Embedded Files
Game that referenced in first paragraph
Monday:
Monday:
Today I came back to some feedback for my escape booklet, so I made some fact checks in the morning to see if everything was correct with my info, as an important part of these booklets is to also be scientifically correct. one of the feedback points was that the narwhal, halibut, Greenland shark and calamari were seen in the same illustration, and near the surface, which was great for the game, but not ideal scientifically, I found some different pieces of information that suggests its possible to find all these animals together at -200 metres from the surface, but I have to find a way to get the characters in the story to see them, as looking overboard would be too unrealistic for the story and game. We have to keep in mind that we need to stay realistic, as to give the child a real perspective on the world, and not one blown out of proportion.
New version to make it more scientifically accurate
We also received the final draft of the objectives for the Deauville presentation, having them printed in front of me highlighted a big issue, there is an obvious pattern which will make the objectives feel stale if not fixed later on, the only thing that changes with each objective is the 2nd objective. for example, if obj1 is hay, then obj3 will always be feathers, no matter what. The solution is by offsetting the third objective, basically taking what we have now, putting them into a list, and shifting over the third objective by one card, so that every card is unique, and even if you find out the first or third objective of a player, you cannot find the first or third.
but this is an issue for another time, at least the full prototype is finished and we can move our focus onto the Escape.
for the escape I reviewed my general overview of my booklet, their will be changes to it but here is what it currently looks like:
Tuesday:
Tuesday:
This morning I met with Igor to review my progress on the escape game, the beginning was mostly solid, with a few changes required to pages and clarification.
further on though, the changes that needed to be made increased, due to moral and ethical problems, but also to the flow of the story, after finding the old image, before eliminating the halibut and Greenland shark, I'm changing this "chapter" completely as the story flow made little sense, thankfully I hadn't put this part into my InDesign, so I won't need to change too much.
I'm going to start concentrating on applying the changes that we made to the InDesign and to my excels so that everything gets updated.
My main issue now is that we decided to add a few double pages and take away some, also while shifting a few pages, this means that many of the transitions I already made to go from page to page will no longer work. what I'm going to do is work on a new Excel page just for the page transitions, and find a way to move what I have in order to fit the new changes into the booklet.
Wednesday:
Wednesday:
Today we have a slight big major issue, which is one of the animals in the Escape, the Willow Ptarmigan (lagopède de saule) is not living in the region where my story takes place, I wrongly assumed it was but It wasn't. a few solutions are possible, I can make a change to my story and eliminate the card in the first few pages, which would allow me to keep the card and stay scientifically correct, but altering the pages I already did, I can try to find proof of sighting of the bird in Greenland in order to justify my story or lastly I can change the animal completely and find something which would be scientifically correct and fit the story.
The issue with all of these solutions, they either take a lot of time (except the second one if I get quick responses from the emails I sent) or change the story and pages I've already done, which is not ideal. to change the species, ideally, we would change it to the Rock Ptarmigan, a cousin of the Willow Ptarmigan, it would have similar characteristics, but more importantly, it would live on Greenland for a portion of the year, allowing it to fit nicely into the story. The main issue with this is that the Rock Ptarmigan is currently in our Défis Nature collection, so we would have to create an entirely new card for it, something not usually done in the escape game.
As I finished writing this Honorine got back to me with some info regarding the Willow Ptarmigan, it doesn't go in Greenland but the Rock Ptarmigan does, and we do have a card for it, it was just hidden as it was a Swiss exclusive game, and didn't show up in the database I have access to. so we just need to expand the description as it was halved in order to fit some German text at the same time, and I should be good to go!
All this change made me realise that there were maybe other animals that I didn't check properly, so I made a quick check on all my species using the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species as a reference to see where species lived. I was surprised to see that Steller's sea eagle only lived in a small area in the east of Russia, this means I have to change this bird, yet again changing the story and some puzzles. Thankfully the rest of my list is correct so it's not a complete disaster.
