Avatar Matching Game
This class project was a five week project where we needed to create a game that is constrained to a piece of media that our group was all familiar with. For our group, we chose to make an Avatar: The Last Airbender puzzle matching game. We had a few design philosophies that we followed in creating our game. We wanted the game to be simple, since the original media is a cartoon, yet honed since the series is long and we only had a short timeframe.
Design Philosophies
Aang is a non-violent character who prefers peaceful measures, so we decided that our game should be more puzzle based, and there should be plenty of ways to avoid combat.
Make the game accurate to the expected audience. We want to make it so that original audience of the media would be able to play the game, so we chose simple match-3 mechanics, themed with show.
Focus on what’s necessary, and keep scope tight. We only worked on things that were vital to the experience, and worked on those up until polish. We also determined an episode we based the level on, and we focused on that level only.
For my own part, I did the entire puzzle matching combat system as well as the level design. I also implemented the level’s layouts. While I didn’t mind doing the level design aspect, I had a blast reconstructing and making the matching puzzle from scratch. Especially trying to do the balance and fire matching aspects. I learned a lot during this intense 5 weeks, and it was great to see that a functional and playable prototype was created and implemented.
