To Bee – Collaborative Project

Video Overview

Initial ideas

My initial ideas for the project were centred around creating a board game that uses Augmented Reality as an additional element that would increase the players immersion. The ideas came from talking with students outside my course most notably from the 3D Animation course and the Virtual Reality course. A student from the VR course called Cal informed me of a software called Vuforia which can be used to create AR experiences within Unity. I wanted to create something that students from many different subjects could easily find a role to play in the creation of the game.

I explored two main ideas for the AR game, firstly a Dungeon Battle type card game in which two battling players would present a token each on a board and when the tokens were viewed within the AR would display an animated character. The characters each had stats associated with them that the players would take turns to choose which stat to challenge the other player on. This game idea is very similar to ‘Top Trumps’, if developed further I would have liked to steer the gameplay in a different direction and aim for a unique experience.

The second idea came from my personal interest in city management games. (For example, ‘Cities: Skylines’). For this game I wanted to create a collaborative game that players would instead of competing against each other, they would have to work together in order to create a city. The players would all be given a set of tiles that display a road and blocks of colour that represent buildings. The players would first set down a tile at random and then build the city from there by matching the roads and the coloured boxes. Similar to how in dominos players need to match the number of dots in order to place a tile. The idea is that the city would gradually grow and when all players have placed their tiles down the city would be complete, and when viewed through AR they would be able to observe the city they had created. To add to the experience would be special cards that would display something unique. For example, a roller coaster, King Kong swatting planes or a landmark, such as the Eiffel tower.

Collaborators

For this project I met with people across a number of disciplines. Ultimately collaborating with Hisham Jarad from my course, Games Design. And two 3D Animation students, Michaela Bruckner and David Edwards.

I had previously discussed my ideas with both Michaela and Hisham, eventually we decided to settle on a game made within Unity. However AR is something I would like to return too in the future, as I believe that it has potential in relation to board games.

Hisham presented a concept idea for a game that we all agreed would provide plenty of opportunity for us all to utilise and grow our skills.

First team meeting

The first meeting was held to discuss how to approach the project. The key things that needed to be discussed were as follows:

• The overall idea, what each person wanted to get out of the project, as well as the specific aims of each course’s unit and how they can be fulfilled.
• the roles each person would fill.
• discuss the gameplay. share ideas.
• establish what the priorities are.

The meeting was very productive and Hisham described in more detail his intended vision for the game. The synopsis can be put as follows:

You play as a bee who is determined to rejuvenating its home within a valley that has been destroyed by a hurricane. You must collect pollen from the last remaining flowers and deliver it to the hives around the valley in order to regrow the plants and trees.

The game was inspired by Thatgamecompany games, in particular, the games ‘Journey’ and ‘Flower’. Hisham made it clear that he wanted the game experience to feel relaxed. There would be no enemies, however the environment would act as a barrier for players to overcome. This would be done via a type of natural disaster, initially forest fire but later settled to be a hurricane. The controls would also be simple and with the potential for anyone to have the ability to play.

We then discussed as a group what roles each of us should take. The roles were decided as follows:

• Hisham: Director
• Sophia: Environment Lead
• David: Animator
• Michaela: Producer

The roles took into account our desired output for the project as well as our current skills. Since it was Hisham’s vision he took the role of director. He was also responsible for the player movement mechanics and the cinematics.

I have some experience creating environments in Unity and Unreal Engine, I also particularly enjoy creating worlds and had a clear vision for how I wanted this world to look, and so took the role of Environment Lead. I would also be responsible for some of the mechanics in the world as I wanted to further my coding skills.

David was to animate the title sequence as well as some models needed.

Michaela too was responsible for making sure we had character animations, specifically the bee that the player would play as. Michaela also volunteered as producer to aid the rest of the team in organising the project.

Our priorities at the end of the meeting were established. My main goal was to concept the environment and share it with the team. I also needed to establish a method of getting the environment to grow when the player interacts with it.

We also discussed as a team what programmes we would be using in order to complete the Project.

