Games Development / Progress documentation
20/4/2026 - 20/7/2026 (Week 1 - 14)
Rachel Ng Jie Ting / 0378902
Bachelors of design (Honours) in creative media
Games Development / Progress documentation
Table of content
Progress documentation
Final Compilation (Video and game
link here)
Instructions
Module Information Booklet
Progress documentation
Taylor’s Annual Mental Wellness Campaign 2026 will be held from 12–14
October 2026. This year’s theme, “Where Healing Meets Fun,” aims to
destigmatise mental health by engaging people through fun, interactive,
and play-based
wellness activities.
You are required to produce a game that will be used for the event, your
game should (but not a must) center around these key words:
- creative expression
- gentle and non-verbal
- explore and express emotions
Essentially, any game that fits a certain mental health theme will do.
Submission Requirement:
Your ePortfolio post should include the following materials:
- Short video presentation and demonstration of your game, prepare it as follow:
- Narrated game features demonstration and highlight.
-
Duration not exceeding 10 minutes
-
Static key visuals of your game (refer: Art Asset)
-
Brief description of your game and highlight of features development
process (refer: GDD, Prototyping Document).
- Link to your web-playable game
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group formation and idea brain storming
On week 1, we formed our group of 5 members, and started
brainstorming for game ideas.
At the beginning, our group discussed and came up with three
different game ideas related to mental wellness. One of the
main ideas was a 3D emotion simulator, where players explore
different emotion rooms such as sadness, anger, and anxiety
Each emotion rooms will have multiples interactive
activities based on their theme.
Fig 1.1 - the very first game idea
However, after receiving feedback from Mr. Ronald, we
realized that some of our ideas, especially the emotion room
with multiple mini-games, might be too complex and difficult
to maintain in terms of quality.
Therefore, we decided to rethink and simplify our direction,
and explore new ideas before finalizing our concept.
Below is our ideas slides, we decide that 1 person has
to come up with 1 idea or more, and then we will vote to see
which idea is the best to proceed with.
Fig 1.2 - Game Development - ideas
After sharing and discussing all ideas, we conducted a group
voting to decide on the topic of our project. The concept Sea of
Echoes, proposed by Sun Yu Tong, received the most votes from the
team.
After selecting this game idea, we continued to develop and refine
it as a group by preparing the first Games Development Document
(GDD) to be submitted.
Fig 1.3 - Games Development Document (Early version)
Starting game development and Work Distribution
Once we have the general game direction, ur group started to
distributed the tasks:
Rachel (me)
- Responsible for all game coding & programming
Aricia
- All of the characters (MC & NPC), including character
movements
- Ship
- UI design
- Game cover page button
- Game map and in-game elements
Jia Yu
- Design all game backgrounds
Yu Tong & Rui Ning
- Drew memory cards, think of the story
- Design the mini game
Highlight of features development process
Below are some developments process highlights during coding and game building。
To put this out, i have very little knowledge on coding, but i understand some here, some there, so all of the game code was assisted by Gemini.
Parallax Background
Minigames
Each minigame is crafted in it own entity group, and has their own script handling the win conditions of the minigame.
Narrative Memory Cards (1 through 9) also sits within their own entity groups, keeping visual asset management separate from gameplay logic.
Narrative Memory Cards (1 through 9) also sits within their own entity groups, keeping visual asset management separate from gameplay logic.
All minigame entities and memory cards are registered directly within the central gameManager script via serialized array containers:
Minigame UI Screens Array: Holds references to all 9 hidden minigame entities. The gameManager invokes these UI screens dynamically as players progress sequentially through the islands.
Memory Card Screens Array: Holds references to the corresponding narrative memory card popups displayed upon minigame completion.
Fragment Tracking: Managed alongside the Max Fragments threshold (set to 5), triggering state transitions when enough Light Fragments are collected.
Last island ending scene
This bad boy is all handled by 1 script, [EndingCutsceneManager]
1. Overview
The [EndingCutsceneManager] script orchestrates the final narrative sequence on the Last Island. It controls character movement, stone shrine interactions, memory star placements, stage-by-stage tree growth, and the final exit transition.
2. Scene Hierarchy & Entity Setup
The Last Forest Scene root entity organizes all cutscene assets into dedicated containers:
- Plant Altar (Plant Growth Stages [0-4]): Contains 5 entity stages representing the growth of the Guiding Light Plant into the Great Tree.
- Memory Cards Container (Scene Memory Cards [1-9]): Houses the 9 background memory card visuals displayed during the shrine interaction sequence.
- Floating Stars Container (Floating Tree Stars [1-9]): Holds the 9 star entities that orbit around the tree once restored.
- MC Character: Houses the main character (player), flanked by crown back and crown front entities for the final crown-placement animation.
- UI & Interaction Targets: Includes click indicator stone (shrine trigger), Exit Light Target (door trigger), and Ending Quote Screen (final narrative overlay).
