After a great week at GDC, team URSA reconvened and began preparations for our Halves presentations in which we present to the faculty the current status of our project.
We spent the first few days of the week rehearsing and focusing our presentation to explain our process and our project as clearly as possible. After much preparation, we felt ready to present on Wednesday. The presentation went well, and we received excellent questions from the faculty about how our game would resonate with the players and how we would ensure that they took away the correct message.
Following Halves, we met to discuss the feedback we received and what our next steps were. We took a hard look at the schedule and made certain our next steps were within scope. We also had discussions about the clarity of our game in its current state and how we could make it better. We then spent time preparing for our immediate next step, which is visiting Washington Square Park in New York City and testing the game within the space.
On Friday, the team met to conceive new event interactions and made final preparations for New York City. We are taking an overnight Greyhound bus and will arrive in the city on Saturday morning. Once there, we plan to test the accuracy of our GPS system within the park, the placement of the various zones, and the flow of the gameplay within the space. We plan to also test whether or not we will need physical markers that correspond to the virtual zones, and test the ambient noise in the park to assess how much sound can be heard while playing the game.
Next week, we plan to run a quick paper playtest regarding whether or not the art assets are portraying the correct tone and provide the users with a clear understanding of what is occurring in the game. We will also be preparing for the User Test day that Janice is organizing and will use this day to test our game with a larger group of players.