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! :)