Tunnel Blasters Unity - mind maps
Introduction
During the first week of my passion project, I decided to create a Unity game inspired by the classic Bomberman game from the late ’90s. Bomberman was incredibly popular when it was released on Nintendo arcade machines worldwide, and I personally played it during the late 2000s as a kid. It became a significant part of my childhood, so for nostalgic reasons, I chose to recreate it in Unity. Last semester, I specialized in game design, which sparked my passion for the field and motivated me to continue pursuing it. Although I’m currently an AD student, I’m considering focusing on game design in the near future.
Process
Design Challenge
Currently, I’m in the discovery phase of my passion project, and I’ve decided to develop a problem statement for my Unity project. My goal is to create a 2D arcade-style Bomberman game, but with my own unique twist. To guide the project, I came up with the following problem statement: How can a Bomberman-inspired game be developed in Unity that offers challenging, strategic gameplay with a unique twist, while balancing accessibility for new players and depth for experienced gamers?
After defining the problem statement, I created a mind map to break it down into different branches, as shown below. This helped me gain a clearer overview of the steps and strategies needed to achieve my goals.
Explanation on this mindmap
The following are my six main branches:
• Coremechanics - The coremechanics are the main actions, rules and systems that define how the players interact with my game to give them their primary game experience.
• Visual Presentation – The use of art, graphics animations and design elements to create the aesthetic style and visual experience of a game.
• Audio presentation – The use of sound effects, music and voiceovers to enhance atmosphere, narrative and overall game experience.
• Unity Features – The mandatory tools and components that’s built into this game engine that help me develop the game.
• Level design – The process of creating the game’s environment, challenges and layout, so the player will have an engaging and interactive gameplay.
• Creative Twist – This will be my own innovation for the game, to make the game similar yet different to distinguish it from the other Bomberman.
Mechanics brainstorm
I’ve created another mind map to dig deeper into the functionalities and features that will be implemented in the game. These features are essential because without them, it wouldn’t feel like a Bomberman game. I came up with this by looking at both old and new Bomberman games, but my prior experience playing the game also helped a lot in shaping this mind map.
For more info on the mind maps above that I’ve made, you can find the links in the appendices.
Feedback
During feedback sessions with my teachers Jan and Petra, they told me I had well thought on this project, but since I had quite a lot as features for my game they weren’t sure if I was able to get my game ready, where I explained that I did already made a start on the project a week prior started with setting up the project and a early start developing the game.
As a advice they said to come with 2 or 3 user stories and then start working on the game while getting help from a teacher or stakeholder who could give useful feedback. Planning ahead out the upcoming weeks would also help me stay on track and finish the project successfully.
Reflection
After getting this feedback, I’ll continue working on my project plan and conduct some researches like a competitor analysis and also an early start on designing my sprites for the game, before I will implement it into my game