Game Evaluation
What Went Well
I think the game turned out pretty well as it has all main mechanics that I wanted it to have. There may be a few minor bugs but none should harm the gameplay. I also had time to add in the speed run mode which I’m glad I could add as it gives the game more replayability once you beat it. There are also trophy collectibles hidden around the game level adding more to the base game so that players can replay to try and find them. I think the game looks decent and some of the lighting looks nice in some areas such as the very first area. There is controller support making the game more accessible for people who like to play with controllers and also they vibrate when performing certain actions giving them feedback for when they do something. The sound effects and ambience sounds that I used, which were all from FreeSound, I think work well with everything that I assigned them to as they all sound like they are in a sci-fi world. I kept the sci-fi theme all throughout which helps keep the immersion.
What Went Wrong
Some of the level design is a bit messy and also quite square making for boring environments. The lighting in the game is probably the weakest part about it as I had a lot of trouble getting it to look right. There are a few puzzles which I think could be improved on a lot or expanded on with more rooms so there’s more than just a few puzzles in one area. While the design for the barriers I think look good, the main problem with them was the fact that they don’t create any light which I spent a very long time trying to get to work which in the end I never could.
Action Plan
I would like to add more puzzles into my game and also some more modes such as a challenge mode and a proper final boss where the player would fight the beacon as well as some more features such as more settings and maybe new power-ups. Also, there were a lot of small things while creating the game that I realised I should have changed but it was too late to change such as some objects weren’t prefabs making it harder to edit specific objects.
Self Evaluation
What Went Well
While there were some challenging parts when programming, I managed to do it all on my own, only using the internet when I needed help. As I finished creating all the main mechanics, I still had plenty of time to spare so I added more features in such as the aforementioned speed run mode and some other features. I created all of the models in the game although I did reuse some from previous projects but I still created those ones.
What Went Wrong
As I am inexperienced with the lighting, I had a lot of problems with getting the lighting to work well within the game. My knowledge has grown a lot from this however I am still not great at this. Level design is something that I do not specialise in compared to other things which is why some parts of the levels may look a bit wonky and all over the place.
Action Plan
I definitely need to improve on my lighting skills as this game has made that apparent to me as well as trying to learn more about creating shaders as I also used those which I have had no prior experience with. I should also learn to better optimise my code and games for the future. While I have optimised them in this game, I still need to learn how to do more optimising for Unity.