On Monday, we had our 1/4 Walkaround where we presented our current work to the ETC faculty and received their feedback. We introduced to them that the game is about microaggressions and showed them the game wireframe, puzzle design, intro storyboard, and puzzle demo.
Most of the faculty found the puzzle was confusing and disconnected from the overall game. We should find a way to make it more connected to the game. Also, they asked who the audience is. They thought that targeting both marginalized groups and non-marginalized groups are challenging. We would confirm that with the client.
Before I showed you the new design of the puzzle, I would like to remind you what are the design goals are –
- Feel the negative impacts (being anxious or annoying) after an offensive statement
- Receive positive feedback (being less anxious or annoying) after applying strategies
- Increase interactivity
Here’s a demo of the new design. After the player solved this puzzle, an offensive statement will be triggered. Then the player will be anxious (not showing in this video, but stay tuned!)
The designer iterated on the puzzle 1 design. When the protagonist is doing a math problem for a classmate’s favor, this puzzle will be triggered. As you could see from the video, the protagonist is solving those math problems.
We also had several other variations of the design but this is what the faculty from the 1/4 Sitdown most liked. From the 1/4 Sitdown, we also learned that it was important to playtest our story and story options. We needed more inputs from Chinese students AND non-Chinese students to make sure our story makes sense and dialogue is natural.
We are making a paper prototype and we’ll test it next week to improve our dialogue and story options.
Moreover, the faculty mentioned the importance of voiceover and sound. We agreed. We indeed planned to put voiceover in the Prologue and Flashback at the end of each chapter. Those will be cut scenes and we believe it will be touching if we add voiceover to it. We don’t want to add voiceover to the main game as it would be much faster to read than listening to the voiceover. Also, we’ll keep iterating our dialogue and it’s a little out of scope to adding voiceover to all of the dialogue. Of course, we’ll chunk large dialogue into sentences to increase readability.
The artist is adding the final touches to the poster and half sheet. By the next week, those should be ready to print!
We like the color contrast, handwritten style project name, and illustration of the girl as the combination of these elements conveys something emotional and personal. At the same time, it makes us or the audience feel calm yet powerful. Thanks to all the hard work from our artist! Below are some previous iterations.
Yep, that’s it about this week. We’ll comeback to share more on next week 😀
Comments are closed