Gameplay: This is mainly a maze game with hiding and collecting as the main factor. The innovative idea is the using of a touching box as an additional device to invoke the players tactile. In the maze there are less light and even exists pure dark area, which ask the players to touch the terrain in the touching box and figure out the way accordingly.
Scene-building: Linked with storytelling, the whole scene was set as in a lab, in which glass tanks with green gas and crying robots are applied as barriers and ghost-like young women set in turning trasparent pyramids are applied as collectable items. In considering too much contents may cause mixed up while the players touching inside the box, the background scene didn’t enrich with items too much, only necessary items and decorations with certain functions were added into the scene.
Storytelling: as the main purpose of applying storytelling is to provide a background atmosphere for the scene, there is less direct storytelling during the game. Some information was added in secret, such as morse code pretending to be decorations, graffiti that don’t know what they are representing, vague voice-over speaking in 5 different languages, and an unseeable “administrator”, trying to bring a mysterious feeling that there might be something but it’s hard to tell.
Combining with the Framework from the Thesis
1. To limit the amount of controlling keys. A complex controlling system may enrich the possibility of operation, but at the same time, it rises the learning cost. A fair simple way to gain a positive result at least expense is to use mouse clicking as the only possibility of input, which decreases the embarrassment of presenting keyboard keys on the screen.
2. To respect the tradition of controlling keys if there are any, e.g., space always refers to jump, or at least, be thoughtful if it is necessary to create a new controlling system. It is fair that a game as a piece of creative work faces the problem that there are no suitable categories to place it in, as the label of the game always comes after a certain kind of game happens. In this situation, it might be helpful to consider the arrangement tradition of operations in the games that have similar visual structures which is the players’ perspective.
3. To apply some hints at the very beginning of the game, to let the players realise at least if the game is operated by a mouse or by a keyboard.
4. To leave the players some time to explore by themselves after launching into the game, but leave an obvious enough hint, e.g., guiding lighting, to give the players some initial aims. Don’t combine the exploration requirement on the operation and on maps together.
5. According to Everaert-Desmedt (2011), upon being interpreted, the representamen has the ability to trigger an interpretant, which in turn becomes a representamen by triggering another interpretant referring to the same object as the first representamen and thereby allowing the first one to refer to the object. Hence it is crucial for the designers to ensure their signs, during the progress from an object to the signifier, can be interpreted by the players in the similar way they expect. Among the three types of signifiers, icons and indexes are more commonly used, as symbols are too easy to be influenced by cultural differences and thus the same interpretation is less possible to lead to compared with the other two.
6. If it is a game using keyboards with a complex or rarely seen arrangement on operation, it is better to show some obvious connections during onboarding at the earlier stage. Probably for ensuring a proper immersive experience, certain kinds of games do exist, avoiding directly telling the players anything and leaving it for the players to explore totally by themselves with controlling keyboards. As a result, the players sometimes will have to try keys randomly or even seek help on players’ forums if they fail to figure out the right operation keys with their previous experience.
7. As mentioned above, the basic style of the game is also an important referring condition. To be adept at combining onboarding with style by using different onboarding approaches and types of signs, the game will become more harmonious.
My framework in the final thesis
*Explanation*
Icons: showing stuff in a similar way somehow (e.g., a similar shape shows on a road sign for falling rocks) Indexes: showing stuff with associating (e.g., smoke is a sign of fire) Symbols: showing stuff by convention (e.g., a 45-degree cross line means “no”)
At the very beginning, the game I planned to make is a classic platform adventure game, which makes using completely no voice-over and no on-screen text possible. But the game that I finally made can be regarded as a totally new category of game. And thus there is less former experience from the players that can be called, especially since there is an additional device with covering that doesn’t let them look inside. The only way to let the players know how to play is either to add some human language for clear guidance. However, my framework is still very helpful in making the whole onboarding experience as smooth, simple and solid as possible. Here’s how I try to apply the whole onboarding in combination with my framework:
1. In the main menu, the guidance only shows up after the players try to press any button or key down to let them clearly know how to start, giving the players some space for exploring by themselves but don’t let them confused for too long a time. As the existence of the touching box is obvious enough, there’s no additional hint to lead the players. (Framework-3, Framework-4)
2. After getting into the playground scene, the player’s character will drop down from the air after another pressing on the button, to provide a visual movement to make the players notice it more. (Framework-5, in combination with my discussion in the thesis “…whereas dynamic visual is not only eye-catching but also easier to be an icon as a sign, as the crucial point for an icon is similarity, thus possibility is provided for simulating an action that the players can do.”)
3. The use of the touching box and the button is described by text to try to make it clear. Also, the usable keyboard keys are shown in text as well, in avoiding the players focusing completely on the touching box and don’t realise they need to use the keyboard. A tradition using of keys is applied according to most role-playing games. (Framework-2, Framework-6)
4. There is no text tutorial on the mission part, but all players can realise what they should do. That was achieved by applying the principles of using “icons”.
both the collectable items and the icon in the mission panel look triangle and transparent blue
5. After collecting the first soul piece, the self-exploring time of the map is given to the players without any disturbance. Image with little light is applied to attract the players to move forward. And an only pathway of getting into the whole map is applied to lead the players to get used to touch and to walk into darkness. (Framework-4)
6. The whole tutorial texts are combined with storytelling finely with proper UI panels, to show a feeling that there’s an administrator texting the players with things like Google glasses to help them launch into the lab, for providing a harmonious experience. (Framework-7)
Processing and Management
For project management, tasks were planned and divided after prototyping and first testing according to their categories to make the multithreaded work clearer.
A form was built to divide the tasks and count the left time easier
I didn’t make an everyday timetable, because according to my own habits, I will always try to do something other than the arrangement on the timetable.
Tools Used
Unity – URP: for building the scene and making the digital part of the game.
Blender: for building models and making poses.
Adobe Illustrator: for making UI panels as well as the necessary documents for laser cutting.
Procreate and Adobe Photoshop: for drawing and adjusting 2D graffiti on the glass.
Rode NT1, Roland A-49, FL Studio and Adobe Audition: for making the background sound and the voice-over.
Ultimaker 3, Ultimaker S5, Form 3, Form 3L, Cura and Preform: for 3D printing in different materials and sizes.
Trotec Speedy 360: for laser cutting on acrylic sheets.
Loctite 420 glue, fretsaw, electric drill, screw, sandpaper, etc.: for combining and installing all the components.
The idea of a double-layer puppet box has been raised, in which the players put their hand inside a box, hold a controller, move it through the pathway, and touch the surroundings to recognize things in the box to help find targets and hide from dangers, and at the same time see the puppet moving in the scene on a digital monitor. The lower layer has nothing inside, just to bring a feeling for the players that they are really controlling a puppet there.
The draft of the physical box of this idea
Two problems: 1. Technically, it is hard and time-consuming to make the very fine linked location between the digital and physical parts. 2. It may not be easy for the players to control and touch the surroundings at the same time.
After discussion with tutors and colleagues, a new possibility has been brought out: leave only the terrain in the physical box, the player will need to touch inside to find their pathway for moving their digital character on the screen (still with a keyboard or a mouse). It can be made either for one player with two hands or for two players for collaboration.
16-17/10/2022
The prototype of the physical box is made by delivery box, screws as thorns and foam clay as walls
The placement of the collections takes into account the player’s movement line. The first one is set very near the starting point, with the purpose of providing a tutorial. The second one is placed on the only way to go deep into the maze, letting the players get familiar with the game. The third one is in the middle of nothing but the players can see the little light from it after they get the second one from far. The fourth one and the fifth one are arranged next to a wall so the players can locate them, but both of them are placed in narrow or remote locations with thorns causing bleeding nearby, to provide some difficulties as a higher level.
The game is mostly in darkness, but yellow and red lights on-screen were used to notice the players in the prototype
17/10/2022 – Playtest 1 – Prototype playtesting
With 5 targets in total, for all of the players, the number of targets they finally found respectively are 1, 5, 5, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, which meant half of the players finished the game, and most of the rest could at least find over half of the targets before giving up. This preliminarily demonstrated that the gameplay was effective. Except this, many notable situations and feedback appeared during the first playtesting:
1. Some players mentioned it brought them a scary feeling both when facing the darkness on screen and putting their hands into a box full of unknown stuff. (This might be important when considering the art style of the game later.)