Card that is in the Swiss Défis Nature
I've decided to switch the Steller's sea eagle to the Snowy Owl, the main issue is that one of the games I had put in involved playing a game of defis nature with the bird cards, and the Steller would win 3 out of the 4 games, and that would signify its elimination in the game as well as signify the next page in the story, so I now have to either change that section completely or reword the game to make it that the owl now is chosen!
One of the items I forgot to mention in my previous logs was my interview with Unu Mondo, a few weeks ago I set up an interview with this organisation that uses its sailing boat to do scientific research in the Arctic region, its boat is a big inspiration for the story, as it has made many important voyages, and is also made in Ireland! I thought of it there as I have been trying to add references from that interview into the game. in the Excel I mentioned on Monday, there is a section where the player is trying to catch a rat, that is a story from that interview, but unfortunately, I'll probably have to scrap it due to the lack of context. but they did mention that the times they encountered illegal fishing were at night when the fishing boats had their radars off, so I'll be keeping this in mind. it helps with the quadrant as it means I'll have an excuse to tell the player to align it up with the stars, but also set a sort of mental correlation with nighttime and puzzles that use the quadrant
Some quick notes from the Unu Modo interview
Some quick notes from the Unu Modo interview
They find them at night mainly (bad ones)
Radar, they have radar
Super modern
Compas of revetement
Gives an angle
Calculates trajectory with current
Navigates with a cap
Three days getting rid of a rat
A lot of scientists get sick
Strings getting caught in the rudder
Port bay
A lot of cards – yams – sleep – read - super repetitive
Sees the boat, and stares at it for ages
Thursday:
Thursday:
This morning we have a meeting with the president of the company directorJean-Thierry, about FOV, we are going to present the game to him in order to keep him in the loop of our development, as well as make sure it's in the company's interest to continue investing money and time into the project.
but before the meeting, I had some more corrections to do. seeing as we had already bought the rights to the photos for the Escape cards, I couldn't use the Rock Ptarmigan for this reason and I was back to square one. that said there was an idea looming in my mind, using the Willow Ptarmigan at the start of the story.
Seeing as it is a bird that lives in Ireland and the UK I can easily make the bird come up at the start of the story, eliminating it from the game before we leave the emerald cost. with that in mind, I made my third, and hopefully last draft when it comes to the animal and card placement:
The meeting went well, I took some notes as if it was a playtest to see how they interacted with the game and its elements, but what is most important is that everyone who played laughed and had fun with it. Seeing as it had made a good impression, I was optimistic, and although the project feedback was mostly positive, some changes still need to be made, especially to bringing the cost of production down, and other minor details we will probably overlook due to design reasons. I learnt that although the feedback of superiors in the company is important, it's also important to note that they don't necessarily have a game design background, but they are the people who control whether a project goes ahead. the golden line is to test their feedback, if it works then great, if it doesn't then at least you can say you tested it.
I finally finished fixing the issues with my booklet, the story is now patched up and the page transitions have been noted. The last step is updating my InDesign document to make sure it makes sense and so I can start playtesting straight after finishing. this has been a massive learning curve, but a good challenge, I'm glad it happened in some ways as it made me re-organise my work in a more convenient and more efficient manner.
tweet I made cause of how much of a headache this was
Friday:
Friday:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
my mood basically,
I thought I was 100% done, but I wasn't, I have to continue the story, and I clearly don't have enough pages, so today the main goal was reducing the number of required pages, by either merging a few pages or taking away some. It's quite a lot of work but it's worth it. now that I have fully caught up in the excels I'm powering through the new bits. I've decided to finish the main Excel, aka the Excel that states what page is what, before continuing with making mini-games or the InDesign, as once everything is down and confirmed, I won't need to worry about what goes where, instead ill be able to focus on how we get from page to page, developing the narrative design and mini games in order to tell a coherent story.
hours worked: 35
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