4/27/2025
Sprint 6 Kickoff
Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. In today's blog post I will be covering my work that I accomplished this Sprint as well as once again how our Sprint 6 went for our team. I am also excited to share that for this sprint we had our official Beta test for our projects Beta version in class. Let's dive into how this Sprint went for us as well as how our Beta playtest turned out.
Work
For this sprint I decided to focus on a couple of small but very crucial things. To start off, the last sprint we had to face some minor setbacks that required us to go back to the drawing board and start fresh. With that being said, I decided to take it upon myself as the Lead Designer to go back and design our own Level Icons and our own D-pad button. To do this I went into Photoshop and created those 2 things so that we could have them as our own assets. After doing so, it was crucial for me to go back into our games unity project and incorporate them into our previous setup. Even though these needed to be redone some good things came out of it.
Our new D-pad buttons would now provide visual feedback. Unlike before where the players would simply press it, now the buttons actually get highlighted to indicate you just pressed this button which I personally think is cool. As for the Level Icon it was beneficial to also get these done since we had previously only put in some placeholder images in for them, so it ended up working out as well with those.
Another thing I worked on this sprint that had to be redone was our audio. We used to have an audio play whenever our player pressed a button to provide noise feedback as well. Well, we also wanted to create our own asset for this so I once again took it upon myself to record a new brick laying sound and turn that into an mp3 file so that we could use it for our game. I still have some refining to do for this since I used my phone to record the sound, it ended up picking up a lot of the background noise that we do not want in the sound file. This was actually a cool first experience however since I have never worked with audio before.
The last thing I ended up doing for this sprint was reworking a little bit of how our stun mechanic for our star projectile works. We had received some feedback from our last playtest that players were still a bit confused on how the stun actually worked. I decided to add a blinking effect whenever the player enters the stun state so that it emphasizes to the player “I cannot move because I am stunned” and hopefully it clears up some confusion.
Playtest
As for the playtest we had this sprint, it went amazing. We had a total of 14 play testers play test our game and ultimately, we had such a good turnout. We believe our game has come a long way and we are dedicated to creating a high-quality game. With that being said, this sprint’s playtest was aimed at finding any big or minor game breaking bugs inside of our game and because of that we now have valuable feedback that will allow us to fix those bugs.
Overall
We as a team are very proud of all our efforts so far that have gone into creating this amazing project. We cannot wait for our game to finally get published and we are so eager and excited to be able to do so.
4/13/2025
Sprint 5 Kickoff
Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. In today's blog post I will be going over some awesome stuff but first as always, I will be covering my work that I accomplished this Sprint as well as how our Sprint 5 went for our team. I am also excited to share that for this sprint we had our 3rd playtest for our digital prototype in class. Let's take a look at how this sprint went.
Work
For this sprint I decided to focus on 2 very important things and ultimately, I was able to accomplish both of them. The first thing I tackled was creating a newer and updated version of our Menu, which ultimately became our Menu 2.0. This was something I had desperately wanted to revisit in order to try and revamp how our Main Menu looked. I definitely feel that as a team we are at a stage in this project where we need to go back and fill in some sort of placeholder stuff we began and incorporated into our project for us to come back and finish later. So that's exactly what I did, I came back and revisited our Main Menu which definitely needed a newer slick look. After spending some time, I figured how to create an animation play on screen for our Menu and decided that this would be an awesome and unique look to our game’s Main Menu.
The second thing I worked on was updating our floor blocks to better reflect a nicer and unique look to it as well. This is something I wanted to take care of this sprint, especially since in our latest playtest we were receiving multiple play testers feedback in which they said they were unsure which block or blocks the player was standing on. So ultimately, I took it upon myself to create a new mesh that could immediately be used to update the floor block prefab inside our unity project so that we wouldn't have to manually go and replace all of the floor blocks in all 3 of our levels that we have so far. This was super crucial that I do in order to speed up and save time. For the mesh all I did was go to Maya and create a simple 1x1 cube to fit the same dimensions for the prefab that we already had, and I basically just added a bevel to the top face of the cube to better represent the grid lines as shown in the image below. This will definitely clear up any confusion's players might have from now on.
Playtest
As for the playtest we had this sprint, it went amazing. We had a total of 12 play testers play test our game and ultimately, we had such a good turnout. Everyone seemed to like our newest iterations added into our game and they all enjoyed it. We still had a couple bugs found in our game once again which will need to be looked at closely again. Ultimately however, they all were able to beat the game and experience all that it had to offer. We also have tons of new suggestions from players who are eager to see more from our video game and we can’t wait to hear what they would like to see from our game.
Overall
We are definitely very proud of all our team's efforts and work that has gone into making this project come to life and ultimately, we are excited to finish the semester strong and make our game the best it can be.