2. Different players reacted differently facing the dark box. Player A put his/her hand far inside the box and touched items with all the fingers in all directions and tried to remember the terrain before starting the game on the screen side. Player B jumped between walls with his/her hand. Player C moved his/her hand along with moving the character by keyboard at the beginning (which met my design aim), but soon stopped moving the hand anymore and enjoyed trying to find the pathway in darkness purely with the keyboard (of course he/she failed). These didn’t bring me too much inspiration on how to improve my game, but it is still helpful to see how the players invoke an uncommonly-used sense differently while playing.
3. It had been hard for me to balance the largeness of the hole from which the players put their hands inside the box. I tried to make it as large as possible with the precondition that the players couldn’t see the content inside. But still, some players reported that the hole was not big enough and as a result, they might not tend to explore several parts that were not easy to reach for them. As a solution, a curtain at the front to cover a more giant hole may be very useful.
4. For the prototype, I would have to hold the players’ hands inside the box and lead them to find the starting point. A suggestion was raised by David that for the final version, a button could be used for starting or resetting the game by the players themselves.
5. The players were trying to locate themselves with distance according to their standing point, the walls and the lights, which means it is better to be equal-proportion simulating in the further version.
6. A player with his/her hand walking against the floor at all times thought the screws were a little gate rather than thorns. The thorns should be made shorter in the further version.
7. Players reported it was hard to realise the one hiding in the lower right angle as the space is too narrow.
8. A player thought the foam clay was the thorns I said. Several others reported the walls and the floor looked the same on-screen but touched with a huge difference in the box. In considering the individual variety in tactile, The differences in materials between items should be enhanced, and at the same time, the connection between the tactile feeling and the visual feeling should be noticed.
9. Players showed more likely to mix up two pathways horizontally parallel (like the letter “E”) rather than vertically parallel (like a lying “E”). (Probably because they have five fingers in a vertical way.) A wall setting horizontally should be made shorter in solving this.
10. The players could hardly find where they were as long as they got lost. A location reset or restart button should be very useful.
11. Plenty of players reported that although it was cool, it might confuse them if they began from a totally dark screen.
12. More players tended not to put their hands far inside the dark box till the bottom but to regard a long thwartwise wall inside as the end of the map. I tried to find the reason, and finally realised it was about the size and shape of the box. If it’s hard for their hands to reach a place, they won’t try to make it but just ignoring subconsciously. Besides, players’ position sitting in front of the desk, their pose, the length of their arms, the size of their hands and fingers, and if they are wearing thick clothes with long sleeves, were all influencing factors of how smoothly they explored the contents inside the box.
21/10/2022
Though telling a story is not my purpose, it is important to determine what kind of theme should be set for the whole game and to strengthen the atmosphere according to the feelings brought to the player by the gameplay. With this thought, after the gameplay was settled, I was stuck for a few days on what background narratives I should make it to. As that would influence how the scene would be like and what the exact each item is and I didn’t know how to go on without these.
This was finally resolved by writing down all the particularities of the game and brainstorming to list all the story settings that meet these particularities that I can rise up with. The scene of Lab was finally chosen as I recalled Xintong’s artwork seen before which can be a very good reference for my visual design, plus it can easily bring some creepy atmosphere which matches Playtest – feedback 1. It was soon combined with some of Hegel’s thoughts which I recently read. From now on the whole design plan has been built.
Xintong’s artwork showing on her Artstation website
24/10/2022 – Playtest 2 – Prototype Playtesting
Tried to let the players start from a very dim light rather than pure darkness this time, a new issue was raised after adjustment: some of the players felt confused, and thought what they could control was the light but not the robot, for the reason that before the robot walking out from the pure darkness, the light firstly would change as soon as the players pressing AWSD.
31/10/2022
A little touch experiment was applied, to see if smooth-printed PLA (the material which 3D printing is using) can be a wall or a surface of a water tank and if some fragments of PLA can be some broken glass. Testers were asked to close their eyes and were told it was something inside a lab.
A tester touching the smooth-printed PLA
Feedback is as follows:
For the smooth-printed PLA: testers reported cabinet doors, desks, floors, and non-metal-made equipment. While asking if it’s possible to be a water tank, only one said it may be; while asking if it can be a wall, all testers agree it’s possible, and more than one supplemented that the wall (if it is) brought up a sense of technology.
For the fragments of PLA: testers reported electronic components and broken wooden stuff or thorns. While asking if it can be some broken glass, non of them agree, as there wasn’t a cold feel and the arrangement was too regular, for the reason that the height difference between the different fragments was too small. The good thing was all of the testers could tell it was dangerous and at the same time, it won’t really hurt them.
As a response to the feedback, acrylic sheets were finally chosen to be added as a new material into the touching box, with laser cutting to adjust the sizes and shapes. For the fragments part, either trying acrylic or changing the setting from broken glass to thorns is a possible solution.
03/11/2022
The UI system was initially settled up, detailed visual design is still to be made. The structure of the UI system was planned according to the needs of feedback: 1. guiding and onboarding, 2. reminding the players to pick up the collectable items, and showing if the items are picked up, 3. reminding the players to get rid of dangers, and showing how many health they have, 4. both endings (winning and failing), 5. general operations (e.g. going back to the main menu, quitting).
05/11/2022
The position of puppets and gas tanks was planned according to the position of the collectable items as well as the area that is easiest to be seen for the players with a fixed camera angle. Besides, a piece of voice-over using five different languages was recorded with my own voice. “η ψυχή μου (my soul)… 其中一份 (one of them)… 今此処にある (is inside this now)… mein Ideal (my ideal)… is too much.” Although the content regards storytelling, the main aim of applying this is to help build the atmosphere, and the players are not expected to learn anything from it. As a result, it was adjusted to sound ethereal and vague. The volume is made varies depending on the distance between the players and the souls as well. The background sound also made for enhancing the atmosphere was finished in FL Studio.
Me trying to make background sound and voice-overs at home
08/11/2022
Two different shapes and angles of the hole for players to put their hands in, the right one was finally chosen
Tried several different shapes of the touching box and the final version was decided upon considering the records of the testers’ position and pose putting their hands in, as well as their moving trail and barriers inside the box.
The Advantages are as below: 1. A hole as large as possible at the lateral range guarantees the players’ space for moving; 2. A hole closing to the top rather than to the desk as well as a slope design makes the players put their hands inside the box more comfortably and thus lets them access all the contents easier; 3. the downward slope, as well as a curtain to be composed later, ensured the sight of the players is prevented, also a curtain placed inside the box should bring less possibility for some players to manually remove the shelter and see the content.
11/11/2022
It may take 11 days to print the whole box directly
Simplified the structure of the touching box and decreased the size of the box according to the estimated printing time provided by Cura. The box was divided into several pieces as well for making sure they are under the time duration limits from the 3D workshop.
Thought about making two levels with two touching boxes, but it will take a lot of time for 3D printing and the 3D workshop in the uni is often fully booked. This tempting idea was finally given up with keeping one of the ideas of the second level’s plan, which is a half-two-layer loft. This is also to better remind players of their exact position.
12/11/2022
The female model’s face was sculptured and adjusted for making it looks more Asian, as I myself am an Asian woman and part of this game is from my own experience. I hope this character in the story can look like me a bit.
The one I purchased v.s. the one I adjusted
For making the players realise the relationship between the robots in the gas tanks and the soul pieces in the pyramid, several robots and souls are divided into pairs with the same pose between each pair.
14/11/2022
The physically broken glass was made by Illustrator and laser cut
A sample was printed and cut to see how to install acrylic sheets. The outside board of the box was printed as well. A small experiment was applied to see if the players can smoothly put their hands in, feedbacks are as below:
People have a wide variety of sizes of hands, but the smallest hand can access the end of the box without too much struggling (if they are not wearing thick sleeves or decorations), and the biggest hand may sometimes touch the top of the box with their back of hands, but not essentially influencing the gameplay. There’s a huge improvement in comparison with the box in prototyping time. If there’s more time left, a box with a higher top might be better and this one can be changed.
