Assignment: Bitsy prototype

By Friday September 10

Pick an idea among the ones we brainstormed together – check the voting result (like icon at the bottom) and consider the ones that have received some votes in the two voting sessions.

Make a bitsy game around that idea. Consider your prototyping goals first. What questions are you trying to answer?
examples:
Can you build a “world” around that prompt? What are the locations? How is the environment laid out?
Can the idea support a spatial or temporal progression?
Can it allow for meaningful choices? Interesting dialogues?
Can you come up with characters that populate that world?

I recognize many mechanics-driven games can’t be really prototyped in bitsy, you can provide some support material to explain the gameplay, like schemes or even a prototype using other engines. You can also choose to focus on the worldbuilding and story part of the game for now. You could for example mock up the encounters, locations and story parts of Hades in bitsy leaving out the fighting.

Make the game complete in scope, meaning: try to make a complete experience even if it’s super low-res. Try to include all the content and not be like: “an then there will be a city level and a lava level”.
If it’s set in an hotel and there are 100 viewable rooms I want to see a sketch of all the rooms. If you can’t make 100 hotel rooms in bitsy there’s no way you’re gonna make them in a proper game engine.
This is an exercise in sizing your game reasonably.

Don’t be too concerned about the visuals but start thinking about a mood, as expressed with visual an spatial cues, colors, and music.

You don’t have to use a bitsy hack to add the music but do select some kind of mood-setting soundtrack to play in the background (ie, in another browser tab), that can turn a cutesy game into a horror and vice versa.

Remember this prototype can become the basis for a semester long project so take it seriously.