Half of our team was off for Thanksgiving break, but half stayed on to work on more art and fix some bugs. Here is some of the new screens we created for the background.
For Softs, we tried to initally get each visiting instructor to have their own iPad, but found that, because of the lack of tutorial, this made the professors struggle greatly. The social elements of the game allowed for them to coach one another on what to do, so if one understood the game, they could easily direct the rest on how to play. We found much greater success if the instructors shared an iPad, just like the ideal setup for the classroom. This made giving the tutorial much easier and they had more fun playing. Overall, the biggest issues were some UI confusion (especially with the dragging and holding the trash over certain areas), the lack of an interactive tutorial, and not understanding how they were progressing (not understanding how they gained or reduced pollution).
In light of this, we finished up outlining how our interactive tutorial would flow and began implementing it. We also worked on start and end screens for the experience as well as iterating on our teacher guide. On Thursday, we tested at the YMCA in Homewood to surprising success. The students got really into the experience even though there was only 1 to an iPad, which is not our ideal setup. We saw them socializing and shouting, but we also witnessed confusion with the hold over mechanic, further cementing the dire need for an interactive tutorial that can teach the students how to properly interact. Over the weekend, we will finish the tutorial, just in time for Festival and some more playtests.