Summary:
This week (Apr.11-17) is the official last week of Alpha. Our core gameplay mechanism has been updated to a more engaging search activity.
What we have done:
This Monday, we welcomed four newly admitted students to our project room (pictures attached). Due to time constraints, we focused on explaining what we did, played parts of the demo, and answered their questions about the ETC program.
Client Meeting (04.11)
To explore the idea of engaging the audience further, Jeffrey brought up some ideas of scoring systems in the gameplay and implementing visual elements when players share the same identities (screenshot attached). The ideas were well received by our client.
Playtest with Jessica Hammer (04.12)
Jessica Hammer is the Thomas and Lydia Moran Associate Professor of Learning Science, jointly appointed in the HCI Institute and the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on transformational games, which are games that change how players think, feel, or behave. We consulted with Jessica about how to engage the audience more while we only have 1-2 weeks to finish the implementation. Some of the ideas she pointed out included:
- Create meaning, for example with characters/stories
- Make the bucket something else that’s fun
- Make everyone work towards a common polished goal
- Timed Competition
- Make an incentive to let people help each other around them
We took all of them into consideration and came up with two proposals, which were explained in the instructor meeting the following day.
Instructor Meeting (04.13)
Before this meeting, our designers prepared a slide presentation to help explain the iterated gameplay mechanism to replace our current puzzle room design. One of the solutions is while players fill in the buckets, they gradually unlock a center wheel (screenshot attached).
The other solution is to replace the “fill in buckets when you have the same identity” with “find another player with these identities” (screenshot attached).
Team Design Meetings (04.13)
After a few rounds of intense discussion on how to change the core gameplay to engage the audience, we came up with the following mechanism (screenshot attached). All the proposed changes have been implemented by the end of the week and recorded as a demo below.
Project Management
We finally came to the conclusion of the Alpha phase this week! After six weeks of Alpha, a complete product has been made. As planned, Beta will focus on stress testing, bug fixing, UI update, GDD polish, and playtest. The website has also been polished with a homepage and a trailer video.
Programming
Huge effort has been made to change the core gameplay system. The puzzle and bucket elements have been completely replaced with finding others with the prompted identities (demo attached).
Art/UI/UX
If players share the same identities, when they move close to each other, they will have a star connection. The star assets, made by Amber, are shown below (images attached).
While developing a user guide for any potential user of our product, UI layouts for the big screen have been created by Alexa (images attached).
What we plan to do:
Next week is Soft Opening Week where we welcome faculties and staff to playtest our game. As we move into Beta, we will work on stress testing, bug fixing, UI update and GDD polish as well.
