May/June 2020

Final Build

 May and June have been a rush to finish the last of the art assets, building up our marketing materials, and fixing those pesky bugs. As we approach our last day of development before our showcase, we are luckily finding our task lists go down. There may be some more developments after our June release, so stay tuned if you enjoyed playing! Support student games! And also support our community! #BlackLivesMatter

April 2020

Rough Build

Our Rough Build was our first prototype with all our redesigns! We also implemented sounds, textures, and a tutorial level. Our playtest feedback shifted to smaller issues such as visibility, bugs, and color cohesion. Also deadlines are coming up fast, here is our mood currently.

March 2020

Design Revisions

 After our Vertical Slice playtests, we made our biggest design revisions. All of these revisions stemmed from the issue that there were too much information and too many possibilities for the player for a party-style game. 

1. Round Based Play

We converted our game loop to round based play to decrease the amount of information we had to communicate to the player and also quicken the pace. This allowed us to instruct the players on a much smaller amount of chores and make the players think less about what they are doing and just do it.

1. New UI

The change to round based play solved a lot of our UI problems. We had hoped for our gameplay to require little UI, but we found that not to be the case with how many things players had to do. We went through many iterations and finally landed on a design that was simple and communicative with just a glance.

1. Orthographic Camera Angle

Our original isometric camera angle gave a wider angle of the gamespace, but ultimately, that made it difficult for players to decipher between all the items in the space. The orthographic angle made the play feel more intimate and items easier to see.

1. Even Smaller Level

The space was still too large in our Vertical Slice for players to do things quickly. We made the space smaller to ensure players would be able to move quickly as well as get in each other’s way.

1. Chore Redesign

Our original chore mechanics were very similar to each other as well as ghost abilities. Additionally, they did not necessarily remind the player of the real life chore. We redesigned our chores to feel more like minigames with button mashing, rotating the joystick, and quick time events. This brings more variety with the chores and calls to mind what the action is really like.

February 2020

Vertical Slice Build

Our Vertical Slice was focused upon increasing the level of conflict between players. We totally redesigned the level as well as continued with our original development plans in regards to the core mechanic.

The following were our main developments:

1. Direct Player Interaction
2. Chores and WinCon
3. Smaller Level

From our playtests, we realized that our players were not receiving enough direction or feedback to be able to initiate fast interactions. The players had fun moving around the space but were unsure of what they were supposed to do with their abilities. 

We determined that our main issues were the following:

1. Affordances and UI
2. Too Many Possibilities for the Player

January 2020

Demo Playable

Our demo playable focused on moving around the space. We concentrated on level design, how to move around the space, and scaring/possession. 

The following were our main developments:

1. Satisfying Ghost Movement
2. Isometric Camera Angle
3. Large Level
4. Interactions to Discover

From our playtests, we realized that we were placing our players in too large of a space to create an appropriate level of conflict.

December 2020

Milestones

Now that we had our full team and a green light to continue development, we created long term goals for our development period of 6 months. We outlined what was a priority for us and what were our reaching goals. We also took the time to incorporate the new team members’ ideas for the game.

November 2019

Recruitment, Pitch, Interviews

With this basic premise and digital prototype we pitched our game idea to a group and received responses from people who were interested in working on the game. We conducted interviews and recruited a team of 13 members! About half of the team were a part of the original conception and the other half were new.

October 2019

Conception & Digital Prototype

Our main interests were in creating a party game small in scope with a focus on mechanics. With our initial focus on mechanics, we immediately thought of the afterlife. Characters based in the afterlife gave us an opportunity to ground the game in the real world, but also provide unique mechanics related to world manipulation. It was a nice balance of narrative and mechanics. However, we felt the fun, fast-paced, and humorous elements of a party game were still missing with this idea. So we asked ourselves the question, what is it like for ghosts to ‘live’ in this world? Would they do the same things we do? This resulted in combining the fantasy of ghosts with the ridiculously mundane task of doing chores.

Taking this idea, we had a couple of immediate concerns.

1. How can ghosts make a mess if they are incorporeal?
2. How can ghosts do chores if they are incorporeal?

From the first question we created the narrative that the two ghost players are roommates who get into fights that create mess and disarray. Our chores are related to the natural descent into disrepair a house falls into without use.  To answer the second question, we made the decision to include a human NPC. The ghost players would be able to possess the human and do their chores. To create balance and competition we wanted the player not in possession of the human to be able to scare the other out.

With this basic premise we outlined 3 main mechanics:

1. Scaring
2. Possession
3. Chores

Our first digital prototype developed on the implementation of the scarring and possession mechanics.