Achievements - Richardng12/Terra_Tales GitHub Wiki

Achievements have been integrated in our system as they are there to help incentivise play through and provide the player with pride and a sense of achievement. Each achievement has three stars, the first to do with the initial unlock, the second with a minor progression and the final, an achievement which is built to target the better players who may not feel that the challenges are great enough.

Multiple achievements are present in each level, related to the required actions. For example, the forest level contains an achievement relating to the objective of the said level. Achievements are unlocked when the player does one of two actions on this level, watering the tree, and the player destroys the fire sprites. The same occurs for each of the other levels, with trash clean up and oil spills for the ocean level, and energy management in the city level.

Each of these level achievements is accompanied by the number of successful completion of such level. This is intended to keep track of the past completions and once all 10 are completed, the player should coherently understand our levels.

Achievements are carefully balanced to help ensure that most are achievable within a few sessions. We feel that this is the nominal amount of gameplay the casual player will play if they are interested. Should the player wish to unlock a greater amount of achievements, more time will be required which should hopefully better convey our deep mappings.

Other achievements not related to levels are also present. A “plays” achievement has been implemented to record the number of times the application has been opened, which we hope to improve the reception of our game, and increase the number of times our game is played. This will serve to hopefully ensure our deep mappings are present and apparent to the user.

To improve upon the variety of challenges in our game, there is an achievement dedicated to clearing the level in a set amount of time. A value of 3 minutes was chosen in an attempt to balance the challenge with the achievability.

Lastly, an “achievements” achievement is present, where the user is able to unlock once enough achievements occur. This is another achievement which we hope to improve the reception of our game and improve the number of times it is played, once again to improve the deep mappings and user understanding of the game.