APD Week 2 - Time

Theme:

Time is a design theme I honestly haven’t thought about very much in my practice. When I consider it now, I realise there are a number of examples I can think of in my work when I have considered time in a design.

In my digital game work I have used cutscenes to imply sped-up time and convey long distance travel. I make decisions to alter time in RPG’s often, including flashbacks, time jumps and even relative time dilation between different planes in Dungeons & Dragons. 

Key questions:

• How can I allow the player to reverse time in a game?

Context:

For this exercise, I wanted to consider a time mechanic in a game that a player could actually play with. There are some very good games which use time as a core mechanic, Super Hot comes to mind immediately, however I’ve mostly found that I get bored of games which hinge so fully on time-based mechanics such as Braid or Max Paine. I do sometimes quite like when time is used to enhance a narrative, as in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Life is Strange. 

Method:

• Find an interesting time based Unity tutorial and build it

• Play with the result by making changes and adding small features

Reflection:

• Brackeys makes great tutorials. This one was no exception

• I had to adapt the tutorial for a more recent version of Unity but that wasn’t too difficult