This week, we had a playtest and found some problems about our gameplay and narrative design. And we made some changes in design to meet our goals.
Playtest
On the playtest night, we conducted a playtest with several guests as a conclusion for the week5’s sprint. Our main question is whether our gameplay, interaction flow, and narrative works for our experience goals.
We got the feedback as the follows:
- There’s a gap between physical building signs and virtual antiques. The audience couldn’t get that the object and stories are related to the building.
- Audience couldn’t get the relationship between dialogue and the virtual antiques. (It should be that you are talking with the owner of the virtual objects)
- Some logical fallacies of why you can get the virtual antiques from the owner.
Thus, we made some changes in design based on the feedback.
Iterate
- Use virtual postcrossing as the main game mechanism and settings.
- Use postcards as a key component to fill the gap between physical building and the narratives.
- Use mailbox as the first step of the AR experience for registration and mission conveyance.
Gameplay Version 2 Details
- When playing our game, players follow the map on the mainpage and find the mailbox near the target building.
- Players check in at the target mailbox. AR interaction starts. In AR, the virtual character would give players the mission card.
- Following the mission card, players find the target building, take a photo in AR and create a virtual postcard.
- Players send the virtual postcard he created and send it through the virtual character of the mailbox.
- Then, players receive a postcard from the virtual character as the postcard he collected. There are historical photos or related images on the front of the postcard. And behind the postcard, there are stories of the front photo. The stories’ topic is about the cultural merge.
Tech
- AR VPS feature (putting virtual objects in specific physical location) using Niantic Lightship ARDK.
- Interact in AR with virtual objects.
Art
- Created the mailbox character’s design and modeling
