We’re now on the home stretch! Team Don Don has been hard at work and we’re prepared to finish strong.

We had amazing sessions this week with Sonja, Andrew, Kara, and Kevin and we learned so much from each of them! In our session with Sonja, we talked about our visuals and simplifying them–which we’ll apply as we create our new levels (Which we’ll explain later in this diary!) With Andrew, we talked about our game mechanics. As mentioned in the previous diary, we were initially going to build a bridge level with the primary mechanic being dragging or tapping phrases. Andrew suggested incorporating more of that drag and drop object goodness, which is what we’re planning on doing now! We also had a meeting with Kara where we went over our project timeline, and we’re still on track to finish on time–whew! And in our final session of week 8, we had a great chat with Kevin and talked about our game’s core pillars, as well as something that I feel really stuck with us–creating the 20% to showcase the 80% (hope I remembered that correctly). But that catalyzed us into rethinking things, and with the combination of Andrew’s advice, I thought: let’s build a bunch of different levels, but not to their entirety. Let’s just build the parts that we’ll need to showcase in our video pitch, so we’ll have snippets of each level to show a better representation of what our game looks like! 

So, yup! We’ve adjusted our schedule to accommodate this, but I really do feel like it will help us explain our vision better! And, we are on track to finish on time, which is great. 

As a little reflection moment, Ephan and I have learned sooooo much so far! In the process of making a game, we learned a lot about design, mechanics, feedback systems, sound, project management, the list goes on! Earlier in the mentorship sessions, we were asked what kind of inspirations we had for our game, and we said that we really liked and wanted to have the story inspired by the film, “Everything, Everywhere All at Once.” Funnily enough, our game didn’t end up being like the movie, however the process sure felt like everything, everywhere, all at once! (Apologies, Ephan and I both enjoy bad puns, and dad jokes). This project has just made me have even more respect for people who work in the games industry.

So, what have we been working on and what will we be focusing on for this upcoming week? We’ve finished writing the first draft of our video pitch’s script and will finalize the script, record, and start editing the video this week. We have also been building those levels for our video pitch, and are planning on finishing those this week. As we mentioned earlier, we really want to showcase our game so we’ll be showing different types of things you can drag and drop, such as words to restore an object, phrases, or actions like hugging a NPC to calm them down. We’re also planning on incorporating a little tutorial walkthrough in our video to explain the mechanics and how the game works. All in all, we can’t believe it’s our final week of mentorships this week and we’re ready to finish strong!! LET’S GO DON DON!!

Best,

Gina and Ephan