Week 7

This week I presented my tool for the ESCAPE to the Dev Team, they thought it was intuitive but had a few issues with the physical design, as it may pose issues for when we want to print it, but that is an issue I can't solve until we get a report back from the factory. the good part is that the main area of concern on the tool is not necessary for the puzzles or game, so if changes need to be made to it then it can, it will just affect the manipulation of the piece, which was more a quality of life feature.

seeing as Igor was working away over the weekend and last week, I never got to present my prototypes to him, so I made some illustrator files with the plans for an example puzzle and the tool, along with instructions on how to use it and some design process.  the instructions have yet to be finalized as of writing this (Tuesday) as I want them to be independent of the test I did last week, currently, all adults I have tested the most recent version on, have been able to understand and use the tool correctly, executing the mechanic in less than 2 minutes of getting their hands on it, without any help or instructions. Now I would like the same results for the tool instructions, where I can give the player the instructions, they read it, and they can explain with full understanding how the tool works, even if they have never seen it, this would mean that both the instructions and the tool are extremely easy to understand and use, and therefore hopefully the children that will play the game will be able to remember and use the tool over a number of days without adult help, this will create a more satisfying gaming experience,  rather than a frustrating one. our objective is to create something memorable and fun, if it's too complicated to understand, the player will remember the instruction booklet and confusion more than the game itself.

A big help over this week and last was the resources from the Prototyping module that my classmates are doing right now, I've been reading the resources and slides posted by the lecturer, and they have been extremely useful, especially the resource linked How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days, Im not much of an academic reader but the methods in this article proved extremely useful when deciding the mechanics for the tool, it made me realise that the first idea was probably not the best, and to keep changing things until the mechanic felt right, the testing method and the way I'm testing the instructions tho is my own method and theory on how to design intuitive systems.

with the data that I'm getting from the unity project on Faites Vos Oeufs

 I  noticed something a tad bit worrieng, the data is showing that a lot of times, players get between 0-3 points,  which is extremely low, if a player ends with this many points they may feel frustrated or cheated. currently the cart looks like this 

as you can see a big spike at 0-3 points, ideally this would follow a parobola-shaped curve, with a flat top like this one (which is also a heart on a radial chart so it can't be wrong)

I'm going to theorise some methods on how to balance the game so that it doesn't affect the process of the game but allows the players to get points before the game is finished.

after talking with Igor, we theorised a bit about how to lower the occurrence of finishing a game with 0 points, but nothing concrete yet.

back to the ESCAPE, I'm going to make a prototype for the puzzle, using the tool I developed, we will refine this prototype until we are both happy with the options it gives us and then we will use it in the final game!

the objective of the puzzle protos is that they feel natural, they are meant to represent a star map, and therefore not obviously be a puzzle, this will allow us to make the game look good, but also add challenge, as if the star map was obviously meant to be used with the tool then the player could easily brute force the puzzle and find a range of solutions that may or may not be correct, we want the player to only try the tool on the puzzle once they get the correct hints and clues.

working on inDesign in order to make the star map scale usable if we need to print them out.

I also made a prototype for a stand for another project some of the team Is working on, I had tested the project earlier in the week and had noted some flaws, they asked me to make a cardholder as they needed an intuitive design that was also within the budget. you see, a big restriction is Bioviva is not just the budget, but also the materials, their games contain no plastic, meaning that any conventional card holders or game pieces are out of the question. I ended up making a lightweight design that was easy to set up and used very little material, so far they are happy with this prototype, but it also inspired me for Faites Vos Oeufs.

In Faites Vos Oeufs, we need a cardholder of sorts, except this will be holding tiles and tokens which will need to be accessible. I took inspiration for the cardholder from the prototype I had made for the other project and started to work on a tile/token holder for Faites Vos Oeufs. 

due to budget, we couldn't have 3D wooden tokens, so we decided to pour our effort into the tile/token holder, the issue is that the box is relatively small, and if we make the game too complicated to set up then we are asking the player to do too much setup for the length of the game, it's a balancing act.

It's Friday as I'm writing this

writing this paragraph,  Igor has had a suggestion for balancing Faites Vos Oeufs, so I implemented his changes into the unity simulation,  I ran numbers with a control group, I don't expect these changes to affect the winners of the game, but I do believe it will boost players scores and hopefully solve the issue I mentioned above. but I plan on running many tests with different variables in order to make a decision on what would be the best way to solve this issue.

I'm currently reading through some chapters of "Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell in order to get a better understanding of the types of players that would play a game like Faites Vos Oeufs, so far I've noticed that chances are, with the flow and mechanics of the game, the player is encouraged to be social and interact, meaning hopefully players won't play the game in an unsocial way.

Back to the ESCAPE, I've decided to take some inspiration from the Borderlands 2 series for the story in Project Cold, not in the sense of kill kill kill and insanity of the world, but in the way, the start of Borderlands 2 begins, where vault hunters are falsely given hope and recruited to hunt for the vault, but instead get betrayed. this may seem extreme for a kid's game, but it's the betrayal part I will be focusing on, where the fishermen in the story are betrayed by their bosses and told lies until it's too late. the inspiration is being transformed and probably not going to be mentioned in the actual story, but I feel it's important to write out all aspects of the world in order to help give it life, it will help when I need to give a brief of the illustrations to artists in November if there is no context to the characters or the world then it will seem dull and motionless, we want the world to feel alive, thriving and moving.  I'm also designing the character's outlines, making sure that their shapes represent their emotions and behaviours, referencing this site and previous lecture notes in order to have a guideline.