Hello! Team Don Don here. Now that we’re heading into week 8, let’s do a recap of week 7! 

 

Mentor Sessions:

During our mentor sessions this week, we received valuable feedback. With Daryl, we explored important aspects of our game, including its style, UI/readability, and camera angle. We also discussed potential publishers and investors for our project. In our session with Harvey, we discussed the feedback system–since the primary mechanic of our game is the drag and drop/tap mechanic, we want to ensure that we perfect its game feel/juice.

 

Story:

We also really honed in on our story, the characters, and the overall plot. So the story follows Anna, and her journey to recovering her lost memories and finding her way back home. Along the way, players will learn key phrases about human connection from the characters they meet. When Anna returns home, she must confront her past and the people she left behind using the phrases she’s learned throughout her journey. 

Building the Demo:

We chose a middle level as our demo since we felt that it was a good representation of our game as a whole. For context, in the previous level, Anna (the protagonist) and Ken (her guide) have gotten into an argument. This level begins with them standing at opposite ends of a bridge with missing planks in the middle. The objective is to restore the planks by selecting the correct phrases as well as restoring objects. Once the bridge has been restored, they have also bridged their reconnection. Below the bridge lies a river, and to help drive the level’s progression, we’re thinking of incorporating fog that will slowly lift as players choose the correct answers, eventually revealing the characters’ reflections at the end, adding to the symbolism of the game. 

 

Mechanics:

Our game mechanics include a drag and drop object restoration system that will reveal clues about Anna's past. We're also thinking of ways to integrate teaching phrases into the gameplay, and while we're currently considering having players tap the correct phrase in response to Ken or other characters’ dialogue, we're still exploring other options to improve this idea. We've also been working on the feedback system for the drag and drop/tap mechanic. We’ve implemented/are going to implement a subtle screen shake, sound effects and character animations for correct/incorrect answers, and light sparkles when an answer is correct.

 

Next Steps:

This week, we’ll continue building our level demo in Unity, which will include working on the feedback system, character animations, and sound effects. We’ll also finalize the script for the level and make artistic changes from our current prototype to a more polished look for the demo. This week was a great week for us as we really established certain features of the game and we were able to visualize the level more clearly. We're excited to keep it up. Here’s to week 8!

 

Yours truly,

Gina and Ephan :)