3/29/2025
Sprint 4 Kickoff
Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. For this blog post I have some awesome stuff to go over but first I will be covering my work that I accomplished this Sprint as well as how our Sprint 4 went for our team. I am also excited to share that for this sprint we had our 2nd playtest for our digital prototype. Let's take a look together how this sprint went.
Work
For this sprint it was very important for me, the (Designer) of the team, to get together with my team producer to discuss at our kickoff meeting how we should prioritize this sprint's work. Everything we worked on for this sprint was aimed at creating and adding our unique features to our version 1 build so that we could successfully present a cool new alpha of our build.
With all that being said, the first thing I worked on this sprint was to create a proper scene transition for when players would finish the level. This would provide a clear visual to players indicating to them they have completed the level and are now on the next level. This was a feature we definitely wanted to incorporate since we are planning on definitely having more than just one level
The second thing I worked on was getting our player to be impacted directly by the incoming projectile. I first however went and created a 3D model of a rocket ship so that I can correctly depict a rocket ship being fired at our player. Once I did that, I started working on the movement and behavior for this Rocket Ship and was able to create a collision event that would trigger when this object would collide with our player. The collision event would basically cause the player to get pushed or sent flying as soon as they would get hit by the rocket. This would allow us to create some challenges in our game and ultimately create some conflict for players to face.
The last and final thing I worked on was to create a new version of our buttons from last time. Since there was a lot of feedback that we received last time where players mentioned they were a bit confused on how the buttons worked, this was very important to fix. For this I was able to create a D-Pad that would look much cleaner and understandable for our players to playtest. Having this done made the game look a thousand times better.
Playtest
As for our playtest that we conducted in class, I can proudly say that it went super well. We had a total of 17 play testers, and we received some great feedback from everybody. During our playtest however, we were able to find and identify some bugs in our game that caused some very minor confusion. The most noticeable one was when players would finish Level1 of our game they would sometimes not be immediately transitioned into the 2nd Level right away. There were other minor bugs but that one was perhaps the most annoying one. Nevertheless, our play testers were still able to eventually experience our full game and everything we incorporated this time around. Some people really enjoyed our newest iteration of our buttons and others really liked the cool rocket ship concept.
Overall
We are definitely beginning to cover much of the groundwork for this project, but we are still continuing to work hard as a team to create an awesome working game by the end of the semester.
3/09/2025
Sprint 3 Kickoff
Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. Today I will go over me and my team's newest progress to date for our mobile game project called “Blox Fighter”. In the last 2 weeks we have undergone and successfully completed our Sprint 3 for this project. This time around our project is starting to look much better in regard to our Digital iteration and I am even excited to share that this Sprint we were able to build our first version for our mobile app and were able to run our first playtest. Let's dive into how this sprint went for us.
Work
This time around I was deeply focused on getting ourselves ready for our version 1 build of our app. That being said, there were a lot of things to get done before we could submit our build. During this sprint I was able to focus on 2 key things for our project. The first things were getting our Main Menu for our game to fully work and correctly transition to our game scene. This was very crucial to have for our initial build as it would have to be fully operational for our playtest to work correctly. Creating the Main menu involved creating a specific scene to house it in, create some overlaying text and a button that would transition us between scenes. After this was created it was very important to enter the scenes into the build settings appropriately so that our programmer can execute the build correctly.
The second thing I worked on was creating the game scene where our beginner tutorial level would be housed in. Since my other two partners would need a scene to throw their work in, I went ahead and created the scene and labeled it “Tutorial”. As I mentioned earlier as well, I also went ahead and put this scene directly after the main menu scene into the build settings as well. Inside of the scene however, I was able to create a atmospheric skybox to create a better immersive environment for our players. Since our games setting takes place in space, I went ahead and found a free HDRI (Satara Night (No Lamps) HDRI • Poly Haven) from Polyhaven and imported into that scene to create the skybox. Once this was said done it was ready for my other teammates to import their stuff and easily set up. That included our first basic level design as well as our player prototype, we have working. Once that was all put together, we were ready to create our first build.
Playtest
As soon as we submitted our Version 1 build, we were ready for our playtest, and I can honestly say that it went fantastic. We had a total of 24 play testers, and we gathered a lot of super important and useful feedback that will help us even more for our next build. As for this playtest though, some of the key feedback we received was perhaps how much people liked our player movement mechanics. Another detail was as well our overall creativeness. Most people who gave us feedback said they really enjoyed playing our game but that they wish we had a little more to offer. Since this was our first version, we wanted to start off basic but still deliver the core gameplay mechanics of our game.
Overall
We feel that this Sprint went extremely well, and we cannot wait to get started on our next sprint. Ultimately moving forward, we want to aim to provide as much new game components as we can in order to provide the players with a more versatile game experience that can produce many more exciting experiences.
2/23/2025
Sprint 2 Kickoff
Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. Today I want to go over me and my team's progress to date for our “Blox Fighter” project. In the last 2 weeks we have undergone and successfully completed our Sprint 2 for this project. I can proudly say that things are starting to look good in regard to our Digital prototype. Let's dive into how this sprint went for us.