• Unity – Unity was the game engine we chose to use as myself and Hisham had the most experience with this particular programme.
• Adobe After Effects – After Effects was used to create the title animations and credit text animations.
• Autodesk Maya – Maya is the preferred 3D modelling and animation programme by the animators.
• WhatsApp – WhatsApp was the primary way of communicating with each other. We would keep each other updated this way and also conducted online calls. We also met in person to discuss design decisions further.
• OneDrive – OneDrive was used to store many of the files used for the project. It easily allowed us to share our work with the team.

Soon after the meeting the name of the game was collectively decided as ‘To Bee’. a reference to the phrase ‘To be, or not to be’ from the William Shakespeare play Hamlet.

Sound Design

We later also collaborated with three people from the Sound Design course, Rafaella Binder-Gavito, Tim Heron and Emmanuel Neill.

They would be providing us with the sound track and sound effects for the game.

We knew we wanted the game to have fitting environmental sounds to enforce the narrative, this would include sounds of strong wind and ambient nature sounds. I also later required sound effects for some of the mechanics such as the pollen collection. In order to provide them with more context I shared some footage of the game with them. This was also to help with getting across what kind of sounds I required for the project.

The Inspiration: Zen Gaming

I found from the initial meeting, and my understanding of the project that the game we all intended to make could fit neatly into the genre of Zen Gaming. I decided to do some more research into the genre to see what I could find.

Zen – Peaceful and Calm.

From research I found that not a lot of information is available on the Zen genre of gaming. As far as I can tell Sony coined the term on the release of the game ‘Flower’ on PlayStation 3. A few articles and blogs have been written mostly around 2008 but since then there has been very little information on the genre. This lack of information suggests to me that the genre either didn’t catch on as a label or is a niche genre of gaming that few people are aware.

Sony first described Thatgamecompany game ‘Flower’ as in the genre of Zen Gaming. An article can be found below:

https://www.mtv.com/news/2458263/sony-introduces-new-genre-to-video-games/

I did find an article that describes certain games as Zen due to certain aspects of the game’s aesthetics or its gameplay. For example, the writer, Emil Nordström, suggests that the game ‘Stardew Valley’ can be considered a Zen game from the repetition in order to progress the game. The article can be found below:

https://bigbossbattle.com/zen-gaming-what-is-zen/

This genre fits nicely with the vision myself and the team had for our game ‘To Bee’. We wanted to create a game in which players have a relaxing and rewarding experience. Using the Zen Gaming genre as a point of reference I believe helped to communicate to the team what the intended aesthetic of the game and gameplay is.

Personal Aims

• I wanted to create a game that fit nicely into the Zen Gaming genre, meaning I needed to encourage a relaxed experience for players.
• Improve upon my skills in Unity and C#. I wanted to improve my skills for further projects, with a focus on improving my confidence with using C# as a scripting language.
• I aimed to effectively incorporate my collaborators work within my own to achieve the best results for the game experience.

Making the plants grow

My first task was to create the mechanic that would allow the player to grow the plants. Originally, I planned to animate the foliage to grow out of the ground using its position in the world. Unfortunately, this had several disadvantages. Below is a list that outlines the disadvantages of this method:

• The position was challenging to script in the way I needed, I found that each time the growth was triggered the object would appear in an unexpected area.
• The way the object appeared was not smooth, it jumped into view rather than having a smooth motion to its final position.
• The growth looked unsatisfying in general and larger objects such as trees didn’t suit this method.
• When trying to create a smooth motion, I used the animation timeline, but this had its own limits of not being able to apply this animation to other object without having to reanimate in the new position.

later I decided to use the scale of the object to simulate its growth. Scaling the object led to a much more satisfying result visually and I was able to apply this script to all the object I intended to use with great results.

The script I used was borrowed from an answer on the Unity Forms: https://answers.unity.com/questions/955495/how-to-smoothly-lerp-the-scaling.html

I found this when researching methods of how to create smooth scaling. It worked perfectly for what I needed, and I easily made changes to adapt the script to certain objects. An example of this is for each object I changed the scale duration to make the plants growth feel natural for its size. the grass grew quickly where as the trees took more time.

