This week, the team was primarily focussed on designing and developing a good, strong introduction that will guide players into the experience. The Tango is very finicky, so there is a lot that the player needs to know in order to be able to enjoy the experience. So we packaged all of that information into 4 slides of warnings. The player now has to swipe through all of them before starting the game. We also worked on an introduction scene. This helps to explain the story as well as introduces players to some of the basic mechanics that they will use further on in the game.
Players start off in a dark empty world with a giant pocket watch in front of them. Once they poke the clock with their prop, the clock activates and the game begins. The world turns fully colored and the dog, their friendly sidekick, pops out and starts following them. We were also able to conduct some basic playtesting with this setup with some of our initial prototypes. Players were a little confused about certain aspects of the experience, but for the most part, they understood what they had to do.
We also got the chance to visit Visual Concepts and Toys for Bob on thursday. It was a great experience! At Visual Concepts, some of the senior programmers and artists, along with one of our alumni Goksu, spoke about how they work and gave us a lot of insight into the company and their games. Toys for Bob was also an interesting experience, since they make physical toys. So learning about their prototyping, manufacturing and distribution processes, as well as the challenges of mixing the real and virtual worlds (in a very different sense from project Gotan of course) was very interesting.
We have our playtest coming up on thursday this week and are polishing up the intro and gameplay so we can have a good session and get good feedback for the final push over the next three weeks.