Due to the limitations of existing 3D printing equipment, it’s difficult for the box to be larger, otherwise, it may be better to enlarge the size to 30cmx20cmx20cm.
See if the players can move easily through the hole
Got suggestions: 1. It may be good to consider cutting the further-installed curtain into strips for helping the players get better access. 2. In order to keep the box steady, it may be needed for the contents like acrylic sheets to be embedded in the bottom plate, which needs to be confirmed by professionals.
15/11/2022
1. As neither starting from total darkness nor starting from limb light can remove the possibility of confusion according to playtests 1 and 2, a new way has been tried by adding light but plus a very thick fog, and letting the players explore in the fog rather than in darkness. Will see if it’s effective in furthering players’ feedback.
2. Several forms were considered to prompt the player to control the object as a self-character at the beginning, including letting the character stand on a digital button and making the surroundings light up at the very beginning. This was finally settled according to my framework in thesis by the rule of “dynamic visual is not only eye-catching but also easier to be an icon as a sign to make the players realise this item is actable”. The beginning way was set as: when the players pressed down the button in the box, the player’s character jumped from the air onto the playground.
3. Considering the players during prototype playtest time tending to judge their position with the sight of the collectable items but sometimes mix different items up, I tried to sculpt some numbers on the collectable items only to find it didn’t look obvious enough nor a good visual effect. This was changed to an addition of some other reference like a puppet exposing outside.
These won’t show any significant difference after applying a shader
18/11/2022
1. The model of the puppet was repaired in Netfabb for 3D printing.
2. To make the players realise the difference between materials and notice the collectable items more, for the 6 pyramids, the material of elastic resin was tried with the machine Form 3L 3D Printer rather than the usual used Ultimaker 3 or Ultimaker S5. In addition, to prevent the players from thinking the top end of the pyramid is dangerous, I tried to change the pyramid’s models from sharp corners to rounded corners. It was imported into the game before printing to see if there was a huge difference.
3. In order to solve the steady issue mentioned on 14/11, it was confirmed it was not necessary to make a groove on the bottom plate to embed every single broken glass, and strong glue would be steady enough.
4. Realized that it may be necessary to make some adjustments to the scene in the game based on the 3D-printed product. For example, after printing, some extra lines (as shown in the picture) may affect the player’s judgment, this may can be made in the digital part as some electric wire.
The unexpected lines appearing on items
5. The first version of the shell with the inside playboard has been printed out. After checking, I realised due to some mistake in dividing out the model from Blender to Cura, the real thing is slightly higher than the model. In addition, the button was found to be too small than I imagined. A second version of the playboard and the button has been delivered for printing.
19/11/2022
1. When setting the starting operation, I encountered a conflict between the old and new input systems of Unity. After checking, both input systems were enabled at the same time.
2. The appearance of the UI system was initially designed with consideration of the style of cyberpunk.
3. The input detection for controlling the UI system and collecting objects was changed from GetKeyDown to GetKeyUp to give the players time to react and expect, reducing the feeling of items disappearing so fast.
21/11/2022
The acrylic sheets used as the glass of the toxic gas tank were pasted, and it was found that due to measurement, calculating and printing errors, the acrylic sheet was slightly higher than the 3D printed model. And it was difficult to redo it with my tight schedule. A small touch test was conducted and the player was asked if there was any awkwardness. Luckily, the answer was negative and it seems I don’t need to make any changes.
21/11/2022 – Playtest 3 – Digital Part Playtesting
The thick-fog version
1. A playtest with just the digital part was delivered on the fog version mentioned on 11/15 – 1, only to find the player can achieve all the targets without a touching box. This version of the game has been given up, but I realised it can be a good menu background with its good visual effects.
2. Adjusted the appearing position or logic of some UIs according to the player’s game progress, and auxiliary judgments were added to avoid UI overlap problems caused by unplanned operations by the players.
3. During the test, it was found that the camera position may be affected when the player moves in touching the wall, causing the camera to shake and other issues.
23/11/2022
According to the needs of covering the interior, not easy to be pushed away, and having a feeling that mixes the box’s appearance, a slightly thicker black matte fabric was purchased in the fabric store. The lower part was once planned to be cut after assembly so that the player’s hand can be free to move. It was soon abandoned as it did not look good.
24/11/2022
1. Different parts were installed together. Considering laser cut is not able to make a sharp top end, some “broken glass” is polished on 80-grit sandpaper to create the irregularity mentioned by the tester during the touch test.
Laser cutting can not provide a completely sharp end
2. The shader was adjusted, and the issue that there might be a shadow appearing behind the character’s head while passing the gas tanks was dismissed (though I don’t know why it is and why my adjustment works).
25/11/2022 – Playtest 4 – Whole Game Playtesting
1. In responding to 18/11/2022 – 4 regarding the extra printing lines exposed outside, none of the players realised they existed. No need to adjust.
2. Some players won’t follow the tutorial and directly began to try walking with WASD and jumping with Space, which won’t call the tutorial dismissing code and will keep the tutorial panel existing during the whole playing time.
3. It was still not clear enough what the touching box is doing for the players unless telling them directly it was exactly the physical terrain of the map in the digital part of the game. Players reported they were thinking there were some interactable items inside the box, and “while learning that it was a map, many things suddenly became clear”.
A player feeling confused about the tutorial and not sure where the button was
4. Some players thought there was more than one button in the box and begin to find the other ones after the tutorial.
5. Most of the players jumped and jumped during the whole gameplay, and may get stuck inside some colliders of the broken glass.
6. Although most of the players feel interested in the concept of calling tactile and begin to try after acknowledging it, there did exist players who didn’t feel easy to put their hands inside the box. Some of them used to putting their hands on the keyboard even if they knew there was terrain inside the box.
7. Most of the players didn’t realise the position they pressed the button was exactly the position their character started at.
8. One of the players thought the gas tanks were screens and there were only these screens existed and didn’t realise there were walls in the darkness in the digital part, feeling confused why there were barriers inside the touching box. A few lights showing the existence of the walls should be useful.
9. A lot of players would not like to walk into total darkness and only walked around the areas that have images.
10. A lot of players got stuck by the raised wall by the sides of the gas tanks.
11. Nearly 2/3 of the whole players reported though it’s possible to be distinguished after a careful touch, it was still easy to mix up the pyramid collectable items with the dangerous broken glass as both of them had a top end.
12. A number of players reported they didn’t feel a significant difference between acrylic sheets and 3D-printed walls unless they touch them with finger pulps, but the fact was most of them were using their fingertips while exploring.
13. The terrain in the box was thin, but in the digital part, the players would have to look up to see something, which might bring a sense of incongruity.
14. Several players with bigger hands might feel difficult to touch the area under the stairs.
15. During the playtest two versions were applied, one with an outline glowing effect on the players’ character and one without. After observing, the one with that effect was kept for the later version, as the players performed less likely to walk into darkness without a glowing shader showing their current position which might cause stuck in the game process.
26/11/2022
1. Vector Graphics was used to allow .ai layers to be imported into Unity.
2. The pop-up of some UI panels has been given a 0.5s delay to give players room to react so that it will not be too sudden.
How I realised the 0.5s delay
3. In considering of more than half of the players didn’t realise the existence of the upstairs area, several pieces of broken glass as well as the red light and bleeding collider were added to the included angle of the wall and stairs to notice the players that there is something in the air.
4. In order to solve all the tutorial issues found in playtesting, the tutorial panels were adjusted. A clear description showing “this model box restored the scene of the lab. You can use it as a map and touch inside for wayfinding” was added, and ” always press the button to restart” was mentioned. According to my thesis “moving items calling more attention”, in making the players less possible to miss the tutorial, the tutorial was set as: showing pressing-button at first, changing to WASD/Shift guide after pressing the button, and after the players pressing any key among WASD/Shift, the touching box guidance will show up in replacing the former one.