The Assets

The assets I used were ones I found on the Unity Asset store. I liked the stylized art style and the vibrancy of the plants matched the concept art. The assets can be found here:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/fantasy/azure-nature-167725

Other growth ideas

Other possible ideas for the growth of the plants included the plants growing under the player as they moved. However this method would have taken far too long for the player to complete as well as leaving patches around the environment that the player missed.

Adding the trigger

In order to make the plants grow on player interaction, I made an empty game object and named it foliage. I then parented all the objects I wanted to be affected under the foliage game object. I then created a cube as a fill in for the beehive and attached a script that when the player collided with the box collider on the cube, the cube would then broadcast a message to all other objects in the parent triggering the foliage growth. I then wanted to make the foliage growth more satisfying for the player as well as giving the illusion of pollen spreading across the environment. I decided to use a particle effect that when the player triggered would bust out in all directions like a pulse. This also worked to reinforced the reward for the player as they are made aware that they are responsible for the growth.

Creating the world

I wanted the world to be fairly open in its design. I especially wanted to include a large body of water that the player could potentially use as a guide around the environment.

I started by plotting out the shape on a terrain in Unity. Since the world was set in a valley I raised the terrain level around what I considered the main play area using a tree from the assets as a reference for scale.

I then began to place down the foliage. In order for this to work I would need to place each object down as a separate instance and then parent the objects to an empty game object that would define the section.

I did find after some time that it was necessary to half the size of the world in order to save time. This later also proved to be a good decision as during playtest some players felt that the game’s world was still a bit too big in its final rendition.

The smaller size of the map overall helped with the gameplay meaning players were more likely to finish the game as the task of re-pollenating can be repetitive. Therefore the smaller size meant players were more likely to finish. It also meant that I could focus more time on making the smaller environment as detailed as possible.

Second team meeting

at the next meeting we all updated each other on the progress being made and what we were to do next.

After showing the team the environment it was noted that the world needed more detail to add a bit more narrative/world building to the game. So it was decided that we should include ruins, not only to signal to the destruction caused by the hurricane but also to add an additional element of intrigue to the players interest in the world.

The ruins were a nice addition to the world and helped the player to navigate by acting as additional landmarks. The ruin assets are ones I found on the Unity asset store, they can be found with this link:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/stylized-ruins-191107

Also discussed was how the player would activate the foliage to grow. It was discussed among us and was decided that the player would need to collect pollen from flowers and then take the pollen to a beehive. Michaela was tasked with animating the flower while I started the pollen mechanic system.

The Pollen System

The pollen system had to work so the player would collect pollen from a flower and then only when the player had pollen would the foliage be able to be triggered and grow.

To do this, I created a bool on the player character to check when the player had hit particles and on doing so this would broadcast a message to the particle system attached to the player which would begin to emit. This was so that visually the player knew that they had collected pollen and would be able to use it at a beehive.

When the player hit a game object with the tag ‘Over’ , the bool would revert to false and the particle system on the player would stop emitting to signal the pollen had be used.

Later I found it useful to change the tag of the player so as then the player could not interact with the beehive when un-pollenated and the player could not collect pollen twice.

The script on the beehive would then check to see if the pollen bool on the player was set to true on collision. This would trigger the foliage growth and disable the collider on the beehive object so the player could no longer interact with it preventing the particle burst from emitting an additional time.

Hisham then provided me with the player character controls and the ‘wind zones’ that would push the player around when they enter them in order to provide a sense of environmental conflict.

I placed the wind zones into the world, only placing a few to start and see what the reaction of players during playtests would be. Below is a map indicating the location of the wind zones. I wanted the wind to funnel the player down the valley as they moved and so placed the wind in areas I felt the player would gravitate towards.

Michaela also gave me the animated flower model. I added a particle effect to the model and placed the flowers into the world. I applied a similar growth script to the flowers so when new areas are grown by the player more flowers become available to them.

The First Playtest

Overview

The Environment

Positive:

• The environment growth felt rewarding and the particle effect was satisfying. Players responded very positively.
• Players appeared to be engaged with re-growing the environment, enjoying the different foliage zones.

Improvements:

• Colliders need to be in place to prevent players from moving through ruin walls and some rocks.
• flowers could be more apparent or abundant. Players found that they blended into the grass too easily.
• Improve the beginning tutorial. Players easily missed the flower at the start of the game as the area was too open and they wondered away from the task.
• One player suggested that more guidance could be provided around the map.

