This week was much more relaxed than last, not to say that it was relaxed though. We had our Quarter-semester presentations. That means that we have already spent 4 weeks working on this project, which seems both too short a time and far too much of the semester already. 
The faculty had quite a lot to say. They were intrigued by the idea of making a more physical game, and seemed pleased that we had done a fair share of playtesting. Many of the faculty mentioned “Pandemic” as something we should examine in terms of a cooperative board game. They also all wanted us to focus in on our design and narrow to one concept. We were given good advice to clearly define our transformational objectives that would help inform the game.
We had sit-down meetings with Jess Hammer, Scott Stevens, and Shirley Yee. Jess encouraged us to think about what we wanted the children to talk about and design for that, coming up with different concepts around our main transformational goals and testing them. Scott pushed us to consider more physical components as well as narrowing in on a final concept. Shirley made us question what parts we wanted to be physical, suggesting that sorting stay a physical component, and she helped us consider the impact of our art on the experience as well.
Outside of the quarters shenanigans, we finalized our schedule, which leaves only 8 weeks for production!(!!!!!) As scary as that is, we have made good progress, working on a juicy prototype of the recycling machines, trying out new art styles, playing “Pandemic” and doing other instructor suggestions.Our schedule also has us pinning down our final concept next week and then doing playtesting to work out all the major kinks the week after, allowing for only minor tweaks and balances during production. Next week, we will be kicking into high gear, getting into our pre-production crunch time so that we can get to production smoothly.