This week the team made three prototypes and have iterated at least once before showing them to client on Thursday. From there the team decide to purse the route of puzzle-centered adventure game. 

Tech side programmer have used Amazon developer console to made a prototype with audio. Audio side we have experimented adding sound effect to Alexa. We all feel that voice largely boosts the experience.

Last week our client suggest us to design while prototyping. We have made a “Grow up a Sim – Branching story” demo, “Spice market adventure – branching story” demo and “The SIMS World Adventure – text adventure” demo. 

Demo 1: Grow up a Sim

You help a university student to make choices.

Demo 2: Spice Market Adventure

A spell caster puts spell on you and you need to travel to a spice market to find an alchemist. Alexa is your Simlish translator and companion. The demo is made with Amazon Blueprints with sound effects.

Demo 3: Text Adventure

Game Flow

Our client feel all three ideas have potential. We decide to take the route of text adventure game.

Here’s what we think:

1. This is a direction that we all feel very excited about and would love to work on!
2. Compared to branching stories, puzzle-centered games can better utilize our team’s strength, which is more at game design than story writing.
3. We agree that Idea 3 could be difficult in terms of defining the space. Luckily we have good examples that we can learn from, such as Escape the Room. We will also playtest and iterate the experience to find the subtle balance among player imagination, player memory and space complexity. It’s indeed a challenge but we are willing to take because if we iterate enough and do it well, the game can be really fun!
4. We plan to have a list of commands of what a player can do(e.g. look at, use ..) and unfold it to player little by little as game progress.
5. We plan to use demo 3 as the starting point, and redesign the puzzles and the story to make the game fits in better at The Sims world.

We are now entering the development stage. By Wednesday of week 7 we will have a complete story script. By Tuesday of week 8 we will have a playable version on Alexa.

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