Evil Dragon Merchant

In this blog entry we, Mauro (from now on „I“), Hanna and Pen will be describing our work on the first prototype in Studio Game 1 within about 2 work days.

Brainstorming and grouping

The idea for this game was inspired through cards that every student had to choose from in a brainstorming excercise. In the end you’d be left with cards and had to write down a short pitch for a game using them as a basis. In the following paragraph I (Mauro) will tell you how this idea came to be.

First picking up the emotional response, „Pleasure“ and „Amusement“ because that is a pretty broad thing to build upon. Then picking up the game mechanic „Buy“, „Sell“ and „Trade“ since that as well is an easy but interesting thing to put into a game. Finding „Steal“ and „Betray“ was lucky since they naturally go with the previous options. At this point I had already set my mind on it being about a merchant in medival times so when I saw the „Dark Age“ card I had to take it.
Afterwards we pulled from a deck of cards with pictures and characters on them until we found something that we liked. The thing that interested me about the dragon card was, that there was a human on there so I started thinking about how a dragon and a merchant could work together. Down below is the pitch I have written down and that we chose.

Original Pitch
You are an aspiring merchant trying to make a name for yourself. You do that by trading increasingly more elaborate wares. You can choose between honest or underhanded tactics to achieve your goals, taking risks with banned wares or staying on the good side of the law all the while you are trying to satisfy a growing dragons greed for more gold by paying it increasing ransom year by year as the dragon grows.

Everyone pitched their game idea, people voted on what they found interesting and in the end we formed teams to pursue an idea with a prototype.

Prototyping

The goal for our prototype was to learn about the haggling mechanic. In our game you would have to haggle with people to sell specific items you stock so that was a core mechanic of the game. Even though this class is focusing on making 3D-Games, we were allowed to focus on a 2D interface mechanic.
After settling on how the prototype should function we got to work. I focused on the UI with Unitys new(er) Canvas System which I had never used before. Hanna was happy to do all the coding for our project and Pen got creative with writing dialogue and drawing our customers.

How the prototype works

Some customers will be approachable because they want to buy an item without paying the store price so you got to haggle with them. You see the initial price of the item, the price that is set in your shop and the new price that the customer wants to buy it at.
To haggle you type in a price between theirs and your shops price but be careful not to go too high, otherwise the customer will give up on it immediately. Some customers haggle once after the initial message, some haggle twice. In the end your goal is it to make as much money from the items as possible.

Art & Text (by Pen)

Other projects in Studio Game 1 – Prototype 1

• Last Minute Packing Game Prototype
• Dice Rolling Game
• Roguelike Dice-Battler
• Ghost Jump and Run