Robot fight is a single player game in which players can customize their own robots and power them to eliminate enemy in different levels by pedaling.
Design
After we built the idle game, we took a step back and recalled our target audience demographic. In Keirsey Temperaments, the players that will enjoy the idle game experience are idealists and rationals. We found it as a good oppurtunity to develope a game experience that values gameplay more than exericse, and is made for artisan and guardian players, who tend to be more tactical and logistical.
Besides, we also want to have practical experience of what we learned from “awareness of exertion” – to see if a game focuses on core mechanism could decrease players’ awareness of discomfort caused by physical activities.
Flow chart
Below is the flow chart that describes the user journey in Robot Fight. The first part(robot customization) is what we designed to be tactical. Players can surely add more weapon parts/gears to their robot, but in return the more parts they add, the more difficult pedaling will be since it will require more hard work. During the second part, robot fighting, players will need to control the robot around and use weapons to eliminate enemy within certain time limit.
Questions to answer
Before we started the developement process, we listed the questions that we want to be answered by building this prototype:
- Which factors do make players feel excited and immersed in exergaming in a short period of time that even decreases the “awareness of exertion”？
- Will competing against past self make the players feel sociality?
Lessons learned
During the one-week sprint, we put our focus on the main game experience and put the “competing against past self” functionality as a furthur plan if we decide to polish it later this semester. Here are the main takeaways from the development and playtest:
- Consistency between pedalling and visual effects do help distracting from exertion:
However, in to keep the distraction for a longer time, the level should be changing and the speed should not be extremely high. - Should provide presets for players to directly dive into core game experience
- Should decrease the precision of attack detection to not make them feel frustrated:
During playtests we find it hard to aim while pedaling, thus this mechanism shouldn’t make players feel