5. An indicator showing “hand in” was engraved and stuck on the outside board of the box.
It was stuck just outside the position of the button in trying to give some clue
28/11/2022 – Playtest 5 – Whole Game Playtesting
1. In a similar situation to playtest 4, there were nearly 1/3 of the players mentioned that it might not be clear enough between acrylic sheets and PLA walls, and between pyramid items and broken glass.
2. The new version of the tutorial made sense. But there were still a few players not used to putting their hands inside the touching box even if they know what it did, and only begin to explore inside after a strong notice from me.
3. During different rounds of playtesting (including this round), players often couldn’t make a clear distinction between different collectable items as long as they lost themselves on the map. Most of them would soon begin to ask if the item they were touching was exactly the item they were facing in the digital part.
29-30/11/2022
1. According to the feedback from the players among the former two playtesting, the collectable items in the touching box were urgently changed from pyramids with rounded angles to cylinders. Addition containers placed outside the original pyramids in the digital part were also added corresponding to the touching part.
Urgently changing
2. In considering solving Playtest 4 – 8, 4 – 12, plus Playtest 5 – 1, 5 – 3, graffiti was applied to both tanks glass and cylinders and both the touching box and the digital part, to bring some additional help for the players to locate themselves and offer some background storytellings. (picture: in-game and physical material)
Graffiti on-screen and raised-touching graffiti made by SVA glue in the touching box
3. Fined the position of the red lights, broken glass models and the collider with bleeding script in the fractured glass areas, making them fit each other better.
4. A long text showing in the form of a letter was added in enhancing the feedback for winning the game as well as providing some storytelling after the players accomplish the game. Several adjustments were made to make sure the players can’t operate anything anymore during the 2.5s showing “mission failed” or “mission accomplished”, including pressing ESC.
5. Before, the starting button was realised by disabling a cube collider under the players’ self-role character, and the players may drop to the playground without pressing the button if they walk around on the collider. After noticing the performance of the players described in Playtest 4 -2, The collider was upgraded from a cube to a space enfolding the self-role character thoroughly. The players won’t be able to play the game until they do press the button to launch.
6. All the colliders were adjusted finely and both the jump height of the character and the height of the terrain were adjusted downwards.
— Written after submission —
02/12/2022
In observing the players playing my game with totally no guidance from me the designer on the exhibition, several new statuses were recorded:
1. I’ve never thought there might be people who can not make it to use WASD+Space+Shift+F with only one hand, but during only my 4 hours of on-site time, I noticed 2 players putting both their left hand and right hand on the keyboard. In that case, they can never use the touching box and play the digital part at the same time. That made me realise while developing a game, it should be useful to also invite some playtesters who are not familiar with playing digital games as they won’t have “common sense (that in my framework)” in playing games.
2. For a normal version of my game, it should be ok to not show the tutorial while restarting as long as they don’t go back to the main menu. But for the exhibition version, there should be a tutorial after any time a new beginning as things happened that players clicked the restart button and invited the next player to play, which caused them to miss the tutorial.
3. Players reported it felt smooth while playing, and it’s marvellous to have such a new experience. Though there were players who prefer not to use the touching box or miss the guidance and got stuck, I also found some players came to the place and accomplished my game totally in the way I designed. All of these made me gratified.
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.
The portfolio video submitted as an individual file showed several complete go-throughs of the game with different endings, while this video below displays the structure of the game’s working flow:
Basic Profile
The game is named “Fertility, Crime, and Economy”. It is a rogue-like game in which the players can approve or reject random different policies to change the data and people’s lives. The players’ aim is to keep the birth rate above the red line and the crime rate below the red line. Failing to keep proper rates or finishing all the policies will lead to different endings. While dealing with the policies, the players can check the current data in line graphs, as well as new events happening to people and news of the whole society.
There are hints in the menu scene as well as animation of the clickable objects as a simple onboarding and tutorialisation.
The games Reigns, Plague Inc., Paper, Please!, and Beholder, as well as the movie, The Handmaid’s Tale, are referenced.
Numerical design is mainly based on structural functionalism in sociology.
For some of the policies, news and people’s stories, materials are drawn from real happened events.
Things that were planned to finish but finally left for further improvement
1. The localization part is designed for the players to be able to change anytime while playing the game, but due to the time limit, we didn’t finish the controlling part. The texts of the English version need polishment as well, to decrease grammar problems and to embed them better in the western culture.
2. Some of the policies are designed to have logical relationships except the random choosing. For example, only if the player chooses to fund the development of artificial reproduction, it is possible to promote the general use of artificial wombs later after a piece of news saying “Artificial Wombs are Coming!”. Besides, these logical relationships relate to other two endings that once arranged, in which the players will separately achieve a high technology government than can produce human babies without women’s uterus, as well as a high centralization government applying repressive rules to citizens.
3. Adjust the positions of several sprites and texts to make them in good composing.
4. Literature reference, including real happened events in comparison to those events in-game, as well as supported academic theories, of the game, is planned to be added in the menu scene for the players to click and check.
Reference
Durkheim, É. Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897). (Chinese version) Giddens, A. Introduction to Sociology (1991). (Chinese version) Parsons, T. The Structure of Social Action (1937). (Chinese version) Mills, C.W. The Sociological Imagination (1959). (Chinese version) Herbert Spencer’s theory of population.
Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows (2022) Politico. Accessible at: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
America’s Abortion Quandary (2022) Pew Research Center. Accessible at: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/
Valenti, J. Abortion by wire coat hanger is not a thing of the past in America. (2017) The Guardian. Accessible at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/15/wire-coat-hanger-abortion-stories-united-states
Abortion rights march: Thousands attend rallies across US. (2021) BBC. Accessible at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58774262
Ashworth, P. Statistics show decline in marriage rates, and increase in age at marriage. (2022). Church Times. Accessible at: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/27-may3-june/news/uk/statistics-show-decline-in-marriage-rates-and-increase-in-age-at-marriage
WION. Gravitas: Artificial wombs are coming! (2022) Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V58tbHAaJNM
Shanti, D. ‘We were human beings’: UK families seek apology over historic forced adoptions (2022) Accessible at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/mar/20/we-were-human-beings-uk-families-seek-apology-over-historic-forced-adoptions
Stern, S.W. America’s Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral (2019) Accessible at: https://www.history.com/news/chamberlain-kahn-act-std-venereal-disease-imprisonment-women#:~:text=Under%20the%20’American%20Plan%2C’,for%20no%20reason%20at%20all.&text=Images%2FGetty%20Images-,Under%20the%20’American%20Plan%2C’%20women%20could%20be%20detained%20for,for%20no%20reason%20at%20all.
WIKIPEDIA. Family planning policies of China. Accessible at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_policies_of_China
Davidson, H. China divorces drop 70% after controversial ‘cooling off’ law (2021) Accessible at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/18/china-divorces-drop-70-after-controversial-cooling-off-law
BBC NEWS. Peru forced sterilisations case reaches key stage (2021) Accessible at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-56201575
Rivard, L. America’s Hidden History: The Eugenics Movement (2014) Accessible at: https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/
At the start of this May, There was a piece of news spread and soon got discussed worldwide, saying the victory of Roe v. Wade in 1973 might be overruled by the supreme court of the U.S.A., which means American women may lose their abortion rights in the future.
This, combined with the recent policies published in China to highly encourage each family to have three children, with some arguments to wish women to go back to the family from career, structured the initial inspiration of me and Xintong Ye.
As females, we usually have our fear and anger toward these policies, proposals, and the thoughts behind them. But what we would like to do with this game (we discussed and both agreed with that) is not complain or criticise, but to ask how can we the human beings make things better and sustainable, and try to build a social model to discuss different possibilities about the future of the society, with the situation of focus specifically on the birth rate.
This is a game with a political lens. By making this game, I was also trying to apply my sociology and anthropology backgrounds to games design.