Player Controls

positive:

• Players liked the movement in general, the ability to move in all directions.

improvements:

• Players did not naturally think to press Q and E to adjust their elevation. It was suggested to instead use spacebar or arrow keys.
• Players felt the game would be more enjoyable using a controller.
• Some players expressed that they felt like the movement speed was too slow over long distances.
• some players felt the camera was restricting and desired for a bit more control.

Improvements made after the playtest

The starting area

The playtest helped me to narrow down the most important aspects of the game to work on next. I felt the most important feedback from this first playtest was to reimagine the tutorial to the main mechanics of the game.

Originally the player began in an open space of the map, it was easy for the player to miss the flower in front of them and thus miss the entire tutorial of the game.

In order to correct this I decided that a new starting area was needed. It needed to be small and narrow in order for it to be very hard for the player to miss the tutorial. I decided to create an additional area onto the map that would serve this purpose.

In order to make it so the player must complete the tutorial before leaving there is an invisible wall placed at the exit of the starting area that is only disabled once the tutorial zone’s beehives have been activated. located within the path out of the starting area is also some wind zones that have an animated spiral, intended to suggest to the player that the invisible wall is actually the wind preventing them from leaving.

In a later playtest it was pointed out that the wind still existing after the tutorial was complete is still suggesting to the player that they cannot leave. Later I changed this so the wind zones are deactivated along with the invisible wall.

The Flowers

The flowers were also an issue as they tended to blend into the environment. In order to solve this issue I decided to increase the number available to the player. I also placed some out in more open areas so they became easier to spot.

Colliders

I also added colliders onto any of the object I found players gliding through during the playtest. This was mostly the ruins, as colliders appeared to not already be applied to the assets.

Menu and Cinematics

Myself and Hisham began to create a menu for the game and implement the cinematics Hisham had created, as well as the title sequence David had animated.

The long pause after the title has disappeared and the camera moves into the earth is deliberate, the audio that will later play over this sequence is hurricane winds. This is designed to inform the player of the hurricane that has destroyed the valley they will be re-growing.

Performance and Lighting Issues

After adding the title sequence and the menu there was a slight issue with the lighting. each scene the game loaded appeared to darken. This I think was caused by the project using the same lighting settings for each scene but issues were occurring when it loaded to the next scene. To fix this I generated the lightmap for the main environment scene and after testing to see if this solved the issue, I did the same thing for the menu scene.

Another issue that had been persisting was the frame rate performance. The frame rate had moments of significant dip. In order to avoid this I set the frame rate limit to 30fps so any dip in the frame rate would be less noticeable. This did appear to improve the performance of the game.

Pause Menu

An additional element we were keen to include was a basic pause menu so players could leave the game and come back to it when desired.

Therefore I implemented a pause menu that would use the ‘P’ key to activate.

The Third Team Meeting

For the next in person meeting the game was shared with the rest of the team. We discussed the previous playtest and the elements we would like next to implement.

Hisham worked on creating a better camera to attach to the player. We believed that the camera would help the player’s movement feel more engaging and give an overall better quality to the game.

Most importantly was the bee model so the player is able to play as the bee. Additionally the beehives became essential as the white boxes currently being used as the triggers for the foliage were not appropriate. The player needed the beehives in place as a clear hint to their importance, encouraging the player to investigate them, triggering the foliage growth. Michaela kindly took on the responsibility of creating both the bee model and the beehive.

When discussing the design of the bee I provided Michaela with a reference image I found on Pinterest of what kind of bee I had in mind for the design. Below are two examples of references I shared with the team:

https://pin.it/Z4bWrMf

https://pin.it/2VtdvZ1

Hisham agreed with the reference as we both had a similar idea of what the bee should look like. We agreed that the bee should be round and cute in its design. Essentially to communicate to the player the idea of a busy, but vulnerable bumble bee.

Michaela then provided concept art of potential designs for the bee. We collectively chose the design from her ideas and she then refined them as shown below.

