Last week our client pointed out to us that our prototype was missing a key emotional component of golf: the moment when watch your ball arc and beg it to go into the hole. Ben Crane, a video produce for golf explains how golfers talk to their balls:

We talk to the ball in two or three ways […] One is we kinda know what the ball is going to do so, ‘Be good, baby,’ we’re kinda just affirming it was a really good shot. Then there’s the time where you’re like, ‘Catch that slope and roll down.’ You really don’t know what’s going to happen. And then there’s that time when you’re begging. The ball is heading to a 50-50 place and you beg, ‘Please stay up.’

Hat tip to Salvador for sharing this.

While researching UI for tablets, we came across this very cool interface that lets you control almost anything with an iPad. It’s designed as an adaptive interface to let the motor impaired play with toys they wouldn’t otherwise be able to use, but there are a lot of possibilities for hacking together cool toys.

February 3 – 7, 2014

Last week our client surprised us: instead of asking us to work on the idea for a modified golf game for connected TVs that we thought was a sure winner or the idea that seemed safest, they asked us to pursue our most ambitious idea—a kind golf meets Inception, where players tee off of walls and ceilings.

This week we assembled a rough proof of concept, something to give us a sense of what our core mechanic would feel like and what it would take to build. A tight schedule and a clear goal afforded us the opportunity to implement Agile and Scrum practices more deeply. Up went the scrum board and each morning we “stood up” to discuss the previous day’s progress.

Throughout the week, our programmers worked on modifying a code base we inherited from an older golf game to demonstrate a new core mechanic. Actually putting our proposed mechanic on screen gave us a better sense of how our levels need to be designed.

Our artists defined a look for our game that would support its gravity-defying feel. They explored three different styles—one surreal, another science fiction-oriented, and a third light-hearted—all of which conveyed that this wasn’t going to be a normal golfing game.

Meanwhile, our UI/UX designer considered how a user might actually execute this mechanic. This was particularly challenging because while our game is controlled on a tablet, the program runs in a browser, vastly limiting the touchscreen gesture vocabulary.

We ended the week with another presentation to our client. After demonstrating our proposed art styles and a PowerPoint animatic of our user interface, we showed them a prototype, driving from the green into a wall, getting the ball to stick to the wall, and then putting from the wall into a hole on the side of the wall. Our clients quickly (and kindly) pointed out that we had missed the emotional core of the game of golf: the anticipation the player feels as the ball soars and the dashed hopes of a near miss. Still, they gave us the green light to go further with the idea.

In the week ahead, we’ll continue exploring our strange golf game, designing our first courses and building our first original assets. Our overarching goal: to see if we can’t get the game feel right.

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We are SeptoBunny, a team working with Electronic Arts’ Office of the Chief Creative Officer to create a golfing game for Connected TVs. Our team includes designer and artist Lucien Chen, programmer Davis Dong, gameplay programmer and designer Frank Hamilton, animator Momo Jiao, character and environment artistSahana Vijai, producer David Wegbreit, and UI/UX artist Key Wu. Look for more info here as we explore this exciting new platform.