CS4730 - Project Part 2: Alpha Build / Playable Demo

Overview

For the second part of your project, you will be developing a short, playable demo of your build. The overall goal is to produce a fully playable game from start to finish. The game will be short however. This means that all of your primary mechanics will be fully implemented and working. Your game will have a start screen, winning and losing conditions, etc.

A reasonable litmus test for what we expect is this: Imagine you are releasing a free demo version of your game to entice players to purchase the full version. This alpha build should serve as a short playable demo that serves this purpose. Here are some examples of what this might mean:

for a platforming game like Mario: A start screen, a short narrative hook (e.g., “they took the princess!”), and one or two fully playable levels.
for a Pokemon type game: A start screen, collect one pokemon, fight one or two battles, conclude somehow.
for a puzzle game: Start screen, and 3 or 4 short puzzle levels.
for a metroid-like game: Start screen, a room or two showing obstacles, one power-up pickup, overcome an obstacle and reach an ending room (with perhaps a short “boss battle”).

Requirements

The graders will be checking that the following requirements are met for your game. You will pass this assignment if all of these are implemented to a reasonable level.

Fully Playable Game: Your game needs to be a fully playable game. We expect your games at this point to be short (maybe 1-3 minutes of gameplay total). However, the game should be fully completable from beginning to end, including final win and losing states.
Primary Mechanics Working: All of the primary mechanics / resources in your game must be implemented and fully working.
Explained Mechanics / Controls / Design: The game must explain the controls and mechanics of your game in some way (through gameplay or text). A player should be able to pick up the game and play without consulting any outside materials. The 1-3 minutes of game content should be short, but interesting. Try to highlight your mechanics and what makes them fun.
Start Screen: Your game needs to have some kind of start screen. The player should not be simply dropped into the middle of gameplay right away.
Animations / Simple Effects: All animations / basic effects should be implemented. this includes animations of playable characters / important NPCs and simple effects needed for your primary mechanics (e.g., light effect for a mechanic based on lighting up platforms). This does NOT include polish effects like extra animations, particle effects, animating static background objects, etc.