The delicate art of pruning: Getting to a minimum viable product

Another friday has passed, which means progress! This session we were asked to create a minimum viable product (MVP), and turn it into our first actual playable digital version.

The first step into creating our minimum viable product (MVP) was, stripping our game concept down to just the bare necessities. We quickly decided that the multiple game modes would not be viable for a first iteration. We still like the idea, but it would require a lot more content to properly implement. The only available game mode that will thus be provided in the MVP is endless, which will consist of you, the tophatted dino, eating smaller dinos, while dodging bigger dinos and obstacles. We decided to not yet include evolution/growth into this version. This is actually a game mechanic that we do hope to implement in a next iteration. It would be something that distinguishes our game from other similar games. However for a first iteration, it was not something that would be necessary to make the game playable.

With this in mind, we made a new paper prototype, because one should not dash into the next development step without evaluating. Upon testing this new prototype with the assistant, we came to the conlusion we still had a couple more elements that could be stripped, including the settings and about screen, and the health bar. This reduced our grand project to a lean mean gaming machine.

This left us with a single entry screen, which displayed the possible options: play, highscores and mute. This screen would only be accessible when starting up the game, and you will not return to it any more. When you die you see a game-over screen, which allows the user to start a new game. The game-over screen will also display the highscores. This is all summarised into some neat lists!

What we have:

• A main menu
• Highscores
• Single game mode that consists of endlessly eating small dinos, while dodging bigger ones.
• A mute button
• A dino with a tophat.

What we really want in the future:

• Growth and evolution game mechanics
• A story game mode.
• More variation in dinos.

What we have stripped, and not necessarily plan on adding again:

• Settings screen
• About screen

We hope that our MVP will provide us with answers to some questions we still have, that were difficult to evaluate with a paper prototype.

• Which control scheme do people prefer? 
• Do we need to add a tutorial, or will people understand the concept just by playing? 
• What about the pacing. Are the game mechanics actually fun?

Future blogposts will answer these questions!