YANI'S DEVLOG #2

Since the last time, a lot has happened in our capstone group. We’ve solidified on our game and we've completely changed the direction that we were pursuing. Something I was really thankful for was that my capstone group has enough experience designing games that we've exercised caution - we were careful to not fall in love with our previous game ideas so it didn't hurt when we scrapped the whole thing. Also, it allowed us to view our idea objectively and see it in its entirety: flaws and all.

This change was basically triggered by the first meeting we had with our contact at Shadow Factory, Keiran Lovett. He mentioned that user experience is basically the most important thing for our design. He also mentioned that user experience is thought of almost like the last point in any game focused design and that the fact that we had this technology to use was an important thing to think of.

What our technology looks like when it's on, more or less. We realized putting it on and strapping it in was a commitment on its own, and that many "non-gamers" would be intimidated to even wear it.

Needless to say, we had a super long internal meeting purely on UX, and we thought of a lot of points. Based on research, we've decided that the funnest part about Mixed Reality and our technology is just the juxtaposition and amazement of seeing "magical" or "mystical" things in real life, such as the Pokemon Go AR feature. Therefore, we’ve made lots of progress on general design wise. We really wanted to make this an enjoyable experience that focuses on mobility, hand motions and the magical factor of seeing mystical creatures in the real world. Our game is about interacting with the “creatures” and as of right now, it’s very much based on emergent gameplay. We are focusing on making the interactions between the player and the creatures fun for our minimum viable product, and if that is achieved, then adding additional features that enhance our experience.

Art-wise, we've certainly been busy. Keana and I have been wracking our brains to come up with a design for our mystical creatures. At first, we wanted to go in the direction of will-o-wisp like creatures with cute faces on them because we wanted them to seem natural when they float in the air - we didn't want something like a puppy or kitten because it would seem weird to have them floating around.

The style of will-o-wisps that we wanted to emulate. Credits go to Kate-FoX on Deviantart for the art.

However, after a few art meetings and mentorships, we decided to change our direction. Our art mentor, Jon, mentioned that wisps looked a lot like flames and that players might not want to touch them at all. And if they did, they would mainly try to cup them - it didn't really aid the interactions at all. And that was the core of our design challenge for the creatures - we wanted the design of the creatures to facilitate the interactions. We looked a lot at family pets - what about a cat or dog makes you unable to walk away from one without petting it? What makes a cat's belly so unresistable - even if you know you'll get an armful of claw marks for it?

Our most essential art inspiration, believe it or not.

Between balancing that and the limitations of our technology have been a challenge. Many reasons why cats and dogs and other creatures seem irresistible is their fur, and we can't exactly mimic that. We can't simulate the haptic feedback, for one, and not to mention that fur is incredibly expensive to render.

And that brings us to our next idea, Slime Rancher.  Slime Rancher is a game where you raise and nurture little Slimes, and then suck them up and farm them for profit. It's a tycoon/farm/cute pet game, but the most important part is the design of the slimes.

Some slimes from Slime Rancher. As you can see, aside from there being variations of their designs, they're also incredibly cute.

The slimes were cute and looked interactable - we got the irresistible urge to poke and jiggle them, while also wanting to feed and pet them. Since they were also slime, they also would solve the problem of lack of fur and haptic feedback. This is what our main source of inspiration came from. From there, we started designing and testing.

We came up with a variety of silhouettes and designs, and we compiled them together. It was interesting to see Keana and I's difference in direction. We had decided to work on them separately so we wouldn't be influenced by each other's design decisions, and therefore we went in totally different directions. I tried to incorporate familiar creature features in my designs, such as designing blobs with cat or dog ears and tails, or blobs with small wings and snouts. I thought that the familiar features would help players feel at ease and also give them the familiarity of some interactions - they would know to scratch the ears or boop the snouts. However, Keana went in the opposite direction and tried to make the slimes as featureless as possible, just a blob with a face. We both brainstormed together after and compiled some designs:

What we ended up with - silhouettes and a variety of designs. These were what we tested.

Then, we gave these designs to our designers, James and Jen. They took these around and showed them to a variety of different people at our school - they went to common areas and tried getting different peoples opinions and first reactions on these designs. The art testing helped a ton and we got a lot of good feedback - overall people liked a more "dynamic" silhouette, and they also preferred a much more simplistic look to the creatures themselves. A lot of people didn't actually like my cat or dog designs because they said it was too "busy". And thus, this is what we decided on so far:

Simplistic, blobby and cute - so far everything we've been going for.

The final creature design is probably going to end up drastically different from this, but for now, I'm excited with what we have and I'm looking forward to what comes next!