Game Design Document Page 5 Scene Art Location will be set in space and is currently being developed.

Sound Effects and Music Background Music – created by Aletheia Cox in Garageband Explosion 2 sound – The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners Compan- ion CD

Game Design Document Page 6