Updates
This week, we ran our biggest playtest. We playtested with 2 schools, South Fayette Middle School and Laurel Highlands Middle School. We had students from the 7th and 8th grades. The highlights of the playtest are:
- The social media post interface is still a bit unclear to most of our playtesters.
- There is a wide gap in understanding between students of the 7th and 8th grades.
- Apart from certain bottlenecks, the players seem to easily navigate the interface.
- Level 2 was too complex for the 7th graders.
By the end of the week, we were focusing on getting a more robust build ready for our soft opening. We had 2 levels integrated into the game and playable.
Design
We changed the design of levels 2 and 3 after getting feedback from our client that the searching mechanic was too complex. As per our previous design iteration, searching involved finding 2 different sets of keywords. But after we had our client and a few colleagues play it, we found that the compound keyword searches were too cryptic even for adults, let alone middle-schoolers.
The new design now requires only one search to reveal all the associated articles. Aside from that, the following are the design tasks we completed.
- Easier to understand UI
- Clearer “Mind List” design
- Implemented Level 2 dialogues
- Finished setting up the missing flow controls of level 1.
New “Mind List” implementation
Art
We are wrapping up the character art and other assets in the game like the start screen.
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- Hans
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- Ryan
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- Alice options
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- Start screen
Tech
We experimented with Google forms to capture player choices and send them back to us to check what are choices the players make in the game, and in which order. The data is returned as JSON to a Google form.
The programming team was working hard towards fixing the bugs and adding “quality of life” improvements to the existing game. The next week, we will be showing our progress to our faculty and getting feedback on the game during our soft opening. Whether we implement all of the feedback is a question that we would have to answer.