For my game, I chose to design a factory building / logistics strategy type game, inspired by other games such as Factorio, Big Pharma, and Satisfactory among others.
It is called Start Up.
The point of this game is to build your own factory, starting from an empty warehouse, which can take all sorts of raw materials and produce all sorts of new materials or products. In order to do this, you must place various machines, conveyor belts, and other devices in your factory (on a square grid) which will move and manipulate the materials as desired.
As a strategy and resource management game, the target audience of this sort of game is generally a slightly more mature one, primarily being played by teens and adults instead of children. It will be played by people who are generally more analytical in nature, people who enjoy taking their time to plan and to learn the intricacies of the games mechanics so as to have the most efficient factory possible. Additionally, the game has many sandbox and creative type elements to it so it will also draw in people who like to build and create, possibly to create functional and aesthetic factories but they might also possibly not be as interested in the intricate mechanics and prefer to just build and design and watch materials move around without being concerned about the numbers.
As a game where the player builds everything from scratch, the initial level is simply an empty warehouse, so for my mockups I included a few machines and conveyor belts to give a sense for what the game might look like during play. Keep in mind that the factory is meant to be able to be expanded over time to fit more machinery. Additionally, I did the level mockup in SketchUp, which asside from its ease of use, is rendered in a minimalistic but bold line art style that I think suits this style of game.
This first mockup is an example of what the actual camera view of the game would look like, showing the factory and all of its parts from a parallel/isometric view.
Here I have a top down view, which while I originally didn’t intend to be an actual view in the game, could be included to help overcome the issue of certain machines being hidden behind others in a 3d view.
As far as characters go, this game does not strictly require any, however, for the sake of giving the player some way to feel like they are the one in charge of the factory, the game will have an avatar for the player. This will be a customizable character who would have a portrait in the game UI which could show different expressions whenever the player accomplishes something or when things go wrong in their factory such as happy and worried facial expressions.
As this character is really just meant to be an avatar for the player and the game is not a story driven game, the character does not have any particular backstory. They are simply supposed to look like someone who could be running a factory or business in general.
For the UI, I chose a clean, straightforward menu style to go with the minimalist line art style the game is already in. For the start screen, I used a screenshot from a different but similar game and blurred it in the background so as to serve as a teaser for the game while not showing enough to spoil the game. I originally used the picture of the level I made but I found the look of the start screen I was aiming for was better conveyed with a more fleshed out screenshot. For the title of the game, I chose a futuristic but similarly simple typography because of the futuristic and industrial nature of the game.
For the in game UI, I went with a simple bar accross the bottom which contains 3 main tabs for the game: Build, Company, and Stats. The bottom bar also includes a settings button and a small terminal looking window which shows you how much money you have as well as the current date in game.
Shown, the build tab is selected and highlighted blue. This brings up the bar on the left which shows the different categories of machines you could build. Each of the 5 buttons would bring up a small window with a list of the different machines available.
Finally, the players avatar is shown in the corner, watching over the factory with the player. The avatar is intended to react to various events and alerts that occur during game play. I would prefer for the avatar to be less realistic looking and instead fit the art style but I couldn’t make a less human looking model in make human.
