Week 18

Monday:

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!! 

Tuesday:

Today we started back to work, i was off for a week and a bit, taking the week of Christmas off. Today I will be gathering the feedback I can from the booklets I sent out for testing, I can't get all of them due to the fact that many people are still on holiday.

I read over two of the booklets and made some quality adjustments to the game (readability and flow of some of the pages) seeing as I have only 3 weeks left of my internship, I am making sure that I make no major changes unless it is very necessary. I also have to wait for Igor to return with the illustrations, so that I may start testing with them finally. I made changes to the following page last week and I just made sure the style was consistent throughout the page: 

also i noticed that when the players drew the symbols above, they weren't always exactly or similar to the ones in the booklet, essentially they were too detailed for a child to draw effectively. so I went into Photoshop and simplified them to make them more readable and easier to re-create. I changed the feuille d'inquête respectively:

With only three weeks left, it is important to get the finer details over and done with before it's sent to the printer.

Wednesday:

Today I made more changes to the booklet, correcting some mistakes that cropped up due to my previous changes, such as the hints. I also fixed page three where it had some graphics from the dinosaur escape, and I made temporary graphics of the quadrant to replace them.

I printed V10 of the booklet and gave it to Andrea, the graphist who is working on the booklet, she is going to play through it today and give some feedback, but more importantly, she is going to start working on the final elements of the booklet. this will greatly improve the quality of the prototypes before printing, after this step, all we have to do is correct the text and implement the Illustrations

This was her first time testing the booklet, but she was the first tester of the quadrant when I was doing my testing during week 6, so I was interested in seeing whether she would remember the basic mechanics of it. And with no surprise, she didn't hesitate in the use of the quadrant, she just got a bit stuck on the numbers for the quadrant, which was intentional so it went well. she did come back to me on page 13, a puzzle which had been deemed hard to read in the past, but after many reiterations, it stopped causing issues. I was a bit worried about what she was going to say, but thankfully it wasn't about the game itself, but rather about the wording at the end of the page, it wasn't clear how to count the boats to get the next page number. so I changed it and improved it.

I did a quick check making sure that all the pages could be read in the current stage, even if a player was colourblind, so using a colourblind viewer I put in my booklet and sieved through each page, thankfully everything seemed to be clear enough and I didn't see any immediate issues.

Thursday:

Today I'm sending the most recent version of my booklet to Andrea so that she may start updating and replacing the graphics, mainly changing elements such as the arrows and the cards in the game so that they are consistent and pleasing to look at.

I also am going to print a playable version of the catacombs prototype so that we may start testing it.

I managed to get a test in by the end of the day, there is some potential, but the game is currently very repetitive and easy, so I need to change something that makes that adds to the core mechanics that add variety/challenge.

Friday:

Today I refined my prototype for the catacombs, concentrating on the core mechanics and game loop. i made sure the player had a goal, obstacles, and could win or lose. I tested the game a few times, working through each problem I had. I had some issues where the game was too easy and got rid of the fun, and ended on something that is harder the more players there are, but once players start getting eliminated, then it gets easier, the difficulty scales with the player count, which I found rather cool.