Project O.W.O.P
What does OWOP stand for?
OVERWHELMING WORDS OF POWER
I know the name isn’t that great, but I couldn’t think of anything good at the time regardless, the project had two sets of specifications on delivering a prototype and a research paper that influenced the design of the game.
To start, the idea came from the inspiration of the game called Scribblenauts, which if you don’t know, it involves a core concept of using words in a Puzzle form of a game, you guess a word by typing it correctly into the interface of the game and spawns the object or even person from which you typed creating a very interesting yet diverse amount of options for players to explore.
THE RESEARCH
With the research paper becoming a supporting document to the design of the project, I knew I didn’t have the knowledge to create something so vast in comparison to a fully fledged team of developers however, the ambition was there. My idea originally was to incoporate this element into something that involved action with an element of puzzle implementation as well, but then it got me thinking how would people use words. First the ideas is I could add anything and then hopefully the player would get the thing correct, but that’s near impossible to add. The idea was the influence the design of the game so that players would instinctively know what they need and when they needed it.
A simple example, to get over a ledge I can see another platform that I can stand on in the distance and I need to get to the other side, how would I do that and by what means?
Now I would think to place create a bridge, but someone else could think of something entirely different like even in the realms of impossibility, such as wings, but you see, I wanted to deliver a product where the design would influence those decisions
To get an idea of what I’m talking about, a link to the research paper is just to the side, so you can download it and view it at your own pace
Ideation
The idea of the project didn’t carry much depth after that, I just wanted to make some themes that weren’t entirely relevant, like creating a time-travelling hero who was born in Victorian England, and somehow get indoctrinated into society learning the ways of a samurai sword in order to stop a Cyborg from the Future from deleting words from Human existance. Well As you can see I’ve made a few sketches so it’ll give you an idea of how the game would look like.
I guess giving the game a little bit of flavour was necessary, but maybe I look back and should’ve made a more relatable theme, rather than going full in on the action idea. I wanted to mix the words with combat associated with a hack’n’slash genre.
Vertical Slice Prototype
Unfortunately, I was unable to make the prototype as 3rd person as I wanted, but at least I created something to show a proof of concept but please forgive the Audio quality, as I didn’t have a good microphone at the time, also this was running on a older version of Unity back when it wasn’t as popular and had small amount of resources
Game Design Document
In addition to this all, a GDD was also created alongside the product and despite the flaws, the GDD is quite bareboanes but still retains the important information that can re-create the design of it. I think that’s what’s most important there. If you want to read it, just click the button marked.