Phase 2 complete!

Work on Dream Boy has been split into 5 manageable phases, the Gamejam, Planning, Prototyping, Design and finally Release. We long passed the Gamejam phase and just this week passed the Planning phase. Yay!~

Each of these phases is meant to achieve some goal. My goal with the Gamejam, as discussed previously, was to: "have fun and finish something." The Planning phase on the other hand was to prepare and figure out what the game should be like, before I spend months working on something that might not even end up being any fun.

The planning phase

My background is in designing software. Software could be anything, most often a web app, but it could also be a mobile app or desktop program. No matter what it is, I always start with a Project Plan. The whole point of planning is to make important decisions and mistakes early.

An example being the starting tutorial area. Originally I wanted to make the tutorial a public swimming pool, whoever I ended up switching out the pool, for making the entire tutorial a waterpark. Not only did this eliminate swimming, which you'd only use in the tutorial (for about 2 minute), but it would also better illustrate how to play the game.

Scope

Another important factor, if not the most important factor in any project, is to define scope. I failed to do this in the gamejam and ended up creating a lot of redundant assets, and almost running out of time because of it! When creating any project, it is important to determine what will and won't be planned for.

Here is my objectives for Dream Boy:

## Objectives
- To improve and make a game that people would pay more than 2 dollars for.
- To create an environment that can be explored like a playground for at least an hour.
- To create a final product that feels complete.

Knowing this, here is my scope:

## Scope
### In scope
- An executable game.
- A demo that broadly encompasses what the game will be.
- Surveying and analytical research.
- Visual marketing and community engagement.
### Out of scope
- VR and AR support.
- A mobile port.
- Online multiplayer.

The first 2 points should be fairly straight forward, I want to make a game with a demo. The next 2 are a bit more technical:

• Surveying and analytics is part of research, which means I will be gathering information to make decisions, rather than guessing.
• Visual marketing and community engagement is what I'm doing right now! More visuals to come.
On that note, for those who do not know, I have a Discord fan server where I post updates on Dream Boy: https://discord.gg/t5Azx8j < A lot less formal and they get updates first.

Out of scope is what will not be included in Dream Boy. The most upsetting for many (including me), but absolutely vital for success. If you've ever faced "feature creep", this is how you deal with it. Along these lines, it is important to define restrictions (e.g. "Areas must have some grounding in reality.") and architecture (e.g. "At a minimum the game will be exported to run on Windows").

Conclusion

These are the key things I included in the plan for Dream Boy, whoever there was far more I didn't mention. As a bonus for sticking around this long, here is the game mechanics section!

## Game mechanics
The central mechanics are as follows:
1. To walk, run and jump around.
2. To look around.
2. Pickup and use items.
3. To alter the world directly or with an item (use or drop).
4. To communicate with dialog choices.

I look forward to showing how the game could look as we enter into the Prototyping phase!