I liked the design of number 4 as did the majority of the team. The markings of the bee and roundness of the body were exactly the qualities we were looking for.

Once the team had provided their input on the designs Michaela created the final design and began the animations.

Also required was additional narrative elements, Michaela had also created some tree stumps similar to those that are left over after a hurricane. This would further aid the player in understanding the natural disaster that had occurred in the valley. I attached these tree stumps with a script that would shrink their size to 0 when the foliage growth was triggered to remove them from the area.

David also provided videos of animation tests for other elements we’d like to include in the game in order to bring the environment to life. We wished to include some other creatures to inhabit the world, including deer, birds and spiders.

Note: both the bee and the tree stumps were added after the second playtest.

The Second Playtest

Overview

The Environment

Positive:

• The element of the wind zones was interesting and could be even more challenging.

Improvements:

• Could be more variety in the foliage types.
• More feedback is required when collecting pollen.

Player Controls

Positive:

• The new camera is far better than the pervious. The movement benefits from it also.

improvements:

• player speed is too slow.
• The player movement feels wrong for a bee. Too heavy feeling.
• Players felt the game would work better with a controller.

Improvements made after the playtest

The player controls and wind zones

It was very clear that the players desired the ability to use a controller for the game so I decided to implement it. Unity already registered the left thumbstick for the movement of the bee. I set the left and right bumper of the controller to control the player elevation as it felt most natural to me holding the controller to use these buttons for that purpose.

I then tweaked the player speed so it was at a point that felt fast but comfortable. I wanted to make sure that the player could still take in their surroundings as they explored the environment.

Finally to add more of a challenge to the wind zones I increased the strength from 3 to 10. The reason I did this was to add to the challenge of navigating the environment but also to aid in the environmental storytelling, I wanted the wind to communicate the severity of the hurricane and the impact the wind has had on the valley.

I also decided to redesign the placement of the wind zones and the amount placed within the world. I felt in order to make the wind feel more present to the player I needed to increase the number of zones as well as using these zones as a method of the player getting around the environment quickly. I focused on using the water areas as the main streams of wind. This would help give purpose to the empty space as well as being an indicator to the player that the water can be a useful guide as to where to find wind zones.

Pollen feedback

in order to provide the player with more feedback from collecting the pollen I first implemented a sound provided by the sound designers that would play each time the player collected it. I also added a sound when the player activates the beehive to help increase the satisfaction and reward of the foliage growth.

I then added to the script that once the player had collected pollen from a certain flower, that flower would no longer produce pollen. I did this to help signal to the player that they have collected the pollen and also to encourage the player to explore further to find new flowers and preventing them from repetitively returning to the same flower.

Menu Sound Design

I put in some sound for the menu screen in order to aid the narrative. Firstly I implemented some ambient wind to give reason to the flower swaying in the scene. I also added a sound effect for when the player presses any button to start. This sound is a response to the players action, intended to informing the player that their action has been responded too by the game and the game has begun. After the title sequence has disappeared and the camera has panned into the ground the hurricane sounds begin to play. The intention behind this particular audio is to inform the player that a hurricane is occurring giving reason to the destroyed landscape the player will find themselves in.

Final Touches

In order to complete the game we wanted to make sure we had the animations in place, the remaining sound and cinematics and any additional final touches to result in a high quality final product.

Cinematics

We felt to give the game a high quality feel and a strong end to the narrative that we needed a credits scene that showed the bee returning to the start area. The scene also included all the names and roles of everyone on the team, animated by David. Hisham created the cinematics using Cinemachine within Unity. Below are the results.

Music

Additionally it was vital to add in the music composed by Tim. Hisham had created a script that would play the music when the player had entered into a box collider with the tag ‘music’. What I had to do was create a box collider in each area that would activate when the player triggered the beehive and foliage growth.

Animation

Next I added in the additional animations such as the bees that swarm around the beehives, the birds and the spiders.

The bees were easy to implement, I simply applied them to the prefab of the hive and scripted in a method that would activate the bees when the player interacted with the hive. Below are the results.

The spiders were static and so therefore required some animation within Unity to get them moving around in circles. I did this using the animation timeline and animating their position and rotation on a parent object of the spider.

