Week 2: Deciding on Approach
I think the best approach for me to reflect on my individual contribution to this module is to write reflectively at the end of each week. We always meet as a group on Mondays, every second Monday with Giovanni, our supervisor, present. Following the meeting, we go away in our cohorts and carry out our individual work, often chatting with each other between main meetings, to ask questions or get feedback.
Monday meeting
We met on Google Meet on Monday evening, and for the first time, we were not all present as Hanni had a prior engagement. We saw this as an opportunity to see how we cope, even early on, with one member down. Our communication skills would be tested to ensure she did not miss out on any vital information, and any comments she would like to make at the meeting were noted beforehand. I often catch up with Hanni a few times a week, as we are both from UX Design, and so I felt that I had a good understanding of any concerns or points she wanted to be put to the group.
As it was our week with Giovanni, as a group we decided to meet before hand to look over the Figjam ideation boards and to refine our ideas into one concept that we will move forwards with. We all reacted positively to two ideas; one, an endless runner involving an animal rolling down a hill, smashing into things to collect rewards. The other was more of a classic ‘beat ‘em up’ where the main character has to fight off against level bosses. I mentioned the idea of combining both these concepts into one game, taking the best, most addictive elements from each to create one game with multiple style gameplays. The group really liked this idea, and felt that it was a great way to add replayability to the game, which is the core challenge of the brief.
Whilst we are still at the early stages of concept formation and development, we know that we want our main character to be a big, cute fluffy panda who rolls down a hill to basically resource gather for the boss fight. We talked about how he could absorb the qualities of animals he smashes into, potentially body morphing but more likely the player would choose at the start of the fight stage which skills from those collected they would use.
We decided that we would use Hack N Plan as a project management tool for the rest of the module. A place where we can create individual work tasks, plan sprints, store documents as well as links to other tools, such as GitHub, Miro, Figma and Google Drive. Rob went about setting up this workspace.
The following meeting with Giovanni went well, and he was confident that our group was progressing will with this module, we had created a concept that could work very well, and that as a group we had bonded well in a short time. We asked about how we should handle Discord as a means of evidencing communication between the group, as Discord does not have an export feature. It was decided that we did not have to explicitly include proof of communication, and that Giovanni being present in the Discord group and having access to all other workspaces was evidence enough.
Individual Work
Following the meeting, Rob and Anouk gave initial thoughts on what they felt were the initial tasks that Hanni and I, as UX Designers, needed to accomplish first.
Narrative Ideation and Forming - Why is our character rolling down a hill and fighting weird animal bosses? Ideate context/background to the game, think about the motivations behind each stage of the game. Why is our character rolling down a hill, who are they fighting and why?
VFX Design - What happens on screen whenever we hit the boss for instance, or when we bump into things while rolling. There should be visual effects on screen, but maybe also sounds and colour changes or camera shakes.
Research currency systems in UX Design perspective - Research currency systems, looking at market research for tried and tested methods. But also to view through a UX lens. How can we design our currency system for best user satisfaction.
Research into Addictive UX in gameplay - Compile research findings and explore ways in which we can incorporate industry standard replayability methods into our prototype.
User Research into this type of game - Some research into what the typical gamer audience of this genre likes (: also what is important in boss battles etc.
Design HUD overlays - Heads up displays, i.e. the UI screens of games. We will definitely need a splash screens, and later on also in game screens for when you are rolling down and when you are fighting. We will need you guys to determine what info to show where and when and in what way. Do we need minimaps? Do we need statusbars?
User testing for rolling mechanic - We will need to put it in front of people and figure out if we will need more gravity/mass etc. We will need a questionnaire and a set up of what we will actually test.
Create main character concept art
Hanni created a Miro Board where we could collaborate on mind-mapping ideas for narrative, VFX, Character Design and Currency, which we each added to over the rest of the week. It was already decided that as Hanni is a skilled illustrator, she would focus on the artworking, whereas I have strong research skills and would focus more on those tasks. We both agreed that we valued each others opinions, and would both have some involvement in all tasks.
Throughout this week I spent time researching endless runner games, to understand what appeals to players, what techniques we can apply to increase replayability. I also researched some competitors that already existed in the market and took some screenshots of different aspects that we should consider, from HUD, to currency and how games market their stories/narratives. I intend to write more blog posts for these individual activities.
The most important task initially was to create concept art for the main character, so we spent a few days adding to the Miro mindmaps, as well as Pinterest boards. On Friday night, we both worked till the early hours of Saturday morning, coming up with narrative and character design ideas. Hanni had presented some early concepts, but two of the three were not in her usual style. I felt that it would make more sense to work in the style she feels comfortable with, and can work at speed in. I agreed that the following day I would write up our notes and add them to the Miro Boards and it was noted that we seemed to come up with the best ideas very late at night.
Over the weekend I also created some initial concept artworks for our main logo branding which I will create additional blog entries for.