In the past 2 weeks, we have completed the features in the game and have continually tested to identify issues to be fixed before handing over the system to Elizabeth Forward Middle School. We also had some play tests with middle school students who came to the ETC. Lastly, we had our soft presentation and received valuable feedback from the faculty in the ETC.
Game Features
We have added all the accompanying events for the class game experience. Each week starts with an event which teaches the students something about the game. We have also introduced the Jurassic Power Innovation Center, which is a fictitious organisation in the game that provides training to teach participants about energy conservation at home. To begin the training experience, we have added a short video that functions as a tutorial to explain the game to students.
In addition to that, players can now learn about the top 5 savings they made for the entirety of the game at the end of each turn. This will serve to help them evaluate their actions in a turn compared to previous turns. This will help them remember the best decisions they made in the game and how much money they were able to save. By showing them their top savings after each turn in the game, they will be able to remember the best energy conserving changes better.
Playtests
We tested the game with several middle school students who were invited to the ETC. Overall, we were glad to see the players having fun in the game. Most importantly, they were still engaged in discussions about changes to be made in the house. We obtained valuable feedback from this play test and were able to fix some of the problems before moving on to the softs presentation.
Softs Presentation
During the softs presentation, we received largely positive feedback from the faculty. They emphasized on the importance of good documentation to handover the project successfully and enable future maintenance to be easily conducted. Apart from that, the focus was primarily on user interface problems that have caused them to misunderstand some information in the game.
Moving Forward
The team is progressing according to our planned schedule and we are happy with our progress thus far. We will be spending the next week focusing on improving the user interface in the game to improve the game play experience. The rest of the time will be spent on bug fixing and polishing various elements in the game. In addition, the kiosks at Elizabeth Forward is scheduled to be completed before Wednesday next week. Until then, we will have more play tests leading up to finals!