Pivots after Prototype Playtesting

Welcome to our second blog post of Team 4's game titled Don't Fear Death. We created and had our fellow peers playtest a digital and paper prototype. Through these sessions, we collected feedback that allowed us to pivot our focuses on what our next stages our. While our game idea and narrative inside it are staying similar, we are going to be focusing on the topic of helping the player navigate our game so it is fun and worthwhile to play.

As mentioned, we had two prototypes being tested. First, our digital prototype was focused on testing how players felt navigating in a 3D space and being able to interact/inspect objects in the environment. Since this is our core game mechanic, we wanted to get feedback on it immediately, and we definitely got the information we were looking for. I mentioned prior that a majority of our feedback revolved around helping players out with navigating this game environment, so we will be enhancing UI (user interface) features for the player. We plan on making a crosshair, giving a particle effect around interactable objects, and slowing the move speed. A player is able to interact with certain objects in the environment, like opening and closer a drawer, but the player may not be aware they can actually interact with it. Similarly, they may not know if they can read a clue or not. It also may be hard to know where the player is looking at when interacting with something. This is why we plan on implementing those three features in our game because it would help players resolve the difficulties in these problems. The crosshair lets a player know where they are looking. All interactable items would also have a particle effect around them so a player knows what they can and cannot inspect further.  Slowing down the move speed also lets a player smoothly navigate the area better and in a more controlled manner.

Our paper prototype focused on testing how the clues would work and trying to test the mystery aspect of the game. The feedback we got from this, again, influenced us pivoting our game to give more help to the player. One thing that we want to maintain in our game is memory as a mechanic because you are playing as a detective. By playing as this detective, you have to use your intuition along with the clues you uncover to piece together the mystery of the murder. We thought that by not letting  clues be picked up and saved in our inventory would immerse the player so they'd be able to think for themselves about how the clue impacts the mystery. However upon feedback, we realized that it is not easy for players to remember the name of our four suspects when they are shown their names once at the start of the game. Clues that are uncovered serve less of a purpose because you may not remember the names of anyone. So, our biggest pivot will be including an ability for the player to see the background of the crime scene and basic information on all the suspects contained within a Manilla folder. We envision this being similar to a "Help" page but it would specifically be brought up by pressing a key. If any of you know the game Phasmophobia, then it would be similar to  bringing up the journal in that game. Here's an image as reference.

This would be realistic as a detective would have information about the crime scene and the murder suspects, along with it being a helpful way for players to quickly jog their memory on the suspects in the case. It would allow for players to see names in clues they find and connect them back to the four suspects that are now a button click away from viewing. This helps the player while still letting us pursue memory as a mechanic.

Overall, these are the pivots we need to follow while we continue to further work on our game. We are still very happy with the story we have planned so far and it seemed that our peers did as well. Going forward, we will remember that we need to provide help for players in multiple ways so they can succeed.

Thank you for taking time to read this, and more updates about our design process will be coming soon! Stay tuned!

                            - Team 4