Critical Reflection
The message of the game
While writing my research paper, I kept thinking about what players would get as a “message” from our game. It is very possible for me that they think of something other than what we would like to deliver, as the real message we have for the game is general and more a question than a piece of exact information to be expressed. I assumed some of them might regard the Tech Ending as a good one while the Revolution Ending as something bad, then draw a conclusion that the designers are trying to tell the others the best things to increase the birth rate is to develop new technologies and build a new structure for human society. In consideration of that, I planned to ask all the playtesters what message they thought the game is containing to verify my conjecture. Unfortunately, two endings had been cut due to time management problems which caused some change on what can be actually delivered to the players, also we don’t have enough time to arrange playtesting with multiple players at last. But the only player who tried our final version mentioned he thought the game was trying to talk about the topic of balance in managing human society, which was, amazingly, not that far away from the message we were trying to display.
Besides, I also realised game-making might be beneficial to academics in the field of social sciences as well, as they can build a social model in a game, let the players play a certain role, and see what the players’ choices are to check and improve their theories.
Sometimes it’s hard to control the workload and cut some brilliant ideas, especially if the designers are holding a strong wish to deliver a message through it. For me, it touches on one of the core concepts of games design- to find the best proper way to express, show, or give guides, with a game, on a suitable scale and let it make sense. That’s what I’ll take my life learning about.
The project management
As we believed we knew each other’s thoughts and abilities very well, we didn’t manage to have a periodic meeting but only discussed whenever we think we need to, which was inadvisable. We did not realize we had some misunderstandings about each other’s ideas until seeing some of the half-finished works, and it caused a mess at the end few days. These will not happen in our further collaboration or my own project management with the others.
The gameitself
1. The game mechanic
The biggest problem with our current game is the lack of interaction while the main content is long paragraph texts which can be boring and stiff. Although we’ve tried to improve it with different methods, such as localization to reduce reading problems, adding in-game character dialogue to make it funnier, etc., the fundamental thing is the mechanic of the gameplay. If we process it again, different prototypes in delivering the same message will be tried and playtested, to find an effective as well as interesting enough way for the gameplay before moving on.
2. The numerical logic
Due to the deficient quantity of the policy proposals, as well as the weak rationality of the numerical logic, the feedback of the line graphs shows a kind of haste and is not completed successfully simulating a running society with the social model that has been raised as mentioned in the AimsIt might bring some improvement if applying more controlling rules or even pre-settled paths. Things should be much more better if we can find a professional economist to join us.
3. Line graph drawing
For drawing the line graphs, linear functions were applied. For example, the initial birth rate is y = (-0.02)x + 1, and if the players approve a proposal to apply a policy limiting the freedom of abortions, the function will be changed to y = (-0.02+0.005)x +1. That is a convenient way for a short-term game-making project, though, a finer numerical plan could be applied in further development, as the influences of policies should be varied at different time spots after they are brought into force, furthermore, different policies that apply at a similar time could influence each other and bring a more complex result.
The function that we used to control the Birth Rate Line Graph, which is a linear function of one variable
4. Limitation on players’ choices
As there is no limitation with approving a policy, for instance, the government’s financial situation, the players can easily pass only those which could make effects while not disobeying morality, like funding new research on relevant technologies. But the strategic content could be more playable if the players, except controlling the birth rate and crime rate in a certain range, also have to approve some immoral policies to improve the government’s tax income for raising funds to approve a better policy.
5. Localisation
During processing localisation, I realised localising this kind of game is never limited to simple translation. Different political cultures surround people living in different countries. People’s identifications, their attitudes toward their government, as well as the current social situation of the countries, are not the same too. All of these should also be considered and arranged accordingly in localising games.
In localising this game, I tried my best to execute this. For example, in the detailed content of the policy “Equal Rights”, I wrote “Introducing a package of policies to support equality and promote equal pay and equal working right for all genders.” But in the corresponding Chinese version, my description changed to “Introducing a package of policies to support equality and promote equal pay and equal working right between men and women.” Because in the context of Chinese, the legal rights of gender minorities have not yet been guaranteed officially, and there won’t be a phrase like “all genders” appearing in a written document from the government. Similar changes in the usage of phrases were also applied to fit the exact situations, such as “general practitioners” to “departments under hospitals” or “march demonstration” to “sit-in”. But these were not big problems. The hardest contents were those relating to the political and economic system. Something may not be possible to happen under one system while in the other one it is probably the daily routine. I had to try to avoid this kind of content in designing policies.
For the reason above, as English is not my mother language also I’m not 100% familiar with western culture, except for grammar issues, there could also be cultural issues left in the game which may make the players confusing. In the future in making games with heavy texts, if possible, a native speaker should be found for polishing and improving the content to avoid these problems.
6. Feedback especially regarding policies
In the real world, a policy’s influence will not show up immediately. In simulating games, this situation should not be changed as well. But that causes a problem, in which the players can not get seasonable feedback after they do something. Multiple ways have been applied to try to give the players rewards to let it seems to be more relative to what they have done, such as shortening the time between policies dealing and the new pieces of news and people’s stories appearing, and containing the same keywords to build a stronger connection. But still, there might be some other ways which are more effective to let the players realise the relationships between the actions and the rewards, and there should be more striking ways to show the feedback which could also benefit building the relationships.
7. The two different visual styles
The two visual styles that we made Left: the later one; Right: the first one
Although we had to move the game to the later scene because of that accident, both of us, as well as all of our playtesters, prefer the first developed one with a screen as its background board. For the reason that screens allow more possibility of interactions than paper, thus it can be more playable and the players can get better involved. For example, according to our initial plan, there should be a huge map settled in the background and the players click on the new appearing glowing spots on the map to check the emerging news and people’s stories. In addition, real-time feedback matches better on a digital screen as well. The line graphs can be made continuously growing over time if they are shown on a screen, but on paper, it can be weird. Besides, a whole screen looks tidier than a mess of paper, and from my observation, people can tolerate more complex content on a screen than those on some paper, also a glowing object in darkness is more obvious than an average illumination, all of which listed above can help the players concentrate more into the game and less easy to make them feel boring.
8. Subjective content
It’s hard to say whether it can be improved, but the fact is, though we tried our best to avoid unconscious bias by researching sociological and historical literature, it was inevitable that some of our unverified thoughts were added indirectly and thus brought some less rigorous content.
9. Future development
During the whole process of making the game, we had discussed loads of the things which “can be added if there’s more time”, for instance, showing the whole life storylines in the forms of important events of the individual people as time goes by, to let the players see how their policies have influenced the NPCs whole lives, as well as some Easter eggs, like “someone has found his losing son from the city news”, to make the people stories more abundant and lively. Another instance is an achieving system. We even arranged the content of each achievement and the visual style of the panel. Indeed, these could improve our game in the future, but we might have spent too much time thinking about the after stuff, while the current stuff was paid less attention. Within the time constraints, how to refine what is already there, and polish it better at the scale that it already has, it’s more needed to be given priority.
This game is processed in collaboration. Our division of work is listed below:
Xintong Ye: art style, all visual and audio resources, scene building.
Yang Hong: logic structure, numerical design, copywriting, coding.
Concepts and game mechanics are discussed together by the two people.
Using Unity as the game-making engine and Plastic SCM as well as google sheets to collaborate.
A screenshot before one time I was about to check in changesThe different tabs that we built to help categorise the documents
Work is divided into tasks with a deadline in Google Excel as well. Discussions and meetings are arranged while needed.
Progress, playtests, and meetings
27/04/2022
Discussed the largeness of the game. Voted down the idea that providing several choices regarding real eras or areas, for controlling the workload as well as avoiding bringing subjective prejudgment towards actual countries or cultures into the game.
Initially decided which contents to contain and how to make them playable whilst combining well with each other.
The draft of the visual panel
01/05/2022
Searched for the real historical events as references, as well as sociology literature in helping build the model.
04/05/2022
1. Discussed the initial birth rate and the players’ target, if it is to make the birth rate increase or just not let it decrease too low. The latter was chosen as it’s better to be recognised.
2. Discussed whether to add a money system to completely change the game mechanic, in dealing with the current problem that the players can keep clicking on the “approve” or “reject” button without thinking anything if they would like to. An achievement system was raised up as well, left for later to see if we have time to do it.
3. Five endings were decided. They are “riot”, “new technology”, “high power government”, “go back to the history” and “the player did nothing”.
4. Both agreed and decided to make a flat background sound without any tune to help build the feeling of the surrounding.
