8th Week: Racing Game

The Idea
Make a simple 2D racing game.

Why this game?
I want to explore this genre because I never made a racing game before.

What went right?

• I started very late but it went very nice. At the end of the week I was happy with what I made.
• Picking the name: It was fun part of the week. When I was playing the game and thinking about name of the game. I observed AI cars rotating around at a single point. AI was very bad but it is manageable to complete the laps. The first thing that comes to my mind is this AI is moving like ‘Mad Cars’. This finally turns into the game name ‘Mad Drivers.’

What went wrong?

• Jumped from one idea to another: This is worst thing happened when you have some concepts but nothing to play. Every idea seems good at first, but the game is not a single idea. For a few hours I am working on the first idea then suddenly something happens then I switch to second idea. This process continued for 3 days. I was just jumping from one idea to another. This quote save me: “Great Designers do not design great games. They usually design really bad games, and then they iterate on them until it becomes great.”
• Eight days: At the end of the week, I just had to do few modifications and the game is done. But that ‘Just few modifications’turned into eight days.

What I have learned?

• Make the playable fast. Fast means very fast. As soon you have the idea. It can be on paper, or just some cards. Anything, but you have to play the game. If you can play the game you will find some good things and some things that you hope it might be good but turned as bad.
• These are my one of the favourite lines by Ian Schreiber in Game Design concepts course:

“By making something playable, you are forced to actually ‘Design the Systems’. No more hand waving of ‘this game will have 50 undefined cards’. You have to actually do your job as a Game Designer, and Design the game.”

• Be ready to throw your idea away, if it is not working. It is hard but you have to do it any way.
• One of the most important things was “Constrains.” Having constrains gives you a better scope to design rather than designing freely. For this week there will one new Constrains every week.
  You can Play the game here: Mad Drivers