One point that didn't come off so great was our use of in-game music. Originally, we were going to have a slide that incorporated the music into the game; however when we presented the slide was missing, and we had to end the presentation, find the music file, and play it back in iTunes. This was more a technical error rather than a weakness in explaining a concept.
It was also challenging to explain the rules of the game. Rules declare to the player what can and cannot be done, and all games have a lot of them. We tried to explain most of the rules that we came up with, such as including a 5 minute time limit, but the most challenging rule to explain was the punishment rule. In our game, there are certain harmful actions that you could take against other characters in the game, but doing so would result in a time penalty, which would make the game harder. We envisioned this happening because the protagonist is already in a situation where his reputation could be harmed; he wouldn't want to do anything that could make him look like a worse person.
It was easiest to talk about our objectives. Because our game is an online Flash game, the objectives are simple and easy to understand and explain. Basically, the player has to find the incriminating pictures before the time runs out. Beyond that, the player needs to navigate whatever obstacles the antagonist puts in his path, including attack dogs, puzzles, and social dilemmas. There are a few minigames within the game that encourage the player to participate to get clues. Because the things the player has to do in order to succeed are obvious and to be expected, we found it easy to outline and explain them.
No comments:
Post a Comment