This week was quite difficult. We did not have a Masterclass with Sonja Christopher. She gave us some great tips on how to use knots to bring more realism to our pond modeling. Thursday was quite an eventful day. We started filming with Salimata following the storyboard validated by the mentors. We shot in the middle of the road in the middle of cars. It was crazy 😍 ! We are preparing the making soon
Hiya! Don Don here to present to you our weekly recap. On this fine Monday morning, we’ll be discussing Week 5. Can you believe that we’re already more than halfway through STL? I seriously can’t. Time is flying.
Week 5 was a bit of a crazy, but pivotal week for Ephan and I. We started off the week continuing to prototype and build our puzzle-based, escape room game in Unity. I won’t go into too much detail of how this game worked since we scrapped it, but essentially it was a split screen on one device. The two players were in different rooms and what one player did in their room affected the other player’s room. For instance, player one turning on a light switch might turn on the lamp in player two’s room which would then reveal a clue.
While coming up with the puzzles, we realized this may not be the best genre for our co-op language learning game. The puzzles would be where we’d incorporate the language learning, but it was quite restrictive because we could only teach so much through one puzzle. Not to mention, coming up with language puzzles that involved two players speaking a different language and somehow working together was incredibly difficult. That, and because this wasn’t the most efficient way to teach a language in a game… we went back to the drawing board.
This was a pretty frustrating time for Ephan and I. We felt like we were falling behind schedule. We asked ourselves what the biggest problems to solve might be.
Solution: Language exchange partners require the two to at least have a basic knowledge of each others’ language to hold a basic conversation. So, for our game (which is essentially for language exchange partners) they too must possess a basic knowledge of each others’ language.
We came up with some ideas, including potentially using drawing as an alternative to communication. After our meeting with Andrew, we’ve decided on a new game:
Objects are disappearing from this world! You and your partner will have to work together to restore these objects to the world. There will be word bubbles in Cantonese and English. Each object will be assigned to a language–you’ll have to work together, teach your friend what each object means and drag and drop to restore that object.
We finished off the week with a hangout sesh with the other finalists. It was really nice to see how the other projects are doing and it was inspiring to hear them talk about what their projects meant to them.
We’ve started developing our new game and will continue to prototype and develop throughout this week. We’ll be implementing the game mechanics such as drag and drop, and character dialogue for instance. It has been a learning experience, but we’re so glad to be at this stage and we’re looking forward to this chapter of our project! See you in the next recap. :)
Yours truly,
Gina and Ephan
Today is Wednesday and it's time for our WEEK IN REVIEW. A long week during which we had 5 meetings with our mentors. We learned as always. Week 04 in the STL adventure was the week of TESTS: where to shoot, what to shoot, how to transition from 2D to 3D, the type of footage and the different camera shots. We were able to advance and find the answer to many questions thanks to the TESTS.
Following our meetings with Vany and Jinko we understood that it was important that our questionnaire for the interview should allow us to arouse the desired emotions in Salimata or at least to get closer to it, we also realized our story board and we also presented it to Jinko who appreciated it very much, this one not being finished yet, we received advices from her which help us for the continuation.
Hey everyone! Last week was a very fun week for both of me and Gina. We got to continue developing Unity/Figma prototypes and received some great advice from our mentors. It was also a week where we challenged the way we developed ideas.
We also remembered that we wanted to work more efficiently so we decided to try out some cool assets from the Unity store. We were really amazed by the amount of useful content on there and will continue to see how it can facilitate our workflow.
In our meeting with Kevin, he got us thinking about the different mediums and tools we can use to keep track of our ideas and got us to make a mind map that contained just about any potential idea we could think of for our project. We realised it's a good tool for storytelling and created mind maps related to story/character development. Kevin also explained to us the benefits of tablets with split-screen as a medium for our playable demo before expanding to other platforms.
Our meeting with Sonja got us to consider our plans for user testing, who our audience would be and thinking about where we can source some precious test dummies! We talked a lot about how we could create a fun cooperative experience and what our priorities should be if we were unable to complete everything we set out for.
We also had a great session with Scot Stafford where he outlined the importance of sound and music to facilitate storytelling and expressing emotions. He also introduced us to the idea of ducking which is about the adjustment of audio levels to prioritise certain sounds.
As for now, we’re going to continue prototyping and try to move ahead in the development process. Maintaining a fluid workflow has been difficult at times due to our time difference but we are trying to find solutions and compromises that give us the opportunity to work together efficiently.
We’re going to try and enjoy this experience and we’re looking forward to the upcoming week! Until next time. Thanks for reading!
