This week, we organized feedback from the soft opening and all previous playtests, and collaboratively discussed and consolidated the lessons we’ve learned about breathing throughout the semester. In addition, we began working on our last prototype: Blow Fire Scene.
Project Learnings:
Despite making some progress in the halves phase with hardware and movement experiments to enhance immersion, we realized that addressing game design issues alone wasn’t enough to create the experience we envisioned. Breathing itself—an input we initially knew little about—emerged as a major blocker to achieving our immersive goals.
As a result, we conducted 9 rounds of playtesting with over 50 players after halves, focusing specifically on identifying and overcoming the blockers caused by breathing as a mechanic. While some challenges remain unresolved even now, this long-term iterative process has given us deep insights into how breathing, as a novel input, can be incorporated into more traditional gameplay.
Blockers For Each Scene:
Blow Fire Scene:
Building on the previous Blow Fan scene, this new scene also leverages the power of the wind sensor. However, unlike before, we aim to deliver a sense of powerful emotion to the players while simultaneously using this scene as a way to conclude our project in the form of a credits sequence.
We invited several classmates to playtest this prototype and received very positive feedback. We anticipate completing the production of this scene next week.
Future Plans:
Next week, we will complete the production of the Blow Fire Scene and record & edit our final video. In addition, our team will begin preparing for the final presentation and wrapping up our project.
