Deadline Dilemma

You have only 1 week till break and all your classes have assigned you all this homework. Problem is that you have such a busy life (at least you say you do) and you tend to not stay focused. Can you help your future self and get all your work done and fulfill your position as a competent student or will you give in to the laziness of the internet world? Find out in this visual novel, as you play as a college student who highly struggles to balance between their work and social life.

Controls:

Press the "Enter" Key to start the game.

Use the Left Mouse Button to click through dialogue / select text boxes.

Use the "Escape" key to exit the game.

Post-Mortem:
What went right?
Well, it was definitely a learning experience, all right. Getting hands-on with the Game maker engine has given me a new boost in confidence on what kinds of games I could make in my free time. Granted, it was never going to be easy translating an idea into the game engine on the first try, but with enough time and practice, this could become a new hobby of mine. Sometimes for me, I just need somebody to guide me at the right place in the right moment to realize what I could do. What really worked well in-game is the translation of the graphical interface. I was going for a bit of an RPG-style interface when creating the roughs for the UI, and it ended up being the better looking part of the game look, in my opinion. I especially liked implementing the mouse hovering animations; it gave the buttons a sense of feeling it wouldn’t get otherwise, what with them being simple shapes I formed through a paint program.
What went wrong?
Well, many things…

First, we had the poorest communication system a team could ask for. We were simply brought together through a Discord group DM, which was barely active. We only had ONE singular in-person meeting together as a group, and that was for the pitch document. Other than that, It was just me posting deadlines and reminders.

Second, Because of the lack of participation from the group as a whole, I wasn’t given any feedback on the game idea. I [Isaac Paniagua], was the person who came up with the idea for this game, as aside from the single meetup for the pitch document, I wasn’t given any more new ideas or changes we could make for this game. I was essentially given full control on how the game could be played, which at first doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all. Why am I criticizing the fact that I got to create my own game. Well that’s the thing.

I was the only person making this game. Aside from the pixelated backgrounds created by Jalen James, the only other person I could credit, a majority of this game build was created by yours truly. All of this is due to a lack of collaboration effort on all of us, me included. As the de facto leader of the group, it should’ve been my responsibility to better organize the messy operation we were given, to help facilitate a better working experience for our first game. But it was due to my lack of experience, many off days, and complete lack of guidance that the game is left in the state that it is in. We were behind during both demo showcases for this game, and especially the last showcase, where I was the lone participant for this group, perfectly sums up this project. A game about avoiding procrastination, thought up by a procrastinator, who procrastinated til there was no time to.

Because of this, many of the game ideas had to be cut. For Instance, the homework was originally going to lead to an accuracy minigame, similar to the “attack” command from Undertale, that would gauge how much homework got completed within the hour. It was cut late in development due to a lack of delivery. Another aspect cut were cutscenes that would’ve given the player a certain boost based on some random event happening in-between days. That was cut due to a lack of implementation, and the days just now seam their way through the gameplay. 

Group Members (Team 15):

Isaac Paniagua
Jalen James

Advait Nair
Camden Wacha