WEEK 3

Our team started the third week with signing a team motto and putting it up in our project room. Our motto is:

To make the players realize  something about themselves, that is, to have an epiphany.

Below our primary motto, we listed several secondary goals:

– Creating an engaging game

– Creating a unique game

– Having meaningful mechanics

– Guide the players subtlety

We are getting closer to what we want in an expressive game.

Progress

On Monday, we narrowed down our wide open ideas to four themes that the team was most interested in. They were Theseus’s paradox, work-life balance, relationship, and trust.

In order to bring new perspectives to our concept design, our team applied top-down brainstorming methods in the next two days. We started with blue sky brainstorming based on each theme. We put aside our previous game mechanic ideas and expanded on the facets of each theme and scenarios to express each facet. Each scenario should be able to serve our project motto. This kept us on the right track of focusing on meaningful game design.

In our weekly client meeting, our team pitched four ideas that originated from the previous four themes. Paolo shared his opinions and brought up several relevant meaningful games in the discussion. He then asked us to come up with more details on specific gameplay mechanics for each idea. On Friday, our team analyzed the pros and cons of existing gameplay for each theme. We selected three of them for further development. They are,

1. Relationship

Multi-player cooperation game

Two players are linked together

We hope the players can realize that any relationship has its limitation and requires compromises.

2. Work-life Balance

Single-player

Multi-window, multi-task

Freedom, meaningful choice

The player plays as a superhero in the game, trying to balance his superhero life and daily life.

3. Change

Single-player

A cube man has six different faces. When he changes his face, the interactions between him and the world change.

We hope that the player can realize that when people change themselves, they can have a different view of their environment

Prospect

Next week, our brainstorming session will come to an end. With three rounds of brainstorming

iterations, we are getting closer and closer to a solid idea. Our branding session is also going

well. We will have the full set of logo, poster and website done.