With our feedback from softs and after on our full experience, we decided to add consequences to enhance the feeling of choice and impact. Essentially, player experience was already emotional, but because consequences of actions with just the dialogue is does not feel satisfying enough, we decided to add something using haptics!
Choice of consequence type
We came up with two options.
- Option 1: spirit like people send off in the void. Dialogue teach them after void in hospital scene. Transition to companion void afterwards. The final companion yes/no has the same thing?
- Option 2: spirit like people appear directly above after crush, and crushed pattern is consequence pattern. Play a dialogue at the same time. Transition to companion void. Final companion has residual.
We decided that even though Option 1 is interesting and seemed impactful, we did not have enough time to test, as well as needing to teach people to send off souls is a whole new thing to tackle. In the end, Option 2 using just the haptic patterns is enough.
Last Hunt Playtest
We tested the consequences using these three types of haptic patterns as consequences:
- Correct choice: stroking or breathing. Lingering for the last companion.
- Incorrect choice: chainsaw or tension.
We assigned these to different character’s heart, and it plays after crushing, replacing the original residual impact.
Feedback and decision
We realized that the pattern playing just as a soul flies up is too quick, and people still cannot register the impact. We decided to change it to, still play the residual impact, not just replace it, have the soul appear in front of player, and while it fades away, play the consequence pattern.
Heart moment
a photo here
Festival
And then… it’s ETC 25th Anniversary Festival!!
We had 15 players complete the full experience, while over 20 additional audience members explored the haptic effects by wearing the gloves and watching the casting monitor as others played. And we got great reactions from those people.
(Rework the GIF soon)
Observation of Player Types
From all the testing in softs, playtest nights, and now festival, we confirmed our hypothesis of whether our experience was played as intended, where haptics is used as a puzzle solving mechanic, by different player types.
Player Types
- VR naivety
- Naive VR guests have great experience with Meta Quest 3’s hand tracking, so it’s to our advantage that our feedback is on the hand, and that the interactions we designed for are most easily observable.
- Non-naive guests, especially those with handtracking experience actually have a harder time grabbing and crushing a heart. We eventually decided to “teach” players by showing them how to interact with a heart before trying the experience.
- Gamer vs. non-gamers
- The most important factor to whether our experience of haptic perception IS perceived, is actually whether the player consciously view this as a game or an experience.
- Gamers register that haptics is an information for puzzle solving, while nongamers view haptics as feedback, but still use visuals.
Next steps
Next week is finals presentation. I will be back with a postmortem of our final and our next step plans! Stay tuned.