3. State Machine & Execution Flow
Stage 0 (Arrival): Player clicks the stone fountain (click indicator stone). The character walks to the shrine
Stage 1 (Plant Sprout): Player interacts with the shrine to place the initial sprout (Tree stage 0).
Stage 2 (Restore Memories): Player clicks to place all 9 Memory Stars onto the shrine one by one. Each click fades in a background memory card, enables an orbiting tree star, and fades out the previous card.
Tree Growth & Door Reveal: Once all 9 stars are placed:The system triggers animateTreeGrowth(), cycling smoothly through tree growth stages 0 to 4.After a brief pause, the exit light beam (Door) fades in, enabling Stage 3.
Stage 3 & 4 (Climax & Exit): Player clicks the exit door. animateStarAndPlantToCrown() lowers the flower crown onto the character's head.The character slowly walks off-screen toward the light beam.
The Ending Quote Screen fades in, displaying the final quote and return menu option.
Final Compilation
PlayCanvas editor project link:
Web-playable Final Game ("Sea of Memories") link:
https://playcanv.as/p/wWDrwLV5/
Brief description of Sea of Memories
Sea of Memories is a 2D side-scrolling narrative adventure that
combines atmospheric
point-and-click exploration with relaxing puzzle gameplay on PC
(Windows) and
Web (HTML5) platforms.
Designed for players who enjoy cozy, emotional, and story-driven
experiences, the game follows a protagonist sailing across a
quiet, fog- covered sea in search of forgotten memories.
Using simple mouse-only controls, players collect glowing Light
Fragments, solve interactive minigames, and gradually restore
memories of the protagonist’s relationship with Xiao Tang. Each
recovered memory helps the Guiding Light Plant grow, symbolizing
emotional healing while illuminating the surrounding sea.
Sea of Memories encourages players to progress through
remembrance, ref lection, and acceptance, exploring themes of
grief, healing, and moving forward in a gentle and meaningful
journey.
Video Presentation YouTube Link:
Cover: DST61104 Games Development - Assignment
Component A: Final Game & ePortfolio
Component B: Game Asset Manifest
Component C: Prototyping Document
Component D: Game Design Document
Feedback
Week 1
- Our primary emotions should be based on research, not random choice.
- If the gameplay concept is strong, narrative is not necessary.
- We need to concern about complexity as each room have different mini game. If too many game, it would be hard to maintain quality and consistency.
- Different gameplay in each room is good.
- The most important is "How the player feels of playing the game", it must align with the project theme.
Week 4
- We should make it clearer that the stars collected by the player represent positive memories and emotional fragments, may use sound effects such as cheerful ambience, children’s laughter, when collecting stars to help players emotionally connect with the memories.
- Instead of directly collecting memory shards, we can change the system into collecting smaller star fragments first. After collecting enough small star fragments (for example, 6 pieces), they will combine into one complete large star. Then, the completed large star will then unlock a memory scene and related mini game.
- For the art style, we could reference a simple visual style similar to stickman-style games. However, the final visual style is still up to our group’s decision.
- Since the gameplay mechanics are relatively simple and minimal, we should focus more on storytelling, atmosphere, emotional delivery, and visual presentation.
- Overall game mechanics are good and well-structured.
- Instead of collecting and placing stars one by one, the idea can be improved by transforming collected stars into a plant growth system, allowing the plant to fully grow first. Then, planting it at the final island as the ending action.
- Recommended adding special effects (e.g. glow effect) to the plant as more stars are collected to make the growth feel more rewarding.
Reflection
Hot damn, I am never doing coding and development solo
again—my soul almost left my body during this project!
Thankfully, Google Gemini was my best friend and coding
assistant throughout the whole process.
Overall, I found this module both tough and deeply
rewarding. Our lecturer gave us a relaxed learning
environment and the flexibility to manage our own
schedule, which gave us a realistic taste of actual game
development pipelines.
However, because we had so much other coursework,
development kept getting postponed. Balancing everything
required a high level of self-discipline, and to be
honest, time management was something I really struggled
with.
Throughout this experience, I realized just how vital
teamwork and project scheduling are. Since our tasks
depended on one another, a delay from one member meant
the next phase of development was completely blocked.
Effective communication and time management are
essential for collaborative work, and these are key
areas where our team can improve.
Clearer planning and instruction relay are also crucial.
For example, I should have specified exact technical
requirements for art assets early on, such as proper
layering. As the team’s sole coder, I learned this the
hard way when I opened the Adobe Illustrator file to
build the parallax background, only to find the art
split into 20 mixed-up layers instead of 5 clean ones. I
ended up spending extra time manually ungrouping,
redrawing, and re-layering the files just to make them
usable in-engine.
While my team created plenty of great art and sprite sheet
assets, several went unused due to time limits and our
inexperience with game making. We originally planned for
smooth character animations, and I feel a bit guilty that
I couldn't implement them into the game.
At the end of the day, we all did our best. While we could
have done better, considering the limited time I had to
code everything, I think it turned out pretty good.
Ps. The internet has alot of free and good quality asset
to use, just give proper credit and can use. Very nice i
like, itch io for the win!
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