Hi everyone! We are team XpressO, a team of 5 graduate students at the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University.
Our project, XpressO is a faculty-pitched project which intends to create an expressive interactive experience by exploring innovative mechanics and unique controllers. By rapid-prototyping artistic expressive ideas, playtesting, and then focusing on one interactive concept, our goal is to provide innovative, artistic and meaningful interactivity to the guests.
Our team:
Yuxin Gu – Game Designer/Producer
Patrick Cheng – Senior Software Engineer
Yicheng Lu – Level Designer/Technical Game Designer
Anna Salieva – Narrative Designer/2D Artist
Tingyu (Polly) Yan – Level Designer/2D Artist
Work Preparation:
Having the first project meeting with our instructors, Jonathan and Scott, on the first day of the semester, we introduced ourselves and discussed our roles on the team. We discussed some doubts about the project and then shared our initial game ideas. After having a deep conversation together, we came to the conclusion of making unique controllers for our project.
We decided our team name would be XpressO. A discord server and a google calendar have been set up for the project.
Game Research & Game Ideas:
This week, we focused on doing game research and started brainstorming about the experience and the unique controllers we would have for the project. Each of us came up with game ideas and recorded them in documents.
Game Research:
1-2-Switch, Waterful Ring Toss Game, Give me toilet paper!
Game Ideas:
- Cow udder controller (Rubber gloves full of water) – milking simulation
- Shovel controller – Dig and bury
Composition Box:
We also made a composition box and participated in a playtest workshop, where useful feedback is collected from fellow classmates and instructors.
Plans for next week:
- Continue brainstorming ideas and vote for ideas we would like to make prototypes with.
- Start making prototypes:
- Design: Record game design ideas in game design documents.
- Tech/Programming: Connect the unique controller with PC software.
- Art: Seek for art references that could fit for our game idea and work on demo art.
- Decide on core hours and time for weekly project meetings.