Gaming Presentation

One of the most difficult things to explain when trying to describe a game are the mechanics especially for our game, Azvault's Saga.

Explaining controls on for a console game is hard enough even though there are physical buttons that you have to push to play the game. It's even more difficult when your game is made for a touchscreen and there are no buttons so that you have to tap and move your fingers across certain areas of the screen to get Azvault to do what you want him to do.

As you can see, the directionality of the movement of your fingers affects what your weapons do when you're trying to kill enemies. I'm not sure if that came across entirely clearly in our presentation. I have never found game mechanics an easy thing to explain or have explained to you. It's just something you have to get a feel for when you're playing the game.

Another point that I feel might not have been expressed as thoroughly as it might have been are the rules of the game. We wanted to keep the game concept fairly simple while adding other factors and minor complexities to it to keep players interested. Basically, the way the game works, is that every level you have to kill a certain number of enimies in order to advance to the next level. If you decide to get fancy by using different combinations of moves and tactics to kill enemies, then you get more coins. With coins, you can buy assorted weapons which have varying "special moves" associated with them. To make things more complicated, we decided to throw innocent villagers into the mix. Killing villagers makes you lose money by paying "blood money" to the families of the victims.

I find that overall, trying to convey the concept of a game is somewhat difficult to do when you're trying to explain it to a large group of people. If you're having a dialogue with someone, or even talking to a small group, it's much easier to elaborate on specific points based on questions your audience might have. It's challenging to convey an entire world that you've created to someone else when you've already outlined everything so specifically. With a lecture-type pitch, it's hard to know where your audience stands in terms of understanding.