Personal aims and objectives
Start with the Gameplay
As a former art history and social sciences student, I was used to showing everything in words and referring to pictures in my past many years. After a year’s work in games, I realised I have also brought these into the flow of games design. Except for widely using on-screen texts or voice-over in game-ongoing, it is usual for me to bring up an initial game idea from a narrative story or a visual scene, but not the logic of gameplay – which should be the core thing for a game. So, in my final major project, I would like to challenge myself and try to understand game design better, by using more designing languages rather than human words during the whole game and making a start with the gameplay.
In addition, I had a fairly weak background in making visual art when I first joined this MA programme last year. During the past terms, I kept collaborating with those who were skilled in art style direction and art resource making. By making this game completely by myself, I would also like to see my progress in visual design for games in the screen part of my game.
A Game Relying on Tactile
By making a game relying mostly on touching, I was trying to explore the possibilities of interaction relying on senses other than visual and auditory, as I believe every sense can be mobilised to be a part of a gaming experience, but, due to hardware limitations, sight and hearing are the undisputed mainstream in most games.
Among the other senses people have, the first one I tried was olfactory, which was once submitted as my proposal for applying for this MA programme before. But when prototyping it, I realised except for technical difficulties, there are two things that prevent olfactory becoming the core gameplay of a game: 1. Olfactory bases on materials and therefore can hardly provide a precise symbolic meaning of specific items or events, e.g., a smell of metal can refer to not only a sword but also a gear. Thus, it will be extremely hard to let the players know how they should react after receiving an olfactory signal. Touching a sharp item can exactly make the players feel dangerous, but a terrible smell may only make them feel disgusting and uncertain. 2. Olfactory relies more on common sense, which, according to my framework of the thesis, is inadvisable unless in a specific game type. Gustatory was briefly considered as well after that, only to find it, first of all, contained too many practical issues, such as allergy and food safety, whereupon tactile sense was finally chosen.
The Idea of “Jugend”
The narrative of the game regards my own experience with a combination with Hegel’s discussion towards people living through their time of youth. According to Hegel and Lukacs, ” ‘The subjectivity of the substantive content of such an ideal implies not only an opposition to the world as it is, but also the urge to do away with this opposition by realizing the ideal. ‘… The transition of the youth from his ideal life into civil society involves a painful process of adaptation punctuated by crises. ‘…In this morbid mood a man Is reluctant to surrender his subjectivity, he is unable to overcome his antipathy for reality and so finds himself in a state of relative impotence which can easily turn into true impotence. Therefore, if a man wishes to survive, he must acknowledge that the world is independent and essentially complete…’ ” … And for me and maybe other people like me, the ideal is various and some even opposite to each other, which may cause an increase of the level of feeling pain. In the game, I would like to embed a story in which a young woman tried to split her soul into several pieces and install them into the bodies of robots so that she can realise all of her ideals separately and doesn’t need to face the real world by herself.
However, the main aim of adding storytelling is for providing a creepy and mysterious atmosphere, but not for the players to explore and fully realise what story is there really happened – or to say, I hope they can’t figure all the storytelling out, as otherwise, the mysterious feeling may disappear.
Critical Reflection
Overall Reflection
The first thing I would like to discuss is, there is an obvious difference in the sensitivities of touching among different players. Some could tell the most detailed differences I made in the touching box, while others may confuse a resin pyramid with a broken acrylic sheet. The difference in bodily forms of different players, which influences the smoothness of putting hands in and moving around, further increases the diversity of situations while the players face the game. It can be concluded that it’s very hard to make a tactile game that perfectly meets all the players’ situations in one single mode, just like a rock-climbing game using VR may not be friendly to very short people. A way for solution may be applied by using as real physical materials as possible (e.g., real glass, real concrete wall) and as close to the real size as possible to reappear the scene in the digital part if this is the case.
In addition, limited by habits, laziness, or hate of the unknown, a few of the players may tend not to put their hand in a touching box and explore by tactile even though they totally received guidance and know what it is for, not to say those who won’t read the tutorial at the beginning. Removing the digital part of the operation and using physical links entirely would solve this issue.
It is impossible for this type of game to be widely used before the sense of touch can be displayed in a fixed machine like a visual display. However, at this stage, this game may provide a little idea for institutions that provide education or entertainment to the visually impaired.
The Developing Process
Due to the long-required time of 3D printing as well as the other physical stuff making, it is difficult to continuously do full playtests and apply rapid adjusting for another playtest in a short time like developing digital games. Although I tried my best to split the whole playtest by applying individual tactile experiments and digital part playtests during the early stage of the developing process, there were still a large number of issues that popped up in the first whole playtest, and made me in a such hurry for adjusting every possible thing during the last few days.
