Devlog #2 - Game Pitch!

Hello again!

 It's been a little while longer than we originally intended, but we're here to update the state of the project in our second devlog. 

Since our last devlog, we have made progress where possible, although we will not deny that our workload has hampered our output. 

Lets first talk about our 1-page pitch for our project, that we have since completed. It outlines the general gameplay ideas of our game, with some sample sketches of our gameplay intentions.

Lets use this opportunity to talk a bit more about the pitch.

GAME OVERVIEW

Mayor Jubilee: Heavenly Star Girl Festival (MJHSGF) is a resource-management gacha game where you play as Mayor Jubilee, who must decide between funding his own municipalities or feeding into his crippling gacha addiction. The gacha characters the player is able to collect have effects on the town itself, such as increasing profit from a certain sector or decreasing running costs for the town's public services.  

KEY FEATURES

Our main feature is the gacha collection, it is the core gameplay loop and what the player will focus on the most throughout the game. This feature will appear in a number of different forms throughout the game, such as pop-up clickbait ads, limited time offers, in-game shops, and gifts for completion of things within the town. 

This feature was based on many of the current gacha games within the games market nowadays. Our main source of inspiration was Summoner's War, which was one of the first mobile gacha games to become widely successful. The game is notorious for it's pop-ups, constant advertising, and confusing layout, creating a game that is mentally taxing for players and inhibits their ability to make rational financial decisions. 

Not to mention the pricing of in-game items and packs is insane!

AUDIENCE

Our main target audience are those familiar with gacha, collectors, and those critical of capitalism. In terms of age, we would say around 18 to 30 year olds so young adults. Despite having a relatively niche target audience we also believe that it could be enjoyed by anyone at any age because of its simple premise and casual gameplay along with its addictive game loop. We firmly believe that it could really be enjoyed outside of our target audience. 

PLATFORM

We decided to branch out from simply using unity to experiment and gain skills with another popular engine: Godot. Godot is a very intuitive and suitable software for the kind of game we're trying to make, leaning harder into it's simple point and click nature. There exist lots of documentation for how a point-and-click game could be made in this engine; Godot is a versatile tool that should let us get very close to our vision for the game. 

Some of our group members have prior experience with Godot, and know that as much as we'd want to - it's unlikely our game will be available to play on any operating system aside from Windows. 

We're looking for feedback!

One thing that's been on our minds since we concepted this town-building gacha idea is exactly how we want to present the message and the kind of tone we want to use. 

After reading the game pitch, did you feel like the tone was clearly ironic and helped emphasize that the game acts as a commentary on the very thing the player is encouraged to do? 

Please let us know - we want to ensure our message comes across clearly, as irony can sometimes be murky waters. 

That's all for now, we hope this game idea resonates with you like it did with us.