Project Proposal Doc – Ver 3

PROJECT NAME:

Claudia Thomas                                Healing Fun                            Ver 3

ABSTRACT:

After having a week of confusion as to whether I wanted to do a serious game or an entertainment game, I came to the conclusion of an entertainment game, after a large amount of reflection and research, which you can see in my previous posts.

Currently I have the idea of creating a social, collaborative game that revolves around making the players more stressed. Inspired by the game ‘Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes’, where one player can see a 3D bomb they must defuse, however the other player is the one with the instructions to defuse it, but nether can see the other’s screen. It relies on communication and collaboration in order to solve the puzzles before the time runs out.

With information only being available to certain players, the users lack a sense of control over the game, as they have to rely on their partner to give them instructions.

The game revolves around creating stress through limiting visibility of information, limiting the time for the game, as well as having a range of different puzzles that need to be complete to do at once. So the gain influenced my idea to create stress in an entertaining way rather than try to prevent it.

During the development process I also created a set of mechanics from my research into stress, I particularly liked the idea of controlling levels, time pressures and healing. As I felt with these combined to create for a stressful environment, as controlling people’s health under pressure is surely a stressful task. Therefore I decided to take this aspect forward from my previous serious game ideas.

I also took forward the idea that players still each have a colour associated with them and can only heal other people not themselves, to force cooperation in players and ensure the game is team based.

There will be a series of boss levels, as inspired by the game Furi, and the players must survive a boss to move onto the next one. Each player has a set health value, the boss will attack them and if hit their health will go down and then they will change a colour. The hit character must then be healed by another player who has that colour associated with them. But if the team isn’t concentrating on healing others then they will die, which I hope will creating frustration and stress between the players, fulfilling the aim of the game.

The game is mean’t to be fast paced and exciting, causing the players to have to think about multiple tasks at once, eg dodging the attacks, healing others and ensuring their heal doesn’t drop to 0 either, all producing an entertaining experience.

 

GOALS:

  • Visually beautiful
  • Make players more stressed – Create frustration at each other
  • Teach players to harness their stress in order to succeed
  • Collaborative process
  • Entertainment game – Possible meaningful moments- Though entertainment will be the main focus.

 

USER EXPERIENCE:

AUDIENCE:

 

  • Millennials (19-35)
  • Gamers (casual)
  • Social Players
  • Stressed easily
  • Interest in MMO Healing

 

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS:
  • Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
  • Furi

 

How will it differ?

  • Healing will be the main mechanics not attacking like in ‘Furi’ – Different from most games, as most are about attacking, so I’m flipping the industry standard on its head.
  • Game will be collaborative like ‘Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes”, however everyone will have their own character which is personally affected by someone else, rather than the whole game is affected. So I think it will cause more stress and annoyance between players.

 

CRITICAL ANALYSIS:

 

Currently my whole project revolves around non game research including:

 

  • Stress: How it affects us?
  • Why people come stressed?
  • Colour and emotions
  • Colour gradients

 

Stress

How stress affects us?

  • Idea of no control
  • Uncertainty
  • Time Pressure
  • Kill Us
  • Increase risk of diseases
  • Optimum stress – Can use stress to your advantage – sports players

screen-shot-2016-11-07-at-14-45-12 screen-shot-2016-11-07-at-15-15-50

First hand research – How stress affects me and those around?

  • Causes of stress involve others a lot – Comparing to others, arguing with others, not meeting up to others standards – And so a key reason why the game would need to be collaborative.
  • No control – A key cause of stress – Main design inspiration for the game.

 

Colour Systems – 3D models, colour wheels, gradients

Colour Mapping

 

Possible environment for the game to be set in.

 

 

Colour Gradients – Kim Roselier

Similar character designs

 

Colour- Emotion Association Research 

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Below I combined the colour/ emotion gradients with faces of the same emotions. Combing the look style from Kim Roselier with more meaningful colour gradients, giving the colours more meaning. I thought this style could be the basis of my characters within the game.

 

 

PROJECT CONTENT:

 

COMPONENTS:

 

Unity game on screen – Because I feel with the use of colour having such great importance within my research, I feel I will need to use a screen to gain the correct colours and larger range of colours than can be printed.

PROJECT STRUCTURE:

 

METHODOLOGIES:
  • Agile
  • Andy’s random ideation Method
  • Speculative Design
  • Restricting Methodology
  • SCRUUM

 

PLAN:
NEXT Phase
  • Highlight key mechanics of the game ideas I am currently most interested in and then form prototypes testing or playing with those aspects. Test the prototypes and gain feedback to help influence the development of the project.
  • Use Andy’s methodology, restricting and speculative design to help me develop my ideas into 3 well developed and researched ideas, that fulfil my goals.
  • Once I have finalised which game idea I wish to do, I plan to use the SCRUUM methodology to help with the development and creation of the GDD. Using SCRUUM I plan to write down everything that needs to be down, forming a backlog. Then I will give each task a time allocation and plan out the weeks ahead of what needs to be down when and in what order. Therefore helping me stay organised and on top of the project.

 

 

How will I test?

 

I think at this initial stage I will simple test on people around me, to gain an idea of how the mechanics work and how to improve them. Then once I have defined my target audience, I will try to get into contact with people who are within my audience and test out some of my more finalised prototypes with them to alter the design to suit their preferences and abilities.

 

SCHEDULE:

 

Week 3 of generating ideas

  • Prototyping Ideas
  • Test Prototypes
  • Refining and adapting ideas depending on the outcomes of the tests
  • Have 3 ideas ready to present
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