To get the birds to fly across the sky I attached a script to the bird prefab. The script would move it forward on the x axis and destroy the object after a certain distance. The script I used was borrowed from a previous project I made called ‘Mars Needs Mail’. I just needed to adapt the script to be used in a 3D project and change some of the values.

I then created an empty game object that would act as the spawn and attached the following script to it. The script was also borrowed from my previous project.

Below are the results.

Player Controls Display

One of the final elements I wished to add was an icon that would display the controls to the player so there would be full transparency and the player knew exactly what they needed to do to move and pause the game. This was important to me as I witnessed in playtests people struggling to work out the controls of the game.

I feel this addition of the control scheme will greatly aid the player and also is a great addition to make the game feel more professional.

A Full Playthrough

below is a video of a full playthrough of the game ‘To Bee’ in order to clearly communicate what was achieved by myself and the rest of the team for this project. The video also helps to add context to my critical reflection.

Critical Reflection

What I Would Improve

In order to improve on the game there are a few additional elements that I would like to add. Particularly to the environment mechanics and the player controls.

Desired improvements to the environment

• Add more variety to the environment.

I think the environment could benefit from more variety in the foliage types. From the playtests I noticed that the players typically enjoyed watching the foliage grow and discovering what each area had to offer. However, I also noticed that some players felt like there was a lack of diversity to the environment, it was suggested that some players would prefer different tree types and flower types. In order to improve this I would implement different biome zones, for example, swamp areas, dense forest, open fields etc.

• Wind zones reimagined to aid the player around the map while also providing environmental conflict.

I would like to find a way of better implementing the wind zones. I feel as though the wind zones could be put to better use as an aid to the player. Ideally I would like the wind zones to be something that the player needs to use to their advantage in order to complete a task. A method to do this would perhaps be to strategically place the wind zones, testing the area each time in order to achieve the desired effect.

• A better pollen response.

I would like the pollen collection to be more rewarding. Possible ways of doing so would be to have the particle effect appear in a more pronounced way, perhaps faster or more explosive. I believe the audio helps but if someone was to play without the audio the pollen collection does not feel as rewarding as it could be.

• Make the bee grow when collecting pollen as well as the ability to collect and store pollen from multiple flowers.

I believe that having the bee scale up and down dependent on the amount of pollen collected would be a visually nice addition to the game as well as aiding the game play. Having the bee grow would also be a visual indicator to the player that pollen has been collected and this will be reinforced by the particle effect already in place. Also a possibly useful mechanic to players would be the possibility of collecting and storing a certain number of pollen’s, the size of the bee would relate to the amount of pollen that is currently stored on the player.

• Better Implementation of the music.

The way in which the music was implemented unfortunately doesn’t work as well as we desired it too. The idea was is that the music would switch depending what zone the player was in, the barren zone would have the desolate music where as the areas that had been regrown would have the upbeat music. This ideally would require an audio manager that allowed for a fade between the two tracks and an overall better result. Currently the box collider method we did use is unreliable and leads to harsh stop start in the music. Due to time constraints we unfortunately couldn’t apply the audio manager, but this would be vitally important to get right in a final release of the game.

• Cinematic fixes

There are a few small quality issues especially with the ending credits that would need adjusting. Most notably the fade to black in the credits scene appears to be misaligned with the camera. To achieve a professional feel, these small errors would need to be corrected by spending some time working out the cause of the problem.

Desired improvements to the player controls

• A moving player camera.

A moving camera was something that was desired by some players during playtests. This could be a useful addition to the game as players would better be able to observe their environment. It may not be necessary however but this would be decided on implementation and then playtest to observe if the moving camera has a positive effect on players.

• A boost button to temporarily increase player speed.

Some players felt the speed of the bee was too slow. I thought that perhaps a speed boost mechanic could prove to be useful to the player. Perhaps if a player collects pollen they could decide to use that pollen to either grant themselves a speed boost to move about the environment quicker briefly or use the pollen to grow an area. This would need to be explored further in playtest to determine if the mechanic is necessary/useful. However I do believe it would give more depth and enjoyment to the overall gameplay.

Desired improvements to the performance

• Improve the frame rate and loading time.

