As we enter Week Seven of the Spring 2022 project semester, we begin preparing for the 1/2 presentations. SciCom Center will present on Wednesday, March 2nd, in the 2:30 PM session. Before March 2nd, we further refined our ideas, created additional art assets, and worked on our presentation.
The Game Design
Continuing on our work from the previous week, we refined our design and created a preliminary example of a potential puzzle. We determined several topic areas for the puzzles as well as added additional details to our design.
Based on our critical conversation topics, we created a list of puzzle topics. These are divided between the categories Future Forward, Community Outreach, and Attracting New Demographics. In total, we hope to create 5 puzzles centered on these topics, but we have decided to begin prototyping one puzzle.
Our first puzzle focuses on the question of how science centers and museums can attract young adults (20-30 year olds) to their venues. We used pre-existing exhibits and programs from the Carnegie Science Center as inspiration. However, in the future, we are considering using a survey to collect more data on this topic as well as increasing our research into both precedents and published papers.
The puzzle itself consists of:
- An empty room/venue for players to add exhibits to
- Multiple potential exhibits with some being more relevant than others
- A prompt spot with additional information about the topic and the game
For now, we are representing these components as paper cards and cutouts. However, it is likely that our final product will be digital unless playtesting results suggest otherwise. Using this paper prototype, we were able to film a short video demonstrating the ideal conference experience for our 1/2 presentation.
Video Link
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i3Z-mUrVNtQTMqctffDF1F6zb5QbQoPZ/view?usp=sharing]
For the future, we are considering how we can make our game more open-ended. We believe an open-ended game will allow for more discussion. Yet, we will also need to consider the details of how this should be implemented and how it will affect other aspects of our game such as the rewards system.
We will also need to conduct several rounds of playtesting. We can test some of our initial mechanics with the aid of ETC students and faculty. For testing with our target audience, we have been told that playtesters of our target audience will be attending the playtesting session later in March. These playtesting sessions will help inform our game’s design in the weeks to come.
The Art
Prior to this week, we had decided on a general direction for our project’s art style. We drew inspiration from the ASTC Conference theme, “Traversing Tomorrow Together,” as well as low poly and vector art styles. We wanted to convey a hopeful and optimistic atmosphere throughout our art.
For Week Seven, we created concept art and sketches of potential layouts and art assets. For the layout, we went with a top-down view. The area also incorporates space for players to add four exhibits. In these drawings, we attempted to use some of the blue-green colors that we were considering for our color palette. Using the preliminary puzzle design, we drew sketches of what potential exhibits may look like. Afterwards, we used those sketches as reference for creating low poly 3D models.
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CbMKh340Rt1EsO-dkQjN0NsvK9mWr0_Q/view?usp=sharing]
In the next few weeks, we will continue to work on improving the art of our experience. We still need to consider the design of our prompt spots in order to make these spots more visually appealing and attractive to conference attendees. We will also have to ensure that our art assets can work well as part of a mobile web game.
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