Continue from last week, the team gathered around to discuss the first iteration of game design in detail. Thanks to the research from last week, the team quickly had a general idea on each components of the game. Starting from the game structure to the detailed design of each demining robots. In addition, the team was already discussing the first playtest of testing current draft of game mechanisms.
Here is the first draft of design graph for different types of robots that players can use to demine a mine field. The goal is to divide the work between two players so that they have to work together to achieve the goal. All of these robots exist in the real-world as well.
Also, the team spent some time working on the possible hooks for the game. By doing this, the team could narrow down the range for target audience so that game features were closely developed according to the target group. For example, to foster the emotional connection to the demining task, the team designed a status system of a village. As the players continued to work on demining, various conditions like health, happiness, safety were improved over time. This would give players a feeling of accomplishment.
Furthermore, the team had a heated discussion on the actual player types the game should be designed on. The clients wanted the game to reach the general public but it was not very feasible due to the fact that there were so many different types of players who play video games. In the end, the team narrowed down to two types of players: Socializers and Achievers.