Finding the Game Mechanic
4/25/20
I have been having some trouble in finding what the mechanic of the game will be. I researched on the games that were suggested to last week and I tried to find some inspiration on what I want to create or further research.
The Paper Prototype
I was trying to create something along the lines of Magic The Gathering. I started to think about the puzzle aspect of the game and how that relates to the thesis of this project. Players could be given puzzle pieces and would have to add their piece onto a big spinning fractal. That is what I drew as a rough concept. There are three type off fractals to build off of. The players have a small piece to add on top. I thought a simple concept of puzzle building and a mix of themes from other card games could be a fun concept to play around with. I was thinking of making the giant fractal pieces like a boss the players have to engage with and the boss fractal will have complex emotions simplified into points like +2 Sad, +3 Anger, -1 Happy, +2 Nervous. Converting emotions into a hit point system seemed really bad and probably would not have a good message on how to manage and be mindful of one’s emotions. Literally “playing” with someones emotions is not a good starting point.
I was thinking through all this and was trying to stay on the main thesis for this “game”. Why do they build this puzzle piece? Why is it a fractal? What the f*#! am creating?
So, I looked to more research to get more inspiration…
I found some like minded individuals, which is good!
Emotional Games
Mightier — A company that helps regulate their emotions through game play and biofeedback. IDEO also partnered with this company to create the design of this product. Article is here.
Pause — This is a mobile game that functions as a stress relieving app. The players drag their fingers on the blob and gather more dots to make it the blob bigger.
These are just a few of the examples I started to get into.
Sky: Children of the light and Journey
These two games are created by the same company, which is probably why they are both so damn beautiful. The games are super abstract and both have novel communication mechanics within the game play. There are no words just sound and gestures that dictate how to proceed to the next level.
I thought I would look into these game incorporate another element from the Neo Cab and Tell Tale Games, The Walking Dead.
Now, the stories are super rich here and very text heavy. I know it would ages to develop something this immersive and rich with story. The element of emotion is different here though. Instead of a new unfamiliar world, the text based games are rooted in the familiar and are focused on your perspective. I think grasping some middle ground with the learning how to communicate with the world around you and have the experience geared towards “you”, the player, there might be something interesting to play around with.
My overall prototyping process
I dived into Unity and wanted to see if I could mess around developing something for the mobile environment. I am interested in making shaders and using the shader graph in Unity to see what I can create. So I found this tutorial and followed along, what I ended up making is an interactive shader. Something that I want to further develop and perhaps find the mechanic somehow through this process. Right now this shader works when the spacebar is pressed. This is a link to the tutorial here.