5. Discussed whether to add a UI function bar on the top of the main UI. A menu scene was finally decided instead, for showing the pure playing scene without too much distraction.
The place where we once thought to add a UI function bar
13/05/2022 – Playtest 1
1. The three tabs of line graphs were complaint be hard to click. A paratactic design might be applied after discussion with Xintong.
2. The glowing spots on the map were not that obvious to successfully call clicks from all the players.
3. Several playtesters mentioned the gameplay mode made them recall the games Papers Please and the Reigns. We referred Papers Please before, but hadn’t looked into the Reigns. A try to the Reigns was added to our plan.
4. One of the playtesters left a comment, “Looks like the game is trying to make the world better. It is interesting, although the main interesting thing is those outside the game mechanic.” I thought he was right. We should try more to improve our game mechanics, and not be satisfied with the “interesting content”.
25/05/2022 – Playtest 2
1. Text was too hard to read. There was too much text on the same page and the players might not have the patience to read them over.
2. A display problem with the font was found. The text looked vague in the Unity playing window.
3. Maddy and David suggested that if the detailed text of the news is not important, then it was better to make it just lines or even remove it. The advice was accepted.
4. The news looked not that like news. A newspaper look might be applied to make more sense.
5. The current scale of the line graphs was too small and thus could not cause the players’ attention and looked more like decorations. Planned to make it able to be clicked to enlarge later.
27/05/2022
1. Discussed and adjusted the composing of modules as well as the visual style, decided to change it from plate 2D to 2.5D or 3D with new elements added.
2. Discussed how to deliver the achievement: tube and little sculpture (birds on sticks) or electric clock (8 bit).
3. Discussed how to show the growing line with limited space on the graph. Xintong raised we could make it shrink at the x-axis as time goes by. Don’t know how to realise with code yet.
4. In every round, there will be random policies, and the players may not survive to be able to play through all of the policies, so it can be said that there are rogue-like elements in our game. Then it should be important to give a summary for the players after each time playing through the game. Also, it should be better if the players can check the former rounds’ data. But that involved storing data locally and I’m afraid I don’t have time to learn.
30/05/2022
Different visual styles that have been raised by Xintong
1. New scene panels were brought forward. The one on the right side in the picture above was finally chosen, as the elements were more concentrated and it was more readable for the players.
2. In responding to the text problem raised on 25/05 Playtest 2, policies were divided into three pages, the title page, the background page and the method page.
3. Discussed how to solve the problem that the policies, which are the main playing objects, are also the most boring things in the game with long formal text. A function to let the players be able to make annotation was raised but voted down as we can’t give proper feedback to an annotation. Localisation to avoid some language barrier, as well as some funny self-talking by the character that the players are controlling to highlight some main information and call the players’ interest, have been finally decided added.
4. Discussed whether to make a tutorialisation at the beginning. Finally, we decided to use indirect hints as guidance and check if they work in the later playtests.
01/06/2022
1. Initially set up a localisation system allowing players to choose between English and Chinese.
2. An animation of a file being thrown onto the working place from outside of the scene was accidentally made, sooner I realised it can be a guide to encourage the player to click it at the beginning. A mini discussion was later held in which we decided to keep that animation. Further polished work was handed over to Xintong.
3. We realized working in the same scene at the same time on Plastic CSM can be dangerous as changes may conflict and some may be lost because of that. We decided to check with each other every time to avoid that happening.
01/06/2022 – Playtest 3
1. There was one playtester who didn’t notice the animation of the files.
2. All the playtesters firstly caught attention by the huge glowing back screen, and then the glowing electric clock. Glowing objects were much easier to get the players’ sight.
3. Several players reported that they did have a feeling of checking official documents. But the surrounding didn’t make them feel like working as a chairman with huge power, but more like a poor guy being put in a dark room to do a room escape.
4. One of our colleagues raised some advice, mentioning that we can add some change to the character’s working place along with the game going through, to make the players get better feedback as well as realise the years passing by.
5. It was hard to avoid the others onlooking while a playtester was testing, which might influence the effects while the others begin to playtest.
6. After playtesting, while discussing feedback 3, we realised there was a conflict between Xintong and me. She thought the character that the players were controlling was a clerk without a huge power, more like that in Papers Please, while in my imagination, the character’s power was similar to an administrator, more like that in Reigns. We discussed that and finally decided it influenced not severe and we can leave this to the players.
One of the playtesters is testing
04/06/2022
Brought up a more interesting idea about the game mechanics: to give the players different phrases and let the players combine them by themselves to produce policies. For example, [forcing]/[encouraging]/[banning]/[launching] + [women]/[pregnants women]/[single mothers]/[bachelors] + [seeking professional development]/[abortion]/[paying more taxes]/[getting married].
Discussed if a government tax income could be added into the game as “the money that can be used”, as a new mechanic to let the players think about the strategy, also as a limit to prevent the players from clicking “approve” or “reject” without reading anything and quickly going through the whole game.
Both ideas were finally abandoned for now because of the time limit and left for further development after the submission.
12/06/2022
1. The requirement of using different fonts for different languages has been reached by using Fallback List adding to the default language. It was not the most steady solution. Also, there were a few words that could not be displayed normally, with the Console Warning Line saying “can not find the relevant word in all fallback font assets”, while there should be those words there. A more steady solution should be found later if there’s time left.
A font with pure Chinese characters has been added to the Fallback List
2. A new scene with the same structure but different textures as well as the back screen was raised by Xintong, in consideration of the “feeling” issue mentioned by several players in Playtest 3.
3. Multiple empty objects were used to detect clicking. The positions have been adjusted during testings to remove the influences by the visual angle as well as the 3D ray.
The empty object in the scene
16/06/2022
1. Tried to use constructors to store different properties of the policies, later found it’s hard to be called as an entirety. The definition of List was finally applied.
The properties of the policies were defined one by one
17/06/2022
1. Solved the problem “the cursors show not the same on different PCs”.
2. In responding to the font problem mentioned on 12/06, all TextMeshPros have been changed to sprites to ensure the localisation working well.
19/06/2022
1. Compared to the line renderer, the trail renderer was finally chosen in realising the line graphs, as it matched the script of counting the change of status better.
2. Realised the misunderstanding between Xintong and me. A new scene from Xintong’s check-in changes was downloaded before, which I thought was an update of the visual style in responding to playtest 3’s feedback towards visual feelings, while she told me it was the response to another feedback on playtest 3, in which one of our colleagues suggested changing our scene according to the applied policies to give an obvious change to stimulate the players.
That was a huge problem as for most of the work I only did them in the later scene. Additional logic of both scripts and the game mechanic should also be produced if we were making the game as Xintong’s idea. We finally had to give up the first scene and turned all the content to the after scene.
22/06/2022 – Playtest 4
1. As predicted, the feedbacks were not enough, and the existing ones were not obvious enough as well. One player said “I can’t feel the people really living there. I feel like I’m just handling with data.”
2. The content gradually appearing on the background board was too easy to get blocked out by the main playing parts, plus, the appearing time of that content was arranged with a random range, so it was very often that some of the content was ignored. That was planned to be adjusted later to let the new content appear only if no policies or line graphs are open.
3. Some players mentioned the red cursor brought them a dangerous feeling. This situation sounds reasonable and the cursor was changed to a green one.
4. One of the playtesters misunderstood the function of the news and people’s stories appearing on the background board and thought they were new things that need to be dealt with.
5. Some players might like to change the pages back and forth, while we have only the function to change forward. That will be added if there is still time after all the bugs are resolved.
6. During playtesting there seemed to be a random bug that showed additional texts while the players opened new policies. After a long time of debugging after the playtest, we finally realized that was because some players had clicked the files more than once a time before the papers showed up.
As shown, the files on the desk were still clickable while policies were showing, which was the reason why some texts show up unexpectedly
7. One-half of the players didn’t really read the sentences in the menu scene carefully, but still, successfully know what they should do, which demonstrated that our guidance in both interaction and gaming aims has worked.
8. All of our playtesters preferred our last version of visual style, the elements they liked including but not limited to the map and the sense of technology.
