Designing the Game

People who regularly visit my site probably know that I like to have games for certain holidays. Christmas is probably the most prominent holiday in North America, so having some Christmas themed games is an obvious thing to do. I know not everyone celebrates Christmas, but if the game is fun this shouldn’t matter anyway. I was planning on doing a targeting game for my planned A of C series of games. This is a fairly simple game to do, but needed a theme that would fit in for Christmas. Santa protecting his workshop from toy stealer’s seemed to be the obvious theme. At this point I opened my word processor and quickly put together a design document. As this is a very small game, only a simple document was needed. Here is the actual document:

Santa's Snowball Design Specification Document

Version 1.00.041108
By Billy D. Spelchan

Introduction

Those evil toy stealing gnomes have been seen lurking around Santa's toy shop. Knowing how close Christmas is, Santa wants to make sure that his toys will be safe. To do this, Santa has set up a target range and has ordered his elves to practice their snowball throwing.

Game Play Overview

The game consists of five levels. Each level will have 10 gnome cutouts pop up, with the occasional Santa popup appearing to keep the player on his or her toes. To finish a level, you must score at least 7 out of 10 hits, with a hit on Santa costing a hit.

The targets start out lasting for 5 seconds. Each level this time is reduced until the final level which targets only last 1 second (must move really quick to finish that level).

Asset List

Graphics

• Santa's Snowball Title Screen - This is a the image used for the title screen. The game is being released as a 640x480 flash applet, so that would be best size.
• Santa's Village - Game background. Should be 10-12 locations (trees, rocks, chimney, window, igloo, etc.) that a gnome can pop out of. The game is being released as a 640x480 flash applet, so that would be best size.
• Northern Lights - Will be used as backdrop for instructions and for credits. The game is being released as a 640x480 flash applet, so that would be best size.
• Santa - will be used in instructions and on a popup board.
• Gnome - will be used in instructions and on a popup board.
• Snowball, snowball splat will be done by me.

Sounds

• Woosh of snowball being thrown
• Splat of snowball hitting cardboard
• Christmas music snippet for winning if can find decent free one.