Rapid Prototyping Week 4: Metaphors Galore

Our theme for Week 4 was: Make a game that is a metaphor.

I initially struggled with the ideation on this prototype, I knew that I wanted to make a game based around stress and anxiety. It wasn't until 2 days before the end of the week that I had my lightbulb moment: It's All Pear Shaped. The elevator pitch for the game was a game in which you are trapped in a room and you have to clean up all the pears. I liked the layering of the saying it's all going pear shaped and my frantic mind trying to keep up with University, work and training all together.

So with 2 days remaining, my main focus was to have the base idea in engine no matter how rough it was. I used assets that conveyed my vision for the game.

I decided that I wanted the level design to mimic my room I have been working out of.

For my playtesting, I wanted to try a different type of playtest. I had one person play, whilst everyone else watched.

I found the feedback very interesting, a lot of people drew meaning from things that were just coincidental.

The slightly smaller nature of the player controller made everything else slightly out of proportion, people drew meaning from this saying it made them feel small.

The lack of windows, which was partly due to restrictions with assets, had an effect on people, they felt trapped in this space.

Some people felt the need to gamify it a bit more and the lack of an ending reduced the meaning of the game a bit.

I decided to lean into these: I made the player even smaller and I added a "pears remaining" Hud element to gamify it a big more.

My initial plan was to end the game by fading to black, so I added that too.

I feel like the final product, conveys the feeling of an impossible task which was the aim.

I focused on making a rough full vision, rather then a really polished feature. And it really helped to lean into players feelings with the game. I feel like with most ambiguous creative pieces, meaning can be drawn from where you don't expect however with the iterative process of game design, you can draw your attention to what players feel and incorporate it into your design.

I used an iterative process with agile where feedback really guided my adjustments, I wouldn't have thought about changing the player size, but it fits the toon shading and theming very well.

In summation this week was better then most, and I will continue to develop my iterative process.

Using the book of lenses found at: https://deck.artofgamedesign.com/#/menu/0/?lang=en

I was able to more accurately find new ways to approach the feedback process, the lens of emotion and metaphor really helped me hone in on what players felt when experiencing this.

In summary, I felt like this was a productive week and I was able to convey my personal metaphor of anxiety. I want to utilise agile more in my personal projects as I have found it helpful for personal growth not just for group organisation.