Happy Monday! Let’s talk a bit about week three, shall we?
This week, Ephan and I had our mentor sessions with Andrew, Harvey, and Daryl as well as a project management session with Kara and our first Tribe Advisors session with (~twenty!!) advisors who gave us helpful and insightful feedback. We pitched our ideas in regards to our game mechanics to our mentors and advisors, and with each feedback, Ephan and I continued to iterate. Here’s what we learned this week:
We’re doing too much.
Ephan and I spent the majority of this week racking our heads trying to come up with an idea that married the elements of co-op, language learning, and connection together in a balanced way. We came up with tons of ideas but nothing was sticking. Spoiler alert: our problem was that we had thought too much about the language learning component in a way that was sacrificing the co-op elements, and really, the initial idea.
I thought about how I had initially pitched this project, and our game was never supposed to be a stand-alone language learning game (like Duolingo)–it was supposed to be more of a supplement to support language learning. And more than that, it was supposed to be a game that connected you and somebody you loved or cared for. It was supposed to be a game that me and my mom would enjoy playing together. It’s a bilingual game where you each possess the skills the other doesn’t have (player A knowing one language, and player B knowing the other), and work together with your unique skills to solve puzzles together.
Ephan and I had been focusing so much on the language learning element that we were going down the road of what seemed like a Duolingo 2.0. So who’s Don Don? Don Don is a co-op, and that gives you the opportunity to collaborate–and connect. You’ll work together to solve and decipher puzzles where the clues are written in both Cantonese and English. Since the clues are bilingual, you’ll have to explain/teach each other (and therefore, learn). Hopefully that makes sense, but we found it interesting that this is essentially what we had in mind in the beginning and also includes the ideas our mentor Andrew suggested to us back in week one. I guess we got too in our heads about the language learning elements, so this is a nice little learning moment. Please bear with us, haha.
We’ve started prototyping in Unity the mechanics, and in Figma the UI. The game will be like those escape rooms, where you examine objects in the room for clues to solve puzzles. Now that we’ve figured out who Don Don is, and who she isn’t, we’re really excited to move forward.
This week we’ll continue prototyping, mapping the user flow/journey map, building the story/narrative, and level design. We’re looking forward to week 4. Let’s go Don Don!
Yours truly,
Gina and Ephan
This week has been a little difficult but informative. After receiving feedback from our lovely mentors me and Gina have continued to work on researching game mechanics. It has been a challenge to re-evaluate our game and define it once and for all but we feel like we’re getting closer and are remaining positive.
Talking to the mentors was amazing! Before the meeting I know I was a little scared to meet all our mentors at once but they were really calming and insightful. They really gave us a lot of necessary feedback to improve our project and got us re-considering important questions like…
What platform are we going to use?
Should the mechanics be decided before the narrative? (Spoiler! Yes)
What art style appeals to a large age demographic?
And these are just some of the thought-provoking questions they gave us.
So for this week, we decided to take their advice and try and get those pesky game mechanics sorted! “How?” you might ask. By doing the best research possible and playing a lot of games. Me and Gina played a variety of co-op games like ‘It Takes Two’ and after we decided mobile was our preferred platform, we looked into Android/iOS games for inspiration. This was incredibly fun and gave us a lot of great references.
As we’re learning more about our project, we’re continuing to refine our work plan and are keeping up to date with our tasks thanks to our project management system Jira.
What we’re working on/what’s not working
How we’re feeling
That's all for this week. Thanks for reading!
During our first week with the THU team, the mentors and the other finalists, we discovered a lot of tools and received a lot of information. A little under pressure because we were discovering a new world but we were able to get by anyway. we were able to set up an action plan, how to make the transition between live action and 2D thanks to the advice of our main mentor JINKO GOTOH (to whom we gave the nickname of Ablah Pokou, the mother of the Baoulé people Ivorian. We will explain the story to you later 🙃). We had a clearer idea of our deliverable, eliminating certain aspects that may go beyond our skills. We've listed all the ideas and rated them, so you know what to do now and what can wait after. we now have tools that will allow us to test our ideas, how to make a prototype thanks to the advice of KEVIN YOUNG.
We were able to find through many searches to find a good reference image bank and inspiring videos. We took the opportunity to do some English lessons too! (even if the text has been translated online 😄 but we will get there step by step).
it was a hard but very rich week for the start of this adventure.
One last thing, our main mentor (JINKO GOTOH) said she loves our project, we are so proud of it. 🥰🥳
What a week! Ephan and I had a very hectic, but insightful week. We dedicated this time to researching and settling into our new journey!
