NIALL CRABTREE - GAME DESIGNER
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The Lethal Deal Vertical Slice is Finished! - Lethal Deal Development Log 7

6/15/2022

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It's been a hot minute! In between finishing University, getting a job in the games industry, going to UK Games Expo 2022 and more, it's been difficult to find time to write about it all. However, I am back and doing some blogging and if you want to download the finished version of the vertical slice for Lethal Deal, head to the itch.io page here!

This isn't the last post regarding Lethal Deal, as we have recently been to Game Republic and I want to talk a bit about that experience. We have also just submitted the game to The Rookies 2022, so that could also be another blog post.

However, to cap off development I thought it would be a good idea to mention what I am proud of and what I wish I/we could have done better on the project. 
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How Cards Went from a 2.6 to an 8.2 in Lethal Deal - Lethal Deal Development Log 6

3/14/2022

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Context: We have just finished our second sprint when developing a vertical slice for Lethal Deal. We are 8 weeks into our 12 week development cycle for this vertical slice. We have just conducted our second round of over-the-shoulder user testing. 
The Problem with Cards: In Lethal Deal, the implementation and engagement of card play was always going to be tricky. As a designer, that was kind of the point, I wanted a tough challenge to overcome. The difficulty of said challenge was confirmed when the quantitative results returned from the first round of user testing just over a week into development, 2.6 out of 10. The qualitative data confirmed that there was almost no want to engage in the mechanism, and the mechanic definitely felt tacked on to the player. 
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Designing Card Drop Distribution with Machinations - Lethal Deal Development Log 5

2/23/2022

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With a 12 week development cycle, often times as a designer I will try to limit as much iteration that we will need so we can work on implementing more features and polishing old ones. Machinations is a great tool to prototype systems and how they are going to function in game, especially when those systems use percentage chances. 
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One feature that I want to implement is a card economy and rarity system into the card drop system and pack system that we have in the game. I feel like this is important because it allows us to lean more onto the TCG flavour of Lethal Deal.

​Check out below how the system is prototyped to work in a "pack" format. Press play to see it in action.

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6 Ways to Make People Want to Read your Game Design Document - Lethal Deal Development Log 4

2/11/2022

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At some point in life, every designer comes to the same realisation, nobody wants to read your GDD. Luckly, I figured this out well before Lethal Deal started development, so I could do my best to make the GDD for Lethal Deal as readable as possible.

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A game design document could seem to a lot of people as a monolith of text that is overwhelming and dense. So having a way for each member of the team to locate parts of the GDD relevant to their role without having to read through it all is essential. Using Google Docs built in header system is a great way to get team members to where they need to be quickly. 
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Level Design Details - Lethal Deal Development Log 3

1/31/2022

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Most players when traversing carefully designed levels never realise just how carefully that level was put together. With Lethal Deal, from the very first block out, I wanted to make sure the player never felt overwhelmed, confused, or lost. And on the flip side, I always wanted the player to feel powerful and in charge of their movement. The core design pillar of Lethal Deal is to make the player feel like a badass, and being overwhelmed by decisions isn't a great way to achieve that. 
Example 1: So many jumpads!!!
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Problem: I noticed after finishing the first pass of the block out for the opening arena level that I was getting overwhelmed by the amount of glowing jumpads in my immediate view when I spawned in. My first instinct was to just remove some of the jumpads, but I knew that it would mess up the flow of movement that I had designed into the level. I've always found that it's better to try and make an aspect of a game work first before deciding to remove it.

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User Testing - Lethal Deal Development Log 2

1/28/2022

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Hello all and welcome back to another blog post about Lethal Deal, if you aren’t caught up on the development of Lethal Deal, please refer back to the previous blog post here. 
This post is all about user testing. After the first week of development I thought it essential to go out there and perform as many over-the-shoulder tests as I could in the span of just a couple of days. I am such a fan of iterative and feedback lead development, I thought planning our next phase of development with the aid of user feedback would be a great way to go. Here are the results of the tests as well as an example video of what the 14 tests looked like. These were all performed using the build from the fifth day of development.
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The First Game Jam - Lethal Deal Development Log 1

1/24/2022

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​Hello! This post is about the "team project" module for my final year on the games design degree at the University of Huddersfield. This is the first of a series of development posts relating to Lethal Deal, a vertical slice for a video game I am working on with seven other people who form the team
​Inline 9. ​We have a 12-week development cycle, including three game jam weeks (40+ hours Monday to Friday) and nine regular weeks (16+ hours Monday to Friday). 
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    Author

    Hello, my name is Niall Crabtree, and this is my comprehensive blog showcasing all of my game development 
    ​endeavors and successes, as well as essays on game design.

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  • Contact Me
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