A Prototype Based on Marbles Moving

When your trying to make a game you must gather all of your thoughts and then start making a "beginning of game" or make a prototype. Prototyping is like using your own creation of a game by putting your ideas that you think are best then, start testing it to see if its good. While your prototyping, your able to make improvements or change parts of a game. Its almost like making a rough draft of a story. Most game prototypes may include rough artwork, sound, and features. Another thing about prototyping is that you are trying to have a prototype game that has an original core game play. The core game play are actions that repeats frequently in order to achieve the game's overall goal. A physical prototype is completely different than prototype using technology or digital prototype,we since physical focuses on game play.  You may find it difficult to start a physical prototype, but there no need to worry because there are methods. There are many methods like starting off using slips of paper with hand-drawn markings on them, make a battleship, or a first person shooter prototype. There are many other ways of making a physical prototype. A game that uses a different method of making a physical prototype is called, "Mancala."

Mancala is a two player family board game where you pass marbles on each "pit" and get as many in the goal. The genre is sowing game or can be called a "count and capture game." To understand about this game, the objective to try to capture more marbles than your opponents in order to win. The early parts of the game was  totally different from what is now on some type of wooden flat surface. Mancala originated in Africa and  they play it on the ground. Rocks were used instead of marbles. The pits and "goal were basically dug up. There are other different ways of how Mancala is structured depending  on the country it is played in. This early part of Mancala is more like a physical prototype because of how differently the game is as compared to how it is played in America, whats interesting about it, and how this idea originated many centuries ago. It doesn't use any hand-made items like paper but, instead uses things naturally made from nature. When the creators made this game, they first visualized all their ideas and their core idea or the main things the game is about. The game core game play was players to grab a certain amount of marbles and drop it in each pit until they reach the goal or have no more. Most physical based games don't use many features, but as discussed earlier,  physical game play focuses on simple game play and engaging the players versus digital play with complicated and beautiful graphics..

Mystical Creatures Being Controlled By Rangers!?!?!

When it comes to making a game concept, you need to think of ideas. In other words, you need to brainstorm. Brainstorming is key in knowing what your concept might be for your game. This also allows you to think creatively by saying anything randomly that comes out of your head like a "giant mech T-Rex that has and iron tank on its back shooting lasers". This may sound ridiculous but, this can be the start or be the core idea for your team members to start brainstorming. There are some other ways you can brainstorm such as list a creation, idea cards, mind map, shout it out by voice reordering it, and cut up pieces of  pictures and matching up the cut up picture. Brainstorming ideas should not  be about criticizing because this will cause discouragement to those people who made those ideas. This will also destroy the entire part of creativity, eliminating the purpose of having concepts. The game that I'm going to tell you about has a good concept and is called, "Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs."

Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs is the third title for the Pokemon ranger series. This game is played only for the Nintendo Ds, and  mostly uses the stylus for game play. Its sort of based on an action strategy type of game with a little of role-playing in it. There were many concepts used in this game, causing it to be different and unlike the other Pokemon titles. One of the key ideas they chose is not to make the protagonist a trainer, but instead a ranger. Instead of capturing a Pokemon using a poke'ball, rangers use these tiny gadgets called the capture disc. This disc allows the player to emotion bond  or befriend the Pokemon when capturing them. Once you capture the Pokemon, you'll gain experience that varies depending how well you capture them. You can use the Pokemon to use field moves. Field moves are helpful in  removing obstacles from out of the way. These obstacles may be giant boulders and trees. The concept action is used for this capture disc and is used by the stylus looping around the Pokemon and dodging projectiles. When I said this has a little role-playing in it, I mean you can increase the power of your captured disc. An example of more power is an increase in the boost of friendship gauge ( which is basically an attack) and health every time you capture a Pokemon. The captured disc is based on a life bar of the game, making you cautious when you get hit by wild Pokemon's projectiles. Soon you won"t feel cautious when you get hit by a projectile because of another idea, quest which were added by the game designers called Game Freak. You can retain them after you finish certain parts of the game. After you are done a quest, you receive many different upgrades like defense boost on a certain element, an increase of the length of your disc, and much more. There are many other editions to this game,  like using your Partner Pokemon, Pichu using its Ukulele that help in capturing Pokemon. This allows you to use captured Pokemon to help you increase your chance to capture another Pokemon, and mount and ride on Pokemon. 