The loading time between scenes is long and could be confused with the game freezing. Improving the load time would be something I would research into further as I feel it is important to improve for the overall performance. The frame rate also would benefit from being improved, it is far from unplayable but the dips are noticeable and in order to have a polished final product it would be worth investigating a method of improving the frame rate.

Conclusion

A reminder of my personal aims for the project

• I wanted to create a game that fit nicely into the Zen Gaming genre, meaning I needed to encourage a relaxed experience for players.
• Improve upon my skills in Unity and C#. I wanted to improve my skills for further projects, with a focus on improving my confidence with using C# as a scripting language.
• I aimed to effectively incorporate my collaborators work within my own to achieve the best results for the game experience.

Does ‘To Bee’ fit the Zen Gaming genre?

In my opinion ‘To Bee’ does fit into the genre of Zen Gaming that Sony coined many years ago with the release of the game ‘Flower’. I believe the use of minimal controls with a simple and direct purpose for the player lends itself to the idea of a Zen Game.

‘To Bee’ offers a relaxed and rewarding experience. From playtest I noted the enjoyment many players got from watching the foliage grow around them, many of the players felt the need to finish the entire landscape. This clearly suggests to me that the game must make the player feel a sense of enjoyment, reward and pride at having grown the foliage within the game.

The key element in my opinion that is currently letting ‘To Bee’ down is the implementation of the music. The music in this game is very important as it is used as an indicator to the player as to what area they are in as well as a reward for the player when pollinating the beehives.

Currently the sharp changes between tracks due to the lack of fade feels irritating which unfortunately detracts from the overall experience. The music in a Zen game is a very important element as music and audio is heavily linked to peoples enjoyment to most entertainment media. Therefore it is especially important in a game designed to allow for a relaxing and engaging experience.

The music is the main element that if I had more time available to me I would focus on the most. I would work on implementing an audio manager that would allow for a fade or transition between tracks.

Have I improved my skills and confidence with C# and Unity?

I strongly feel as though I have greatly increased my confidence using Unity and C#.

I personally do quite enjoy making physical table top, board and card games but I am glad to have had the opportunity to delve back into digital games. I am certainly more prepared when it comes to my next projects and tasks within Unity. While I still want to make physical games I am glad that I can balance out my time and spend more time working within a digital space. Potentially combining the two and creating an AR game as per my original ideas for this unit.

I do feel I have made progress using C# but still have much further to go. This is something I am keen to keep working on during future projects and by practice. I did push myself in this project and am very proud of the mechanics I achieved for this game.

Incorporation of others work

The work that the other team members produced was outstanding and has had an immeasurable positive impact on the final product.

The animations of the bees, flowers, spiders and birds have completely brought the world to life. Implementing the animations into the game was typically easy, however I did experience some issues importing the player bee character and its animation. I worked with Michaela over a number of days in attempts to solve the issue. Michaela did eventually find an alternative solution and it worked within Unity.

There were a few other issues some of which were solved through team work and others unfortunately could not be completed in time. For example we were initially hoping to have other animals in the game such as deer but ran out of time.

The models created by Michaela were easily implemented and I used them to great effect within the game. They gave the environment more depth and provided more narrative cues for the player, such as the broken trees indicating a hurricane.

The title animation and credit text animated by David added a quality feel to the overall game, They fit the theme nicely as the text fades away into pollen dust.

Overall the animation and models were fantastic additions and I believe I utilised them appropriately within the game to increase player satisfaction and enjoyment.

The Music too definatly improved the game by way of giving that extra feel of polish to the final product. My only regrete is the time constraint as I was not able to properly implement the music to full effect.

The sound effects on the other hand helped to achieve the rewarding feeling of growing the foliage myself and the team were looking for.

Overall I believe I have achieved my goal of incorporating others work into my own to create the best experience. In my opinion the elements created by the other team member and that I added to the game has greatly helped to make the game feel full and to a high standard.

Team Summary

In summary I am incredibly grateful to have worked with this team. I found everyone to be highly motivated, skilled and with a keen eye for detail which helped us to create the best gaming experience we could. I am very proud of the result and very glad to have had the opportunity to work on this project.