Week 6

this week I finished the unity project and focused on the ESCAPE, I made several prototypes and tested with people for the tool.

for testing I decided it would be best if the tool was easy to use, to the point where an adult shouldn't need instructions to figure it out, after around 7 iterations I started getting successful tests where a player was never exposed to the game could pick up and use the tool without any help or indication, they just saw the puzzle, the tool and the hints for the answers, which did not use words, only symbols that were indicated on the tool. in the end, it took on average a minute for a player to pick up the tool and understand it.

I decided on this approach as the tool will be used by a kid, and with the help of an adult if needed, designing the tool around intuition means that the child, who will want to get things done quickly and on their own, will need to pick it up and immediately make correlations, of course, that is a perfect world, but the ways its designed now allows a player to easily link the symbols on the tool to the ones on the puzzle, each symbol is unique and is easy to see, for example, the symbols that the player will use as reference points are rounded and coloured red and yellow, meanwhile, the points that will reveal answers are in black and white and are sharp. the one exception is a symbol that is used for both answers and reference points, this symbol is rounded, but has sharp points in it, and is coloured black and white. my next step will be doing the same thing but with the instructions, where I will refine the instructions until a player can pick up the tool and explain easily without fault how its used without using it, again designing for inactivity, the fun will come it the puzzles that the tool will be used for.

I also fixed major bugs in the Unity project that allowed me to get more accurate tests and results. we found out that if the player was super antisocial, the player would win 50% of the time, no matter the player count, eg if there where 6 players playing 10 games, the antisocial player would win 5 times while some other players would never win, we confirmed this with an IRL test of the game, where without telling the others I played antisocially. I ended the game with 80 points, while second place had 43, this was a clear issue, but I don't know if it is worth fixing, as the only ways we have thought of include sacrificing some key elements, which may affect the fun, we have to remember that the game is targeted towards kids and families, will people actually find this exploit?