Our main goal for this week was figuring out our game mechanics. Our game is a co-op where player 1 is learning English, and player 2 is learning Cantonese, so we wanted to think about a way we could do this where it was still fun and engaging. We were brainstorming solutions on how to integrate game mechanics with our narrative/story and language learning elements seamlessly.
We researched and looked into videos on YouTube and articles online. We looked into what game mechanics are, looked at similar games and made bullet points of what we liked about each of them, looked into language learning techniques (we particularly liked Stephen Krashen’s theory on language acquisition–how it’s more effective for people to learn a language via visual cues or context and we plan on implementing his strategies into our game).
We also thought about our story and fleshed out more of our characters. I found Coursera’s CalArts: Story and Narrative Development for Video Games to be extremely helpful. The course talked about strategies for creating ideas (the game goals, protagonists/antagonists, levels ideas) and gave examples on character briefs and what a game synopsis could look like. It mentioned that a story should have a spine–which is the primary theme of the story, and rising action, and that a story can be split into three acts–the set up, confrontation, and resolution. This was all really helpful while ideating our story.
We also had a very insightful session with Andrew! We pitched our current story to him, and he suggested making the game’s value to be about teaching/reminding players the value of communication and how it helps people feel seen. We both really found this helpful in coming up with our story, and making sure that new ideas tied in with our theme.
We also defined our deliverable. In our session with Kevin, he mentioned the idea of a “vertical slice of cake,” which was helpful, and also made Ephan hungry. We told Andrew that we plan on having a playable demo where players can get a sense of the game mechanics, story, and value.
This week, we also started hammering down our work plan. Tasks will definitely change as our journey progresses, and there will definitely be a lot of iterations and back-and-forth, but currently I’ve divided our time into 3 periods: pre-production (planning), production (the art needed for the minimum viable product), and “post-production” (basically making all the art pretty, like adding textures and potentially VFX).
We believe we’ve figured out our game mechanics and have a story going, which we’re looking forward to sharing with you tomorrow for feedback.
How we’re feeling:
Gina: I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed haha. There’s a lot of information to process and a lot of stuff to work out, but it’s understandable at this early stage. I’m not much of a gamer–at least, not anymore. I used to be obsessed with MapleStory (if anyone else here is a Mapler…let me know) but now I mainly just play Mario Kart haha. I learned a lot about games this past week and was surprised how much decision making went into it! The game mechanics, narrative design, UI, sound–everything pieces together into one cohesive theme. I feel like I’m learning a lot about games, and it’s exciting because at the same time, I get to apply it into practice for this project while being mentored by industry experts! I’m also looking forward to getting to know the other finalists better, and meeting everyone in-person in Spain! Although this journey will definitely come with its own set of challenges, I’m so excited to learn & grow and work on Don Don with my best friend!!
Ephan: I felt a bit surprised to see the direction of our concept slightly shift as we learnt more about game design, language learning and narrative writing. I am also really excited to develop some of the concepts that we discussed. I believe we’ve created a really fun story with interesting mechanics. I’m a little nervous but excited to receive feedback from our mentors tomorrow so we can really fine-tune our project.
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Phew! Hopefully that wasn't too much haha. That's all for now. We'll see you soon! :)
Hello! Welcome! Thank you for coming here as I document my journey with Sony Talent League.
The seed for the story of Siu Lan and the Adventures of Magic Cookbook began with a recipe, so today I will share with you a “recipe” I will take with me in the coming weeks.
Before I get into the recipe, I wanted to share some happenings in my week. In the first week of working on my project, I had the pleasure of learning to focus my ideas, so they benefit the current state of the story. This was done by identifying a thesis that will be used to shape the components beyond the series. This learning reminded me of the phrase, “take one thing at a time.” I have had to remind myself of this phrase many times in life. If you ask me how I feel, I’d say excited, curious, open, and probably hungry.
This week I am finalizing what I will be presenting in my final pitch and getting to meet my mentors. If I were to rate my eagerness to learn on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say 1,247/10.
If you have read this far, you might think, “Where is this recipe?” It is coming, promise! By the way, this isn’t a recipe for banana bread. This is a recipe of values I will keep in my back pocket to pull out when I feel doubt about my abilities. For me, the opposite of doubt is trust. So, this is a recipe for: Trust.
A recipe for trust
½ cup of self-care
Place doubtful thoughts in the oven for 24 hours
1 tsp of identifying my feelings
A dash of self-compassion
1 cup of reminder that unknowns can be turned into questions
That's it for now! I am very excited to share my journey as the weeks go by.