This week Trini continued our research part with case studies of several satyrical games
We are still working on that and if needed, will make a deeper analysis, depending on the information we need further.
Also we did some brainstorming and came up with 3 ideas:
- “Dress your character”: the game is reacting in a fun (or sometimes creepy?) way for the “wrong” choices of clothes and other stuff. In the end the result tells you to what extent you’re a conformist or smth like that.
- “The Challenge”: the goal is to get to the counter while taking a range of things you need. But the space in the basket is limited to just one type per item. The robot will try to make you take the things it offers. If you bump into the robot, the item slot will be taken by his item and you’ll have to move towards another one. In the end you can see how much your stuff you managed to save.
- “Click here to continue playing” Player tries to click the ‘play’ button on the game (or a button or something), but is swarmed by fake ‘advertisements’ popping up saying that they will help them, or with real stuff that advertisements say like “click here to lose 50 pounds” or something, they have to close out all the x’s (which are tiny). There is a hidden timer that will show you in the end how distracted you got from your goal? Gets faster and faster
For now we have chosen the second option because it offers the challenge element and will communicate the idea of struggle with manipulative ads not only via visual cues, but with the mechanics itself. I feel that the game will be stronger if the message is supported by the gameplay as we have established in the literature overview. Thus elements of other idea options, like popping out adds, can be incorporeted in the main gameplay to emphasize the main message even more and make the experience more annoying.
Having decided on the main idea canvas we have distributed the roles. Trini will do the coding while I am responsible for overal style and assets. Trini is already doing some coding tests. I am experimenting on art styles from which we would choose the one to develop further. As style references we have a top down pixel option
and a more smooth one like in Dumb ways to die. This is still in progress.