Major Design issues faced in developing a flash game for
Key stage one children.
By Steven Wright (S143211)
The game we made for our key stage one flash game is called “Animal Frenzy”; the idea of the game was to educate children in learning about animals and the environments they lived in, also about caring for the environment. The game play mechanics are dragging the correct animals on to the background while finding litter placed around the scene, once the correct animals have been placed you move to the next level in which there are 5 in total. When making the game there were major design Issues we have been faced with and had to think about while making this game for key stage one children, are the following Gender, Art style, Music, Sounds, gameplay and difficulty while still trying to keep it educational and fun for the children to play. I will talk about each of these and how we researched and how we overcome these issues to make it a suitable fun yet education game for key stage one children.
The gender is an important aspect we needed to address so the game appealed to both genders, boys and girls so either gender could have a connection with the characters, at that age girls and boys tend to prefer to play as their own gender so it was very important to put it into the game, we researched other flash games to see what they did to solve this issue, a lot of the games we looked at didn’t give a option of selecting the gender of your character and only gave you one gender or the other to play as, the games we researched also featured a male and female lead character, which we thought was good idea as it appealed to both genders.
We decided to use the idea of having our main characters male and female; to solve the issue of both genders having a connection with the main characters as they could connect with one or the other, we also decided to keep the main characters young looking when designing them to try to give more of connection. We decided that we wouldn’t let you make or choose a character to play as so it felt like you get to play as yourself which would also make the player feel connected as they feel the main characters are actually talking to them and that they were actually part of the game.
The Art for the game is a very important aspect of the game we needed to make the graphics big, bright, colourful and cute looking to grab the children’s attention and to keep them interested in playing the game to make them want to see what was going to be coming up in the future levels, we researched what appealed to children visually by looking at other flash games, children’s television programmes and magazines, all these types of media had similar things in common bright colourful artwork with friendly looking characters.
The backgrounds for the levels are very colourful, and have a cartoon look to them which appeals to children of a young age, the levels have a basic detail design to keep them very simple looking but still visually pleasing so it wouldn’t look over the top. The Animals were designed to look like their real life counterparts but with a twist of making them appeal to children we did this by making them cute and friendly looking, using bright colours, friendly facial expressions and poses, we felt it was important to still keep the animals looking like their real life counter parts so the children could identify the animals if they were to see them outside of the game, we kept main characteristics of the animals such as tiger stripes and the lion’s mane, this would further help the children in recognizing these animals. The main characters which are Mickey and Mandy who guide you through and tell you facts about the environment and the animals, we kept a cartoon look which looks friendly with bright colours, so children felt they were characters they would like to help and play with, the age of the characters also was important to keep in mind so children could associate with them more, we originally had Mickey and Mandy as adults but we felt children would connect better if we made them younger looking.
The sound and music for the game was an important issue as it needed to fit the mood of the game as well as appeal to the children playing the game, it also adds a lot to a games immersiveness it can make or break a game if the music or sounds aren’t correct. The animal sounds we researched by looking around the internet for the characteristics of the sounds the animals made, also sound clips and video footage of the animals, we wanted their sounds to be authentic so children could recognize the sounds of each animal if they were to hear them outside of the game, once we found the sounds we had to edit the animal sounds so they didn’t sound too loud or too harsh so the children who were playing wouldn’t be scared when they heard them.
We thought it would also be a good idea to add in Voice acting to Mickey and Mandy, To bring a bit more life to them and too excite children hearing them like they were talking to them and also to bring out a bit more enthusiasm of what Mickey and Mandy were saying, We decided on Robert Hutton to voice Mickey as he fit the role of Mickey, and we chose Nicola Mizon to voice Mandy as we felt she fit the role of Mandy, Both voices we thought children would like and feel comfortable with as they’re clear sounding and very friendly voices.