9. One of our colleagues pointed out that we paid too much attention to adjusting the visual presentation continuously during the whole developing period, but these problems should have been avoided before the prototyping stage had done. We thought that was a precise critique.
22/06/2022
1. Several texts and coding problems have been fixed.
2. In response to the series of issues found from the process of playtesting 4, the line graphs, which are one of the essential objects but too possible to be ignored, are moved from the background board to the desk. A shake animation to those line graphs is also applied at the beginning of the game to call the players’ attention. Besides, the way of adding news and people’s stories is changed from replacing to overlying, to make it more obvious to the players as well as dividing the interactive and noninteractive areas thoroughly.
3. According to the advice from David, red lines are added as thresholds in the line graph to help the players recognize the ranges in which they should ensure the rates be in and hence clarify the gaming target.
After
In the upcoming summer, we are planning to remake this game with the former visual style and a better mechanic to give the players more space to use their subjective initiative, to let the players produce policies by themself, not only reading prolix texts and clicking “approve” or “reject”.
Confirmed to use Google Drive as the collaboration platform.
The collaborate forms that we used in Google Slides
Discussed and ensured the main elements: VR 3D, players be to freely walk through, forest and nature, racial conflict, technology and resources.
03/02/2022
A storyline with all scripts finished. The first draft of the game mechanic had been done under discussion. VR scenes were being built in sync.
10/02/2022
Discussed and removed the life system. Players would not lose health points when touching dangerous plants anymore.
Changed the way of punishment.
Changed the endings from “the Master brings back the player to keep assisting him, and the player will see how his/her mother forest get destroyed, before that, the player can choose whether to activate the Alchemy Matrix remotely and perish together” to “the Master kicks the player out of the aircraft and fly away, soon brings back more aircraft to exploit the forest, before that, the player can choose whether to shoot the Master’s aircraft with the Alchemy Matrix in person”.
17/02/2022
The first simplification: 1. Shortened the storyline. 2. Removed the one-by-one countdown time control and punishment system. 3. Deleted the design of the level, make all tasks appear at the same time and let the player explore freely. 4. Cancelled the plan of UI panels design; 4. Simplified the progress from collecting the Plant Crystals to gaining final products. (In the original version, players will have to use a series of equipment that were designed according to the principle of nuclear reaction activating.)
23/02/2022
Got the first version of the Master’s and the Oins’ voices from Sound Art students, not very easy for players to figure out the exact sentences. Editing method discussed and settled.
Playtest 1
1. Gained compliments on the visual effects of the scenes.
2. Some players were keen on throwing the Plant Crystals upward and watching them fly away. But there weren’t refresh settings of the Plants Crystals, if the player throws all the Crystals away and can’t get them back, the game will be stuck.
3. An issue regarding teleport and collider of background objects: players could teleport to the top of different plants and stay in the air.
4. An issue regarding teleport: several players reported teleporting were interrupting their experience. That would be resolved after the Telepathic (players will be able to transfer onto another Oin’s body) was done.
The scripts of animation and dialogue tutorial on how to use Telepathic to transfer positionHow an Oin will look like if it is “Telepathicable”
5. The forest scene was big and the traffic flow was not clear enough. Players gave advice on showing a minimap by the corner. We discussed that later. Instead of a minimap, we chose to put talking Oins near most of the functional positions to give the players some hint which won’t hurt the immersive experience.
6. Players sometimes tried to interact with objects which are not interactable. Some of the players reported they would have a desire to touch the items which were glowing. Adjust regarding glowing and attention attracting was arranged to help the players distinguish which items are interactable.
7. The first bunch of plants with Plant Crystals should be moved closer to the starting point, in helping players to realize what to do.
03/03/2022
The second simplification: 1. Removed all the special operations that players would have to do towards the plants and the Plant Crystals, like putting fire on the blue mushrooms to get blue powder, or cutting the white crystals to gain white liquid with a knife and a container. 2. Decided to delete the way transferring with Telepathic as it would be complex work and we didn’t have enough time to finish. 3. Totally removed the time limit, players would not have to face the failed ending and get killed by the Master anymore if they can’t finish all the tasks in time.
In the former version, there was a failed ending, in which the Master kidnapped another Oin and the player’s view is gradually getting vague, as the master is trying to kill him/her with poison/electric shock/etc. (hadn’t decided before removing)
Additionally, due to technical reasons, the form of the Plant Guide was changed from a book to six elec-sheets placed in the lab and can’t be brought outside that scene anymore.
Along with that, an Analyzing Machine was added, took the place of the original recording way- holding the Plants Crystals above the correct page of the Plant Guide.
11/03/2022
Gained help from Zans and Richard, the issues with the OVR manager as well as the black screen problem was fixed.
Playtest 2
1. Plenty of safety issues were found- players would frequently drop off the scenes from the floor by different spots. Air wall was built later to solve this issue, as well as a script to reset the players in case a similar problem happens again.
2. Some interactable objects were hard to reach by VR hands, such as a Plant Crystal sandwiched by a bunch of other plants, and mushrooms that were too short. Positions of several objects were adjusted regarding these issues.
3. The positions of the Transfer Gates might bring confusion if it’s not at the same place as the starting points of each scene. One more Transfer Gate was added to the biggest scene to ensure a better experience.
4. Issues regarding collider: when picking up the Plant Crystals, players would have a probability of being unable to move or getting pushed by the Plant Crystals, and the alchemy platform had a small probability of not being triggered as well. We didn’t give the highest priority to fix these and they were left to solve in the final version.
5. Players generally reported that the moving and rotating speed of the joystick was too fast and caused dizziness. Speed was adjusted to lower to a certain extent.
6. Almost all the players tried to interact with the Master and the Ions because they were moving and catching their eyes. A possibility of physical interaction should be considered in later updates.
14/03/2022
A guide scene was discussed and finally decided to add.
A backpack system was mostly made but finally given up as both the groupmate who took this responsibility and the rest couldn’t import it successfully to the main version.
(Mini) Playtest 3
Got advice to make a real physical book for the plant guides, though sounds interesting, I haven’t yet imagined how it can be combined with games with VR devices. Maybe that can be tried in a digital 3D game after.
16/03/2022
3D animations were imported. Some pieces of animations would change the character’s position, but the afterwards ones did not remain at the new point and will return to the origin point. Issues were reported to animation groupmates and get fixed.
A mistake was found in the finished sound. “The exit gate is just behind you” was read as “The exist gate…”. This tip sentence was finally abandoned as there was no available time block in the Foley studio for sounds art groupmates to make a fix before the submission time.
(Mini) Playtest 4
1. The arrangement of the guide scene was adjusted according to a final playtest. The guide of VR was moved from the back to the left front of the player. The gate towards starting the game was moved away from the origin platform. Several tips were added.
2. Players seemed to tend to ignore the dialogue and the animation. The volume of voices and the positions of NPCs were adjusted trying to catch more attention.
Reflection on collaboration
Although we managed to finish developing by the end, our project management on collaboration was far less than a good case. There are several main points among the collaboration process that need improvement:
1. The project file is too big to be stored online, in addition, only one of us has the VR devices. There were three of us working separately on building scenes, writing game codes and making shaders, which means all three would need to use both the project file and the devices.
Under this situation, we didn’t arrange a regularly onsite co-working time or at least a timetable for taking turns keeping the hard drive and working on it. Instead, we worked on old versions respectively and imported new works together to make a new version at the weekly meeting, which usually caused a mess.
2. We didn’t combine all the work well together until the ultimate days, which wasted the opportunity to have a complete playtest during studio time.
In addition, we didn’t check the resources from animation and sound art groupmates as soon as we got them, which caused plenty of last-minute adjustments and even a few deletions as there was not enough time for them to make a new one.
3. Due to the lack of experience in designing a game in VR, we didn’t work enough on prototyping and its testing. That caused more modification which could have been avoided.
4. The game we planned to make at the beginning was too big and too complex. Although the project was finally completed, a lot of time was spent during the first weeks on things that had to be cut in the later management. If we arranged a more reasonable proposal at the beginning, maybe we could free up more time to test and improve, making the whole project more polished and running smoother.
