The Daydreamer

Platforms: My Roles: Game Designer, Character Designer & Artist, Animator, Sprite Designer, Boss AI Development Tools: Game Maker Studio, GML, Photoshop, Animate, Java, Android Studio

The Daydreamer was a game developed for a Computer Game & Simulation Programming competition centered around the Future Business Leaders of America organization.

Competitors were given a prompt and had to create a game under certain guidelines. The game was expected to be educational. As educational games are infamous for being quite boring, I made it my goal to not only deliver a game under the guidelines, but to also create a fun experience for everyone.

Thus, The Daydreamer was born. It's a 2D platformer where you take the role as Steve: an intern at a gaming company. He learns new game industry topics within his daydreams which allow him to climb in his career. The game was initially released on PC and later on Android.

Designing the Story & Cutscenes

In order to add to the education aspect of the game, I included a story with non playable characters and dialogue. Each daydream would serve to teach the player about different skills within that particular daydream. For example, on the first level, digital design skills are taught and throughout the level, Steve further understands more and more about that specific topic.

During the initial phases of the project, I sketched up the concepts and decided on what I wanted the 5 levels of the game to be about. I knew I wanted to add different levels to the game and I was set on making each of those worlds totally unique and fresh. The first level's colorful world is a complete 180 to the second level's technology-inspired landscape.

Creating unique worlds also helps keep the game engaging and makes the educational part of the game more fun.

Sprite Designs

Steve's various outfits throughout the game

Since each world has a distinct look & feel, I wanted to see if I can also have Steve echo the style of the world he was currently in. Each of the outfits were designed to represent the 5 levels of the game (Digital Design, Computer Problem Solving, Network Design, Cyber Security, and Business Management).

Because I was having to create 5 designs anyways, I thought it would be perfect to also add unique idle animations to each of the designs as well. Idle animations in game are always a neat way to really express the character and add the cherry on top of the design.

Boss Fights

Sprite artwork of the bosses

Boss fights are one of my favorite parts about video games. The intensity and challenge they present and the rewarding feeling after defeating them is what truly makes boss fights stand out. Boss fights can also leave the player feeling frustrated if it feels to cheap or unfair. It's a fine line, so I wanted to get it right for The Daydreamer.

Because of this, I took extra time to design and program the bosses for each level. I wanted to design bosses that not only had cool designs, but design them in a way where the animations and actions of the bosses made it clear to the player what they were going to do next and react accordingly. This way, there were no surprises or cheap gimmicks.

While I was sketching the design of the boss, I was also thinking of the way the boss fight would play out in the actual game. I wanted to make sure the design of the boss didn't hinder the ability to create the boss action via script.

Boss AI

The toughest challenge of the entire project by FAR was creating enemy boss AI. Each of the bosses have various attacks and behaviors. Some bosses cannot be damaged unless they are performing a certain action. Once the player understands the different behaviors the boss can perform, they can begin to win the fight.