This week, we have decided on our game mechanisms and started making prototypes for our game. While some of us made a paper prototype and carried out a playtest with naive guests, the rest of our team focused on developing a digital prototype and made progress on demos for our game.
Game Design
We narrowed down our game ideas to one game concept at the beginning of this week. In the game, the player works as both a body snatcher stealing body parts in the cemetery and a businessman who assembles the body parts and sells the assembled body to the ghosts with different requirements.
- Storyboard/UI
We documented our game idea and according to the gameplay, and we have created a paper prototype for playtesting.
- Paper Prototype
Paper Prototype includes a grave map, a workshop interface, characters, and body parts. This could prototype our game mechanisms rapidly.
- Playtest
We found naive guests to playtest our paper prototype, and we received a lot of feedback from the guests which could better help us iterate on our game idea, such as:
- Assembling the body parts together and giving them to the ghosts is the most fun part in the game.
- Digging up the grave is somehow repetitive because all the graves are unknown and the player has to check each grave one by one and choose to dig or not.
- More stories and backgrounds are needed for the ghosts.
- Narrative Design
After our playtest and discussion with instructors on Wednesday and Thursday, we decided on our main direction of game narration and started working on a detailed narration for the game.
In the game, the player works as an assistant of Dr. Frankenstein. As the Doctor needs bodies to carry out his experiments and reaches his goal of creating a perfect body, he demands the player to snatch bodies from the cemetery and assemble the body parts for him. As the assistant, the player’s goal is to steal bodies from the cemetery and assemble bodies that satisfy his requirements.
Programming
For the digital prototype, we have developed some demos for the grave searching & digging gameplay and the body assembly gameplay.
- Grave Searching
Players can move around in the maze and look for graves. By checking the information on the gravestone, which is showing in the console, players can choose to dig the grave or keep exploring.
- Body Assembly
Players can drag and drop the body parts to their designated areas. Once they drop the body parts near the area, the body parts can automatically attach to the spaces.
Production
- Carried out playtest, scribed notes during the playtest, and organized notes and feedback to documentation.
- Had team bonding at the beginning of the week.
- Schedules and carried out meetings with instructors for suggestions.
Plans for next week
- Made a more detailed digital prototype
- Programming: Add more detailed functions to the prototypes
- Art: Create art assets for the prototype
- Playtest our digital prototype and collect data and feedback.