Melissa Group Prototype 3 - miwamiwa/CART315GroupPrototypes GitHub Wiki

Dog Factory

It's panic-mode at the dog factory! Dog food, balls, and dogs are all being sent to the same room and the struggle is real. Dogs are attracted by balls of their own color, but they are also even more attracted by the dog food. Try to lead the dogs back to their respective boxes by kicking the balls towards them.

Press WASD to move, Space to jump, P to powermove/kick.

Push the buttons on the platform above to spawn more dogs and balls.

Devlog

This prototype joined the dog concept from Sam's prototype and large wall buttons with color coordination from my prototype. This prototype was supposed to be a 2-player game at first, one player would be on the platform pressing the buttons and the other one would be at the lower level trying to clean up the mess they've created. Because of the circumstances of being stuck at home, we figured it would be bothersome for every playtester to find a second player to play with therefore we reduced the scope for convenience. It was difficult to find a goal for the game as it felt very chaotic. The chaotic feeling was really entertaining to observe but it was hard to come up with an idea that would give it a more concise goal, making it more game-like. Therefore we added the concept of "sheepherder" where people would have to separate the dogs by their colors. Also, in this prototype, we introduced an AI movement to the dog so it would move around and prioritizing eating the pepperoni-looking dog food over chasing after the balls.

Playtest Questions

• Was there a strategy to your gathering?
• Is it entertaining to observe the dogs' behavior?
• Did you give up on the goals of gathering the dogs and just spam the buttons?
• Was there not enough or too much dog food?
• Is it too difficult to gather the dogs using the balls? (The kicking not being easy/responsive enough)
• How do you like the color associations, does it help you grasp what is going on?
• Did you try pressing multiple buttons to fill up the room, or did you just press the button once and try to bring the dogs back immediately?
• At what point does the screen seem too full of dogs and balls visually?

Playtest Response/Suggestions

It seems like people interacted with the game very differently. It was either trying to follow the "gather the dog" rules which were very tedious to achieve and kinda annoying, understandably so, or creating chaos and enjoy looking at the dogs running around. The balls were very difficult to redirect and the camera perspective didn't help. When the player was trying to use the balls to redirect the dogs, it was tedious to try to kick the ball in the right direction with the right force so that it would be close enough to the dog so that the dog would go after the ball. But it wasn't always the case, if there was dog food nearby or the dog was too far, the dog wouldn't respond to the ball even if the player kicked it. It probably wasn't a very satisfying experience. Other than that, people seem to understand pretty clearly the color associations. Some people spammed the button and got to see the screen full of dogs and balls, bringing them joy, but other people didn't even get to that point because it sounded counterproductive to the goal. The dog food seemed overlooked and not very useful to the game, even though enjoyable to watch and the dog's behaviors were not understood very well by the players.

Group Reflections

By developing the game from scratch I really enjoyed observing the dog's movements and bugs (sometimes it would run into the wall for no reason) and I was aware that the dog would react more strongly to the dog food than the balls. These things that I enjoyed seems to have been lost in translation to the player, as people were just confused by what was going on. To some, it enjoyable to create a whole mess, while others were trying to follow the guidelines of what to do and the game didn't seem responsive enough for that. It would be a process to figure out what could be changed/removed and it would have to be a drastic change since the goal was difficult to achieve and there was no real incentive to press the buttons. We could've added UI diagrams to show what the players have to do so they're not as confused by the goal, and instead of boxes, maybe making it plane areas on the ground. We could also make it so the player can hold and throw the ball for a better response than trying to kick it and for it not to go in the right direction.