Work
As the Lead designer for our team, one of the main things I did this sprint was to help facilitate the creation and distribution of work for our other 2 teammates alongside with our team producer. Since our last sprint, we needed to create some more user stories that would help us well with our current goals and overall project vision. The previous sprint’s focus was spent entirely on creating a working paper prototype. This time around we were all mainly focused on getting our project inside of the Unity 3D engine to be able to start creating our digital prototype. This being said, there were 3 main things I was able to focus on and accomplish this sprint. First would have to be our players movement. This specific task was a bit difficult to complete. We actually went through two different iterations for this movement method. Since we wanted our block player to replicate a flipping mechanic, it was important for us to create a movement that was heavily reliant on rolling along the pivot axis of the player object. Ultimately when the 2nd one was created, we felt this one was the one that best represented our project vision, so we are sticking with this new method.
The next thing I worked on for this sprint was getting the player to correctly respawn back to its correct and original spot every time they have fallen off of the platform. This is a super important game mechanic that would definitely have to be done if we want our players to face any real kind of challenge. I started immediately after wrapping up the player movement, since I needed that work first in order to be able to properly playtest the respawning function. With that being said, I was able to add a Rigid body to my players prefab in order to have gravity affect my player so that whenever they would step off the grid boundaries they would fall and die in a sense. However, I kept running into a few issues while trying to do this. The major one, was perhaps the issue of getting the player block to restabilize itself in the upright position. It seemed that the matter in which the player block fell directly down mattered when it came to respawning it back to the correct position. After a while though, I was able to find a solution and get it to work the way I wanted it to.
The last thing I was able to work on and complete this sprint was the incoming object mechanic that we are trying to implement as our +1 idea for our game. This was something we also wanted to take care of right away since we felt this was going to end up being one of the core gameplay mechanics for our game. For right now though, we didn't have a lot of models and prefabs to work off of so I decided to just use a 3D sphere inside of Unity to represent the incoming objects movement and spawning which was relatively easy.
Overall
We feel that we are definitely heading in the right direction, and we are looking forward to starting our Sprint 3 kickoff.
2/09/2025
Sprint 1 Kickoff
Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. Today I want to go over a new mobile game that me and my new team are working on. I have the awesome pleasure of working as a Lead Designer for this new project alongside Gabriel Alter as our team Producer and Patrick Mcgee as our team Programmer. As the Lead Designer we have decided to collectively work on an idea that I brainstormed during the first week of my 2025 Spring semester. In this blog post I will cover how this whole process has been a different experience for me and ultimately how me and my teams first sprint for this project went.
For starters as you may recall, I mentioned in the beginning of this post that this time around I have the great privilege of being a Lead Game Designer for this semester's Mobile Game Development class and it is a role that I am honored to take. With that being said, like previous semesters we were tasked in the very beginning to create a pitch for a mobile game using the +1-game design strategy. After researching and understanding the ideology behind this strategy, it became clear what I had to brainstorm on. I decided to try and implement a +1 idea to the hit game “Bloxors”. My +1 to this game would be to add incoming projectiles to the player making it harder for them to reach their end goal. This would essentially be a culmination of “Bloxors” meets “Crossy Road”. Our working title for this project will be called “Blox Fighter” and after pitching this idea to the class I was able to land my awesome teammates who would help me bring this project to life.
Work
With all that being said, as the Lead Designer I have been tasked with creating a game treatment for my team and I to envision how we want this project to turn out. It has also been my job up to this point to communicate with both my teammates and especially my team producer in order to effectively create and write user stories inside of our backlog in Trello. While this role has been an additional challenge to take on, I believe me and my team can deliver an awesome and creative project that we can all feel very proud about at the end of the semester.
As for Sprint one, the team and I decided to split up beginning tasks among the 3 of us according to roles. As the Lead Designer we felt I should take the responsibility of creating the paper prototype to have ready for a first playtest, while my other teammates worked on getting a Unity project going as well as creating some annotated maps for a tutorial level. So that was my main focus this Sprint and let me tell you that it ended up working a lot better than I anticipated.
Playtest Results
During our playtest. I could see that players were getting a clear understanding of the movement mechanic as well as our objective and goals. Part of this success was due to the fact that I wrote such a short and simple rule sheet to begin with.
I think players immediately got the gist of things and were able to complete both of my levels without a hassle. The only problem perhaps was for our paper prototype it was kind of difficult to convey our +1 idea to our players, so we did have to run into a couple of questions from players seeking a little more clarity on that portion. However overall, we were able to get a total of 15 play testers who all ranked our game a 3 out of 4 for level of enjoyment. Overall, I would say that we did a good job with our Sprint 1 and are already beginning to do work for Sprint 2.
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