Before
showing the designs and completed version of my interface for this game. I will
first take you through an explanation of the controls. This will help you to
understand what it is my interface will be doing and how it will work.
‘animal
crossing: city folk’ is on the wii and only for the wii. Which even though it
would be nicer if it was on different gaming platforms, it wouldn’t be possible
to make this happen, because it would affect the controls and the overall
gaming experience that you receive.
The controls
are fairly simple but many of them are motion based. Most of the motion based
controls can be substituted with a button control for instance fishing can be
activated by swinging your remote like a fishing rod. Or it could be activated
by pressing the ‘A’ button. Moving this
game onto a different platform will take away this ability. Even though the
‘X-box connect’ has recently emerged. The experience still won’t be quite the
same since with the wii you have a physical object that will act as a rod
Motion also
has an effect on whether you can see the inventory options or not. When the
pointer is not on the screen everything on your screen will be gone. Though once on the screen the inventory tab
will become available. When your character is not walking or moving the clock
will then come up. The idea was to make as much screen see able as possible.
Without cluttering it up with icons and such.
The controls
were made to be quite easily understandable as the game was aimed to make it
playable for children of the age of 3+, which was achieved since the controls
are simple and easily memorable.
Despite the
young age rating, the most common people to play these games are either, older
teens that aren’t massive or hard core gamers and would prefer a more relaxing
and easy going game, or young children.
Having the
age rating as it is, strikes me as an extremely good idea as it vaguely teaches
the ‘grown up’ life style to children in a fun way, since this game is a ‘slice
of life’ style game in which you are made to earn money, make friends with
neighbours and pay a mortgage. Unfortunately for the more thrill seeking
gamers, this game is not what they would look for.
http://www.gameslave.co.uk/imageviewer.cfm?img=30349&title=Animal-Crossing-City-Folk
http://kupika.com/XxMISSMEWMEWxX/Animal-Crossing
http://www.smh.com.au/news/games/animal-crossing-wild-world/2006/01/11/1136956230447.html
There aren’t
many games in this franchise, with there only being 3. The first, on the
Nintendo game cube, the second, on the Nintendo DS, and the third, on the
Nintendo wii.
Each of
these games all have the same basic controls, goals, and graphics. They don’t
differ much aside from the designs of the interfaces and the quality of the
graphics since each game has had big time differences.
Every one of
the game interface designs have all been rounded and soft which I liked very
much and wanted to keep in my design. The colours are also quite bright but not
to ‘in your face’ I liked this and wanted to keep it.
The aim of
my interface was to take up as less space as possible of the screen but too
keep at least something on there to indicate that there is in fact a menu.
Overall I am
happy with the way that my final outcome has ended up and I think that it is
smart and simple. Sticking to the original themes but also being something
new.
