My Final Game Analysis Walkthrough: Sushi Samurai

I put my own knowledge of game design to work to create Sushi Samurai, the small, action/adventure platforming game I created in GameMaker 7 for my final project. After hours of painstaking work and planning, frustrating programming, and often disappointing setbacks, I now have an idea of what it's actually like to produce the games we play. Lackluster content and buggy mechanics aside, I think the most successful aspect of my game is the overall story and concept.

My game aesthetic takes the traditionally cutesy, quirky concept of animate sushi with a darker, grittier feel of more mature action and fighting games; while the environments look about as semi realistic as 2D platforms on a gridded-out object placement system could look, the idea of the game is to navigate through the mossy stones and mountain precipices to collect sushi ingredients. The otherwise muscular, mean-looking samurai hero is dressed in ironically hot pink and neon green armor, lending a charming look to the game.

The monsters are clearly sushi rolls, although they certainly look evil and menacing with bugged out eyes and gaping mouths of sharp teeth. The Dragon Roll boss monster is only slightly more frightening than his smaller minions, with the addition of taloned limbs and the ability to breathe dangerous, fiery projectiles at the hero.

While the story is basic, unfolding through only two levels, it makes sense in the context of the story and drives the action. Text alerts substituting for cutscenes speak to the player as if they were the samurai hero, informing you that you must climb the mountain to return pieces of cursed sushi to the mighty Dragon Roll, a huge sushi roll currently possessed by an evil spirit that has killed your father, a master sushi chef, and is holding his spirit hostage. Once the player collects all the sushi pieces, they are prompted to defeat the monster before entering the final level, where they must dodge fireballs the Dragon Roll spews around the cave and hit him 10 times to defeat him and avenge the hero's father.

Although I'm proud of the overall result of my game, I wish I could have fixed a lot of problems I didn't get to as a result of time constraints and the confusing, often unpredictable and fineckey GameMaker software. The two levels are short and lacking content, and I'd initially planned to include some other pickups to enrich gameplay; there might be some health boosters, or pickups that would make the player temporarily invincible, as well as an extra costume for the hero or a ranged weapon even that would serve as milestone rewards to keep the player interested. I had also wanted to add more complex levels, complete with ladders to climb, keys to get, traps to avoid, and doors to extra areas to open.

I also wanted to add more sprite animations to further characterize the hero and the sushi enemies; I had actually made animated gifs of a walk cycle and an action of the samurai swinging his sword, but I could only include 1 image for the fight sequence; for some reason my game would freeze when more than a single frame of an image was included as the sprite, even though I had included an action for the fighting hero object to turn back into the default hero object after the animation had ended. I had also intended for the sushi minions to have zombie walks and attack animations, although this didn't work out, and my attempted "AI" system (would pace along paths, sense the presence of the hero when he got close enough to attack him, and follow him after that) for the enemies seemed to crash my game and cause glitches.

In the end, I had to simplify some of the grander ideas I had initially had for my game. It was certainly an experience though.

And here it is:
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/106293-samurai-sushi