Week four update:
This week we have focused on hitting our next milestone for the client meeting on Tuesday, Feb 20th. We have been full steam ahead, working on three more puzzle designs to begin playtesting, and to show to our client.
On Friday, Feb, 16th, we had our quarters walkarounds, introducing the faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center to what we’re doing, and how we’ve chosen to approach our project challenge so far. For quarters, we aimed to produce a simple prototype, building off of the last one in order to show how the five verbs we have so far would be applied in game. For Level 2 verbs, we have Move, Rotate, Wait, Destroy – which are commands applied directly to the object in game. The one Level 3 verb we are working with right now, is Loop, which can be applied to multiple Level 2 commands.
In addition to this, we discussed potential for increased complexity in our puzzles, layering the idea of moving forward from puzzles requiring the player’s movement from point A to point B. Our most recent idea on this has been the idea of creating Balls and Probes (balls and goals). These provide another puzzle system that now asks the player to become more engaged in the system – manipulating objects for a different goal rather than personal transportation.
Moving forward, we intend to refine the puzzle in prototype 3, and implement at least two more puzzles of lesser difficulty to illustrate how the game’s progression would work. To further this, we plan to playtest our puzzles – specifically with the demographic in mind, to fine tune our puzzles, and to see if our game is actually playable by non-programming teenagers.
To round out the week, we also have a variety of questions we’ll be asking ourselves;
- Are we emphasizing the educational aspect, or are we emphasizing the inspirational/fun aspect of our game?
- Is it possible to schedule client meetings on a weekly basis, instead of bi-weekly to shrink the feedback loop?
- Finally, how does our game fit in the overall larger framework that E-Line is working on?