Devlog #2

Devlog #2

In our first devlog, we chatted about the first steps of our process, which included our topic area, type of game, and our theme/setting for our story.  In this devlog, I will dive into the research that we have collected so far and continue to collect, our aesthetic for our game, and the species of our characters. 

Research

We started off our research by creating a research plan and discussion guide for user interviews. In our research plan we outlined our goals in our research which is to discover the key barriers and opportunities for our target users of our game. After defining the goal we agreed upon research questions and methods of finding interview participants. Our goal was to conduct 3-6 target user interviews with the help of the CDM participant pool. After finalizing our plan, we created a discussion guide and focused on collecting what the general mindset of our target user has when dating or in relationships and understanding any guidance they might have. Currently we have one user interview that was collected but also created a survey with the most of the same questions created in our discussion guide. As of writing this devlog we have collected 8 responses. Along with our user interviews a competitive analysis was also conducted on two dating sims called Monster Prom and Tabou Love Stories. In both games, there were a few strengths and weaknesses such as Monster Prom is more of a playful gameplay in a school setting while Tabou had a variety of gameplay with storylines with drama and sexual scenarios.Commonality between the two games is that they are both dialogue-based and lead the player to decide on love interests. 

Aesthetic - Mood board

To better understand the design of our game, we created two mood boards. As mentioned in our first devlog, the team landed on a theme/setting for our story which is a coffee shop. In our game we are hoping to have parallels with choosing a perfect coffee and choosing the right person to be with. With our mood board it helped us organize our game inspirations. These will serve as a resource to help keep the style and aesthetic of the game consistent with our game goals and expectations. This will continue to help assist us on taking this game from concept to creation after we wrap up all our research. The first mood board is more of a Hygge coffee shop vibe. “hygge “ is a Danish word that refers to joy and presence. This decor emphasizes comfort, warmth with the use of warm soft lights, use of wood, warming inviting atmosphere with lots of neutral colors. The second mood board is more of a rustic/vintage coffee shop vibe. It includes a lot of nature elements, chalkboards, mix of wood and accent features that include a color palette of neutral colors with hints of blues and greens. 

Species of Characters

An element that is important to us as a group was to be inclusive of all types of relationships and gender identities. We decided that our characters would not be traditional human male and female characters as it is in many games. Instead, we aim to choose or create a “species” to represent characters. In doing some research, several games out there do not have traditional male and female characters, such as Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Monster Prom. After further exploration as a team, we had landed on the idea that our characters would be mythological creatures. We are still sorting out which creature would work best for each character, but we did land on including a Siren as one of our characters.

Next Steps

To progress forward I think our next steps as a group would be to collect our research and create an affinity diagram to sort out key insights/ findings from both the user interviews and surveys. From the affinity diagram it will help aid us in creating our scenarios in the game that our barista character might encounter. Another next step would be tying in our mood boards to the look and feel of the coffee shop and connecting it to our species of characters.