Graduate Games Blog

One of the really important things I decided early on was that I wanted to have good background variety.  All of my locations had to fit into the dog motif (i.e. parks, lawns, etc) but having level after level of dog parks wouldn’t be very interesting for the player.  So how could I add variety to the game?

To add some variety into the backgrounds, we came up with some different seasons.  In the winter, the fields and parks could be covered with snow and in the spring flowers could bloom on the grassy landscapes.  This was a great first step, but I still felt that it wouldn’t give the player enough variety.

In order to maximize the locations found in the game, I also introduced a time of day element to each background.  You can play at dusk/sunrise, during the day, or at night.  This allowed me to mix the green palette of the day levels with an orange look for dusk, and a cool blue look for night.  This was a great design decision because it not only introduced variety and more color, but also was cost effective and increased the number of unique backgrounds available in the game.