While the game may have a great concept for a Pokemon game, there are a couple of flaws in this game. One being, the game play of the capture disc. It can actually be very boring to some players because you are basically just  looping around. Some players either like or dislike. There is also an annoyance when you encounter Pokemon who are agitated.  These Pokemon  are difficult to capture because if  you stop trying to capture it, it will slowly regain its anger. Some of the sad things about these concepts is that your limited by a certain number of Pokemon. This limitation makes you have to release the Pokemon for more room. With all the upgrades you receive from quest and others, wild Pokemon will begin to feel not challenged because they are capable of  absolutely zero damage. There was some wild Pokemon that are extremely fast and abusively using attacks. In order to improve  this game would be to try  not to make the game too easy and have so many annoyances.

Angel Within The Skies

Feedback is a great way to make a game designer improve their skills because they let you know the main negative parts of the game. Even though feedback may sound negative, it will have a positive effect on the game. A positive effect will create an advantage while a negative effect works against the effect. Balancing them will force the game to have a divergent behavior making the players become engaged. You can also receive feedback just by letting players to play test your game. This is what many game designers do when their game is in beta. Without feedback, games will never improve and many games will result in dead ends. A game I'm going to show you has a few flaws but still a great game called "Kid Icarus Uprising" for the 3Ds.

The game, Kid Icarus Uprising, is a action game where you shoot enemies through land and sky fighting enemies from the underworld. The main hero, Pit, is an angel who was sent by goddess Palutena. She guides you as you travel along the way of your quest. Your quest is to defeat the evil monster named Medusa. She's was once defeated previously from Pit's last adventure from the game, Kid Icarus NES but, she was reincarnated. She was the one who summoned demons across the skies of the overland. Along your adventure, you can obtained dozens of weapons that are melee and ranged. Also, there is another item called, power palettes that have certain powers like healing or increase your attack. You can change the difficulty of the game by using hearts which is currency. The increase of the difficult, the better items you'll get after you beat the game. Another fun thing about this game is that you can face other players using internet battling them in different stages. Even though this game has a fantastic atmosphere, intriguing story, and music, there are couple problems in the game. The controls of the game are difficult to play because of how abstract they are. To move around, you use the joystick and to shoot/attack you use the L button. This is where the problems of controls begin. In order to aim at enemies you have to use a stylus. That allows you use your special attack and use power palette. This style of control creates even more difficult for the player especially for left handed people. While your trying to get used of the controls, the difficulty can be very annoying especially if you're trying to get better items. This is type of game for immediate players or above. Seeing those flaws may sound disappointing but, its still great game to play and it has many interest within the game.

A Creative Adventure

When its comes to art, you can explore in your imagination by making art come to life on just a sheet of paper. Having your own creativity hand drawn can make you think of many ideas from which to choose from. You can have your drawing in a painting, comic, animated TV show, or etc. Art is used all over the globe, especially in video games. When developing a character for a game, game designers have to plan out the type of character they want for their game. They start by making drawing sketches or art concepts. Many characters like Mario, Cloud, and Sonic were all created using character design on sketches. Speaking of drawing sketches, the Nintendo Ds stylus shares the same traits of a pencil, which is easily compatible to use. If your interested on any Ds games involving a stylus or drawing, then your probably would be interested in the game Drawn to Life.

Drawn to Life is an adventure game where you basically can draw anything, such as the main character, weapons, and many more objects of your choice in the game. The game begins where there was a peaceful village, but suddenly a rebel appeared named Wilfre, who created an army of evil shadows to spread darkness over the land. He also tore pages from the Book of Life and secretly hid them across the land.  Those pages were templates for parts of the land. Before everybody lost hope someone cries  out your name because you are the creator of the game,  You as the creator is able to draw the hero to help reconstruct the village back to normal. When you start playing the game, you are greeted into this building where there is a mannequin. You start drawing the main character from the mannequin.  After that you start in your adventure rescuing citizens, restoring the land, and extinguishing darkness. There are also secrets within the game, such as music unlockables, other drawing tools, and much more. There is actually a sequel of the game too. One for the Wii and one for the Ds. I highly recommend getting the Ds version because it is difficult to draw using the Wii sensor.