This VR game was developed based on Oculus Quest 2 and using Unity as the engine. Players can walk around, move, teleport, and interact with characters and items to explore the game world, solve puzzles, finish tasks and achieve different narrative endings.
How to use the VR devices to interact in the game
There are three main scenes in the game: the starting place, the spaceship and the forest. Every time the players start or restart the game, they will begin in the starting place, in which they can get themselves familiar with the actions, read the developers’ name list and walk into the regular game at any time.
After getting into the regular game, firstly the players will arrive in the spaceship. By the first time the players come into the scene, the human character “Master” will give some background information from the view of human beings, relay a series of tasks to the players, and tell the players how to transfer between the spaceship and the forest.
In the forest scene, there are spirit characters “Oins” staying around different spots. Once the players are close enough to a spot, the Oins nearby will separately give different pieces of information from the view of the forest spirits and relay another series of tasks (puzzles). Except for these, the players are able to explore freely until they finish part of or all the tasks they have.
The full aerial view of the forest scene
To finish the tasks from the human beings, the players will have to collect different crystals on specific plants according to the information given on the tablets in the spaceship scene, bring them back and put them inside the container of the analysing machine. After all the crystals have been analysed, the game will come to the end after the players get out of the spaceship under the order of the Master. Whether the End 1 or the End 2 is going to be shown depends both on the progress of the tasks from the Oins and the players’ choice.
One kind of plant in the real forest scene V.S. Same kind of plant displaying on the tablet in the spaceship scene
In the Oins’ tasks, the players find clues from the voices or by exploration, solve the puzzles according to the alchemy manuscript and activate the alchemy matrix in the forest. There will be a ray with a button to control it after all tasks are done.
The alchemy manuscript, showing hints on how to use the Alchemy Matrix
By the end, if the players finished the Oins’ task, the players can choose to use the ray to hit the Master’s spaceship. The forest won’t be bothered and the Oins can live their lives as before. If the players choose not to, or they haven’t finished the Oins’ task, it will come to the End 2, in which the Master goes back and bring more and more spaceship to start their colonization in the Oins forest.
Appendix: dialogues appearing in the game
Master’s
Scene
Content
The first time the players get into the spaceship.
“I’m the greatest botanist in the world, you may call me Master!”
“You should be grateful to assist me, I need you to get something for me from your nasty forest. [the radiated, killing forest] Now, go collect every plant on these tablets.”(Master slap the guide on the table)
“If you try to escape or be late I will destroy you, your kind and your forest!”
A hint to tell the players where to go if they can’t find the way to transfer themselves to the forest scene.
“What an ignorant creature!”
“The exit is the glowing white spot, just behind you!”
The players go back to the spaceship without any plant crystals.
“Look at the time. You’d better finish your work before I lose all my patience.”
If the players explore freely in the forest for too long a time.
(The player can hear the voice of the master from far away) “What are you doing! Why haven’t you come back!”
When it comes to the end.
“Hahahahaha, good! Just like what I expected, your plants are the best for our new energy resource!
“You are useless now, disappear from my sight! ” (player been kicked out from ship)
End 1 in which the players use the ray.
“What! What’s happening…no, STOP!!! ”
Oins’
Scene
Content
A group of Oins near the entrance (the transfer gate) of the forest.
(all) “Here, come here, One of us!” [excited voice]
(one) “We all worried about you, he took you away! (messy) “What happened? Does he hurt you? What does he want? He wants to take our forest! He wants to destroy our forest! What will happen to us![ Oins talk anxiously]
(all) “Bandit! Bandit!”
A group of Oins near the legendary manuscript of the matrix.
(one) “Ancient forests and our ancestors will help us to prevent this great evil. This! Is the legendary Manuscript of Matrix. You will take it! Use the alchemy matrix and we are going to defeat him!”
(all)“Defeat him! Defeat him!” [Oins excited]
One Oin near the pathway.
(one)”Don’t resist that human now. Work on both tasks for the moment, we’ll finally let him pay the price. Now go for it!”
A group of Oins near the alchemy matrix.
(several) “Here, you found it!”
(one) “This is an ancient alchemy matrix. According to records, it can provide huge power in a second, just like a big cannon. All we should do is get the materials prepared and wait for that human’s spaceship to rise up.”
Recently, I was thinking about the relationships between colonization, races, resources competition and the development of both technology and social formation. For me, my narrative aim in designing this game is to tell a story, in which human beings are looking for new energies and therefore violate the spirits(named Oins)’ forest, but also leave some technology on how to use those energies to the Oins (during generations colonial). The players, as one of the Oins who’s kidnapped and forced to work for the human beings, by the end, can choose whether to do nothing and see it happens or to fight with the human beings with the technology that they learnt from them to protect their homeland.
As for the gameplay, we hope to make a mini immersive world for players to relatively freely explore and finish tasks, and gradually understand the storytelling during these processes.
And for the visual presentation, our VR groupmates would like to make a magic forest while I was thinking about the visual atmosphere of the First Industrial Revolution. We kept these two in two different scenes and combined them into our narrative aims in representing the two different races.
Critical Reflection
The game
I was not familiar with coding regarding VR. As a result, there were loads of hidden peril in my coding for the game. Some functions were realized in weird ways, which might cause unexpected problems in actual plays. For instance, in spite of DontDestroyObject, I used a weird method to allow players to move with objects between scenes- applying a trigger on the player’s body (as I didn’t know how to check if specific objects are grabbed by VR hands), and while the player triggering the object and the gate at the same time, enabling a same object by the position just in front of the player in the next scene.
Besides, there are different aspects regarding guiding players that need to be improved. Before, every time while playtesting, the designers would have to explain to the players how to act (teleport, grab items, …) with the device in person, even if those actions were commonly used in a lot of VR experiences. For most people, VR devices are non-necessary stuff compared with phones and computers, thus they are usually not familiar with using such devices.
We realized that by the last playtest, which was already very close to the final submission time. An initial scene was urgently added to give a tutorial on how to use the VR Oculus equipment, as well as provide an area for players to get familiar with it. It worked as expected in an extra playtest, but might not be the best way as we didn’t have time to think a lot about it. Guidance design concerning all possibilities of players getting stuck as well as introducing players to the game world should be considered at the very beginning next time.
By using the new-developed language and the vocal guide we’re trying to avoid stiff hints in the VR experience, but after it’s done some problems were raised. For instance, as all the sounds are played by VR devices this is not straightforward to ears like headphones, players might face difficulty getting all the things clear, plus player is able to move away from the NPCs at any time, which also decreases the opportunities for them to go through the whole narrative and get the information on how to play through.
The alphabet of the new-developed language, more like a simple substitution cyphers
More severely, for a more immersive VR experience, we didn’t make a UI system for players to check what they need to do easily by general language. The guidance relies almost totally on the audio dialogues. Once the players choose to ignore the NPCs’ voices, they will very probably lose their targets.
The project
Overall, we were trying to make a game that is more complex than what we can finely do in two months. As a result, loads of things had failed to meet the expectation. There were still several functional bugs left with the final submitted version, e.g., the Alchemy Matrix sometimes could but sometimes could not recognize the correct Plant Crystals (we speculated it’s a collider issue but didn’t have time to figure out), which might prevent the players from getting to the next step. Plenty of non-functional improvements are needed as well, e.g., 1. while speaking, the NPC’s head should be able to turn following the exact position of the players; 2. There should be a loading UI for a smoother experience while the players try to transfer from one scene to another.
Working with VR
This was my first time making a game-in-VR during which I realized there were differences in things that need to be considered between VR games and PC games, not merely the familiarity of players using devices, but, associated with this, more complex behaviours and expectations. For example, after getting familiar with the situation, the players who were new to VR tended to pay most attention first on teleporting through the whole map, trying to find all interactable objects in the scenes, whilst ignoring the background information like the animations and the sounds, which might cause confusion about how to accomplish the game. But this kind of players may feel satisfied with the pure interaction in VR, and the game inside is more likely a surprise but not a necessary experience for them. This may change if VR becomes more popular, but before that, how to balance the interest attracting of VR and of the game should be considered.
