Ok, so now its officially March. We now have about less than a month until the semester is over and our projects will come to an end. Since Jen, James, Keana and myself are all going to GDC next week, we’ll have even less time to finish up the project. However, I am glad to say that things are overall going very smoothly.
Since the last update, we’ve changed some things up. Our game is now called Booyo Park, which was actually our original name before BooyoSitter. We decided to change the name because we’ve also changed up the premise of our game. We scrapped King Booyo, and now the premise is just that Booyos is a magical creature that exists in the world around you, you just need our special tech to see them. Booyo Park is a place where you can interact with the Booyos. Therefore, since we scrapped the whole “taking care/babysitting” aspect of the game, we changed the name back to Booyo Park.
I also added in a custom texture for your hands in Leap Motion, so they’re no longer just the default grey hands. James drew up some concept art for them, and then we all picked our favourite design and I added the texture in. They look pretty cool in the game if I do say so myself. We also got some great feedback on them from playtesters, who said that the gloves helped them believe they were in a “magic cartoon world” where they could interact with the Booyos.
https://twitter.com/hexabytegames/status/1096038852714729473?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1096038852714729473&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgamedesign.sheridanc.on.ca%2Fwangyani%2F
We’ve also been busy doing a lot of things for our project outside of the game. I mentioned in my last update that our Twitter was up and running, and we’ve been posting regularly. We almost have a hundred followers now, which is great because our goal is to have people recognize us and our game before we start showing it at conventions and other places.
Also, I finished our website and it’s now up and running!
On the topic of branding, I was comparing prices from various websites to print promotional art for our game when I found out that Vistaprint was having a 40% off your entire order sale. Needless to say, I spent the next 48 hours furiously designing our promotional art so I could take advantage of the sale. Everything worked out, and we’ve already gotten our promo stuff in!
This is the mockups of our promotional art. Not pictured are also matching Booyo Park t-shirts. Everything’s come in and it all looks great.
We also had some guests from Ubisoft Toronto visit and try out Booyo Park! It was super exciting. They had really nice things to say about our game, and it was cool to see them experience MR and Leap Motion.
https://twitter.com/hexabytegames/status/1103001574979321856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1103001574979321856&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgamedesign.sheridanc.on.ca%2Fwangyani%2F
The main thing I’m going to be focusing on for the next few weeks (aside from GDC) is creating an onboarding video for our game. I drew a storyboard for this video, but basically, its a video we’re gonna have running on a loop at our booths at conventions that will introduce the concept of Booyos as well as the premise of our game. It’ll give people something to do if they’re waiting in line to try our game or just as something to look at.
I also spent some time storyboarding the actual onboarding offboarding experience for the players. Often times, a lot of people can find VR games intimidating to get into since there’s a lot of unfamiliar technology and a sense of the unknown. It goes double for our game since we have a lot of unfamiliar technology, with the backpack and Leap Motion and Zed M camera rubberbanded to our headset and all. Therefore, we want players to feel reassured and comfortable, and we want the onboarding and offboarding process to be as pain free and stress free as possbile. Everyone on the team has different roles theyre gonna play, and hopefully, this will help us stay on track and running smoothly under the stress of everythign at conventions.
Needless to say, we’ve been busy! And even as this project draws to a close, we still have a lot to do, even though it definitely feels like we’re on track and working hard. Recently, I’ve been realizing just how grateful I am about being apart of this team. We not only work well together, but we also have a ton of respect for each other. We’re still all great friends, and I know that whatever comes up, we can deal with it. It’s not something a lot of people can say, and I’m extremely grateful that I can come to school every day and still be not only excited about what I’m creating but excited about seeing the people I work with. I have a lot of confidence in this project, and I’m excited to see what comes next (including GDC!)
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