However, I can still feel my project management is better than the former terms. The final version of both the exhibition and the submission version doesn’t have as many bugs as before, and the gameplay process shows in a smoothie way as well.
Reflection on Details
1. After adjusting the shape of the collectable items and adding graffiti on Nov 30th, there was no time left for me to apply another playtesting. Though according to the former playtest, these changes should work, at least won’t turn anything bad, it could be better if a final playtest had been applied.
2. I should have found materials with more obvious differences in tactile for all the content used in the touching box. Not only the degree of roughness but also things like specific heat capacity. In the beginning, a playground board made of laser-grade plywood to simulate the walls and the floor was also considered, which showed a significant difference with PLA in comparison with acrylic sheet, but in worrying about it might hurt the players if there is any splinter, and also, on the other hand, a playground made by wood may not be harmony with the visual part showing on the screen as the latter one contains a sense of technology.
3. About the size of the touching box: the making way of 3D printing limited the size of the whole box. Most of the testers reported they won’t realise the existence of those very detailed items in the box as they were too small. Things might get more flexible if another technology with proper materials was chosen.
4. For the tutorial and onboarding to lead the players to put their hands in the touching box and press the button for locating their position, the final solution chosen was a tip with “hand in” text plus an arrow stuck on the box correspondingly outside the position of the button. However, it might be more clear to change the text “hand in” to “button this way”. A more ingenious solution might be: redesigning the shape of the box, exposing the button outside the box, and linking it with a pathway leading to the inside of it.
5. I heard there is a kind of black paint that can completely avoid the diffuse reflection of light. If the inside of the box is painted with this, the curtain may not be so important.
6. In the digital part of the game, most of the bugs and issues were solved except for the problem with the collider of the following camera. I noticed several times the players were influenced or even confused a bit when they try to walk very close to a horizontal wall near the lower side as they can not see the wall anymore but were still warded off by it. Luckily, it’s not an essential problem and won’t influence the whole process of the game very much. Another thing that might need to fix is the animation control regarding the players’ movement. The players’ character will keep the walking or running animation while moving towards a wall. That influences nothing under lights, but while in total darkness, the players may be misled by that and think the character is still moving. In addition, the camera will shake heavily if the players go upstairs and at the same time press Shift to speed up, which should also be modified.
7. Sometimes the button will spring up crookedly after being pressed as it was only equipped with one spring. The keystroke is fairly long as well which makes the feeling of pressing the button not a hundred per cent silky. If I were to make a similar game in the future, buying some button keycaps especially prepared for self-make installations should be considered to optimize this experience.
8. More sound effects should have been applied for a stronger feedback interaction. In the current final version, the player won’t hear the voice-over anymore after they pick up each soul piece, but negative feedback might call less attention than positive one. A clear and short proper sound may be applied after successfully collecting the items, so do the time after the players win or lose the game.
Unrealised Ideas and Further Possibilities
1. The hardness of the game can be increased by adding a count: the self-role character’s power/electricity. The robot will gradually lose power while walking and collecting items, and the players will lose the game if their power is used up. This can be added to the main menu for the players to choose between. A time counter may also be added to give the players an efficiency score on a rank board in case some players (like me as a player) would like to compare with each other.
2. If more interactable factors can be added into the box and send more signals than one single button can do to realise a more linked experience, such as using a turning steer to open a door, some weak electricity to bring the players some prickling sensation in the dangerous area, or making the digital-part robot say “don’t touch me” while the players really touching them in the touching box, the whole playing experience should be more solid.
The sensitivity of the players towards movement listed in my thesis may also be applied in the aspect of tactile. In that case, something movable like a moving wall continuously following the players in some specific area, narrowing down their living spaces to let them nervous and have to find their way out urgently, may be a good way to bring some excitement. It should be interesting if the robots inside the touching box are moving by themselves as well. All of these can be made with Arduino.
3. Considering it’s still a game on-desk, the size of the touching box was made in the range to be suitable to place on a desk. In this case, even though I realised my original plan on the size (30cmx20cmx20cm), it may still be difficult for the players to recognize the very tiny items like the crying robots. If there’s enough time, budget and tools, and I were making a touching game again, I may like to try making a VR game with a 1:1 touching space and the players will have to put themselves in rather than just a hand.
4. Thinking that this may be more suitable for people with visual impairments than ordinary games, it should be great to improve the sound feedback system in the later stage and have some playtesters proceed with an eye-closed test to see if they can also pass the level. Although my original intention is not to design games specifically for the visually impaired group but to explore the possibility of applying tactile in games design, it is also a gratifying bonus for me if it can provide some gaming interest to people with difficulties.