Gameplay was something we had to get just right, so it wouldn’t be to difficult for the children to play, and so they would understand how to play without having to read a long tutorial of how to play, we made it so the tutorial was in the first level so the child could play while learning how the game works at the same time to make it more fun, we also added a help screen which also explains how to play in more depth in case the child got stuck while playing, we also added in screen shots showing the child what to do alongside the instructions on the help screen, to make it clearer how to play and also put in details about various elements we added like the rubbish littered around the levels, the try system and how the medal system worked.
We needed to make and keep the game enjoyable throughout so the child wouldn’t be bored playing and eventually end up stop playing the game, the game itself could become very boring as it is initially just drag and drop the animals on to a background, so we needed to make it more interesting we tried to do this by adding interactive elements into the backgrounds which is a little animation which happens during each level for example an acorn dropping from the tree when the pigeon is placed on to the branch, we also added in parts of the background with saying what they were for example if the player highlighted a piece of tall grass it would highlight and a box would appear saying “Tall grass” which would make the game bit more enjoyable when playing as they would also be learning about parts of the environments as well. Litter was another element we added to change the game being just drag and drop, the litter is hidden throughout the level’s which the player can optionally find which will improve the medal they would receive at the end of the level. The medal system is something we implemented to improve the longevity and to add a goal to the game “When players begin to feel they don’t have a goal worth striving for, the begin to get restless” (Costikyan, 2002:2), as when we thought about the game we had no reward system other than placing the animals to progress further into the game, the player needed to have a motivation to carry on which is also known as “struggle” in design terms “It is essential to note that players want to work for their rewards” (Newman, 2004:16) there four types of medals bronze, silver, gold and platinum; Bronze being the lowest medal and platinum being the highest medal depending on how the player performs in the level will result in which medal they will receive, we also put our own spin on these medal’s by making them include animals such as for bronze you would be rewarded with a fish and for gold you would be rewarded with a Lion; we decided to use medal’s as we discussed as a group that they were commonly used to reward children at a young age for good work.
Difficulty is a very big issue when making a key stage one game, as you can’t make it too difficult so the child would get frustrated and give up playing, you also can’t make it too easy so the child would either finish the game really fast or just end up being bored and stop playing before the game is completed, I think we managed to get the difficulty just right for the age of key stage one, we have 6 animals to choose from 3 correct and 3 wrong, we also gave the player a set amount of tries which we decided 6 tries would be a good number for the player to find and place the correct animals, the tries go down as they place an animal, if they lose all their tries then its game over and they have to start the level again, we felt that it’s better to have the player replay the level rather than have to play the whole game again from the start, they can replay the level as many times as they would like to until they pass the level, that way its kept the game easier without the player getting frustrated of having to start from the beginning.
We also decided to make the game get progressively harder so the first level will be the easiest and the last level would be the hardest so as the player got more comfortable with playing they would find it gradually getting a little more challenging, we did this by lowering the amount of tries you were given to guess the correct animals, we all thought that would be the best way to tackle that issue as it was very hard to think of other ways to make our game get progressively harder due to the style of game it was.
In Conclusion I feel our game didn’t have many design issues, the minor one’s we had we were able to overcome, by researching, thinking like our target audience, working and discussing as a team. While talking as a group it was mentioned about what a designer was consisting of which this was brought up “As a designer, you still have to figure out what is fun, what your game is about, and what vision and goals you bring to it” (Church, 1999:4) which a member of our group said that we also need to always think about our target audience when designing the game, and I think that is a very important aspect of designing a game, the target audience always comes first, as they will be the people playing the final product, so all decisions and other points off view should be considered with an open mind for designing the best product for that audience.
Bibliography
Costikyan, Greg (2002) ‘I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games’. In: Frans Mäyrä (ed), CGDC Conference Proceedings. Studies in Information Sciences. Tampere: Tampere University Press, pp. 9–33.
Newman, J., 2004. Videogames, London: Routledge.
Church, D., Gamasutra - Features - Formal Abstract Design Tools. Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal%20abstract%20design%20tools.php
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