Video Game Prototype

Attack on Mushrooms complete - an analysis

Over the past few weeks, I’ve co-developed a game prototype, Attack on Mushrooms, using the YoYo Games’ GameMaker Studio software. As the programmer and producer, my role has been writing the code that enables the functionality of the game, as well as communicate our game’s development progress and goals to our big cheese. I also did level design for each of the three game areas.

The game’s goal is to fight the nearby mushroom mobs, and eventually progress to beat the boss mushroom. The game originally was designed to have quests, but we didn’t scale the game out enough to support that.

Attack on Mushrooms, playable version 0.0002 - download (exe) (Windows only)

Controls

Arrow keys to move (up to jump), spacebar to melee attack.

Known Issues

• Using the melee attack in midair permanently freezes the player’s position and restricts further movement, requiring a game restart
• If the player is jumping up to the left towards a wall and immediately turns to the right, the player will teleport to the right until they hit a wall
• There is no game end - killing the boss mushroom does nothing

So the game has made some progress since our original prototype, we’ve added real level design, enemy mushrooms, and attack mechanics. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to dedicate as much time to the game as I’d like, and I feel that I lost a lot of inspiration and motivation along the way.

From what we’ve made, I definitely proud of the movement mechanics, and for the final I think I’ll use that portion to create something totally new.