Clare Lee, Emily Xie, Mariana Holtz Betiol, Yifan Zheng

Core Studio: Environments

April 15, 2021

Project 3 Postmortem

Introduction:

• Wondervision is a single-player fantasy adventure game in which the player, having lost their glasses, embarks on a journey through a magical world in order to find them. The player is severely short-sighted, so their surroundings are blurry unless it’s up close. In this way, we explored a different perception and experience of the world since the player’s main sense, vision, is restricted. In order to win the game, the player must rely on sensory information other than sight such as sound, color, and movement in order to navigate through the different environments and ultimately find their glasses. There is a fun, original twist at the end of the story!
• Stylistically, we were inspired by the themes and motifs of the classic fantasy story, * * * Alice-in-Wonderland and set out to make a game that inspires feelings of whimsy, curiosity, anxiety, and triumph in the player. We used Unity3D to build the game, original art/assets, as well as Blender and outside free-use assets.
• Our team roles were:

• Mariana Holtz Betiol: main artist/creative director, UI, level building, documentation
• Yifan Zheng: facilitated meetings, programmer, UI, music/audio design, level building
• Emily Xie: main playtest facilitator, main level designer, level building, documentation
• Clare Lee: level builder, level design
• Apart from our main roles, we all had interchangeable duties and contributions such as asset searching and general building in Unity.

What went right: 

Teamwork

• We had clear division of roles, effective communication between teammates, and an organized plan for time management. We used miro as a tool to organize and outline the project with dates and tasks assigned to each individual member that coordinated with their assigned roles specifically. Oftentimes, we overlapped tasks and helped each other. We made sure everyone is on the same page so no one is being left behind. When one person is working on the project, they would text the group chat to let the rest of the group know so we won’t work on it at the same time to avoid conflicts in github. We also notified the group when completing the tasks assigned. We communicate with each other almost every day throughout the week, besides also having synchronous  at least 2-3 meetings per week.  

Storyline

• We had a strong and well developed concept of the narrative, which led the overall story to have a beginning, middle and end that made sense with the game mechanics. Our narrative also gives the players a clear main goal, so there is a motif for them to be in that world. We were also able to convey the story through environmental storytelling, adding easter eggs from the beginning such as posters, paw prints and books as hints to the player of what may be going on in the game. The mechanic for the blurry effect to represent a near-sighted person was also very effective, and straight away told the player who they were within the story.

Effective playtests

• Throughout the various versions of the project, we consistantly playtested with various people from different game and personal backgrounds to ensure we got good and useful feedback. For instance, in mechanics such as testing the blurry effect, we were looking for testers who wear glasses to see if the effect was true to their experience and testers who do not need glasses to see if the blurriness would be too much or too confusing. From every playtests session we did, we tried to find a solution and develop from players feedback. All feedback are well documented from taking notes observing players to players taking feedback surveys after playing the game.

Navigation 

• We had a clear path to follow, however it would be blended within the environment so the experience is still immersive for the player. To facilitate the navigation, we also added diegetic UI, such as recurring floating books with tall light beans, as a way to give the player landmarks they could see and follow from a distance that would also confirm to the player that they are going in the right direction. There are also particle effects, paw prints on the walls and the floor that leads the player going towards the next scene so they won’t be lost in the game. 

Assets + Audio Design

• The assets we used for the game matched our overall aesthetics, whether it being original assets or found ones. We were going for this cute but fantastical look and we managed to pull it off successfully. All assets and materials were working to create a world that seems cohesive and believable. The audio design is also appropriate for the game, from the music choices  and when the music plays to the more basic sound effects. The audio also sets the tone for each space within the game, such as the clocks ticking and the more intense music in the final room.

What went wrong:

Webgl/performance

• Depending on the platform/device, the performance of the game varied heavily. We found that the game took an excruciating amount of time to load on Itch.IO, the time varying depending on the player’s device and internet, and sometimes we couldn’t even conduct a playtest due to the fact that the game wouldn’t load on the playtester’s device. On certain devices the game also lagged heavily and not on others, which we didn’t take into account when making the game. We also unfortunately have little control over this since performance, on WebGL in particular, has to do with a lot of different elements including the browser the player is using.

Technical errors/bugs in the codes

• We faced some coding bugs/errors that we couldn’t fix. One in particular was the portal. It worked perfectly in-engine, but once exported into a build it became really janky if the player shakes the mouse/camera quickly, and it was hard to figure out why it was happening and debug it since this issue would only appear in the built game, eventually we had to let it slide. Another issue we couldn’t fix was the mouse cursor. The game starts with a menu scene which the player can interact with with the mouse cursor, and once the game gets to the ending there is an ending scene which the player can click the “quit” button to quit the game, but in this scene the player couldn’t use the mouse cursor for some reason, even after we enabled it in the script it still wouldn’t appear, it’s not game breaking but we never resolved this problem.

Textures

• Difficulties regarding textures in the build were due to complications with WebGL. The biggest example we faced was that the textures for the trees in the wonderland completely disappeared on itch.io, but were visible and functional in the editor. Double checking the project render settings in Unity vs. WebGL’s capabilities might provide some insight into solving this issue in a future build. It was a relatively minor bug that didn’t hinder the gameplay/mechanics or any core narrative elements, but it was still a nice visual detail that added to our world building that was unfortunately unsuccessful due to technical problems.

Maze

• We think we could improve the maze element of the game a lot. The maze itself is not problematic, but we felt a bit flat. As mentioned during playtests, the maze is kind of generic and doesn’t really have any “smart” design. The entrance is on one end and the exit on another. The maze is sort of the puzzle element of the game but it hardly counts as one due to its over-simplicity. If given more time we would design a more complex maze, maybe with the exit in the middle and multiple entrances on different corners.

More interactive/Lively ending

• A notable challenge we faced during development was deciding on an ending to the game and story that was cohesive. This was a topic that we brainstormed throughout the development process, and eventually created one that was both time efficient and narratively satisfying. However, we had to sacrifice a potentially more complicated presentation (cutscenes/animations, etc.) We felt that it was a bit static/simple compared to the lively experience the player just had. Since the cat is such an integral part of the story and the main twist, we feel it deserves a more fleshed-out conclusion. This could be improved in a future build in a way that would add humor as well as narrative value.

What you learned:

• Since this was our first game group project, we have gained valuable experiences in regards to planning a project as a team (especially remotely), coordination, and the technical aspects of making a game as a group: setting up github, communicating our work effectively, etc. We practiced project management as we assigned each team member tasks each week for each build which we think is a successful way to design a reasonable work schedule in a team setting. We had to negotiate on which day which person is working according to their schedule because understanding that everyone has a different amount of work and time they can put into the project is important. So we are keeping each other accountable.