mnniska

[mnniska]

Rock Paper Feelings 1.6 - Level and UI improvements

Today (it’s June!) we finished up version 1.6 of Rock paper Feelings. In this version, we have focused on redesigning our level up system and iterated on the UI to match these changes. I figured I’d go through these changes and provide some perspective on the problems we’ve tried to solve with them. 

Redesigning the UI, again! 

The goal here was to allow for the emotional minigrid to be much bigger - since we want to use it to show the player our new levelling system as well as the comfort zone. I also took the opportunity to move the map UI to the bottom of the screen - creating a dedicated UI space at the bottom and allowing the top to focus on gameplay. 

NEW UI

OLD UI 

A level system built for feelings

We’ve felt for a long time that the level up system needed some iteration. We’ve completely discarded the old system and gotten ourselves a new shiny one!

In the old level up system,  birds who felt a feeling intensely enough had the potential to level up - but to trigger the level they had to perform a specific action tied to the level. For example, to level up in caution, the bird had to lose a fight while being close to a friendly bird who won a fight.

This system had a couple of problems. It was easy to have strong emotions enough for a level, but triggering it could either be accidental, or very hard depending on the condition. This created inconsistent progression and took agency away from players. Another issue was that the level triggers were all unique - making them hard to understand and creating a ton of extra programming work.

In the new level system - we’ve done away with level up triggers entirely. Instead, we’ve tied everything more closely to the emotional grid. Each feeling has a number of emotional seeds the player can pick up by moving close to them. Once a bird has picked up all seeds for an emotion - they level up.

This system encourages players to interact even more with the core mechanic of manipulating feelings. Players must traverse all over an emotion and explore it thoroughly to level up in it. We also avoid case-by-case level up conditions, making the rules clearer.

Get all the seeds within a feeling to level up

Debug shortcuts

Among other bits of polish, Jazeps have also added keyboard shortcuts for going slow or very very fast through the game. Use the left shift button to slow down time, or right shift to speed it up. Very handy when you’ve grown tired of some of the battle animations! 

What’s next?

We’ve had ideas on how to change how battles are represented for a long time, and are itching to try some of our solutions. We believe we could reframe the game to be less about fighting and more about talking - which fits with the core theme much better. For the next milestone, we will be experimenting with this.

I want to play!

Of course! Sign up as a playtester here to download the latest build  

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEkERC3weqPQ4waHB-GAM_sIeaIIdvfOjBKunO8FGYDhUUqg/viewform?usp=sf_link 

Thank you for tagging along! See you in a month! 

[mnniska]

Practising some bods. One of them is without reference, but you’ll never know whichhhh 

[mnniska]

Rock Paper Feelings v1.4

It’s been two months since Rock Paper Feelings 1.3, and version 1.4 is now finished. This iteration (called The Clarity update internally) has a ton of tweaks and we are very interested in seeing what you think of it. In this post, I will go over the problems we noticed in version 1.3, and how we have attempted to solve them.

Before I start - please note that we are looking for playtesters! If you are interested, follow this link to sign up as a playtester https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEkERC3weqPQ4waHB-GAM_sIeaIIdvfOjBKunO8FGYDhUUqg/viewform?usp=sf_link

Problem 1 - Unclear rules

In version 1.3 it was hard for players to give constructive feedback on our gameplay - as the rules were hard to even grasp in the first place. Players would give feedback on our faltering communication of the game’s rules rather than the game itself.

Solution 1 - better tutorial

For version 1.4, we have attempted to fix this by improving and polishing the introduction of the game. Based on playtesting, we narrowed down a number of misconceptions about the rules of the game, then we changed and added feedback to the tutorial to address them.

Solution 2 - Streamlined rules

However, a game with convoluted and confusing rules will be hard to play no matter how much your tutorial rocks. Some of our systems were hard to grasp and were quite convoluted - so we streamlined them to make them inherently more intuitive.

An example is the level up system. Previously - to level up one had to

a) have fought X amount of battles

b) have intense enough emotions

c) Each level up is tied to a gameplay-driven condition. This starts the character development. For example, to level up in cautiousness, a bird must lose a fight while watching a friend win a fight.

We felt as though B and C were fine and were closely tied to our emotional system. The first condition, however, had nothing to do with emotions and added another condition to an already complex system. It did serve a purpose however - to ensure players would not level up their birds too often, thus breaking the game balance.

To amend this, birds are now reset emotionally when levelling up. A bird will lose their intense emotions which allowed them to level up and must climb again on the emotional scale. Thus feelings in themselves acts as XP in this new system. We’ll have to wait and see if emotions can act as XP, or if our various emotion-intensifying mechanics breaks the progression curve for birds.

Solution 3 - More feedback

A ton of more feedback has also been added to more clearly communicate what is going on. For example, birds will now sit down when resting and the fight button now has tooltips letting the player know why a fight cannot be started. Lots of smaller things like that.

Problem 2 - players are not planning ahead!

Rock Paper Feelings is not deep if one only focuses on winning the current battle. Unlike many other RPG’s, players can only choose the placement of their birds. There are no battle commands and no movement points. The depth comes when one is trying to manipulate their birds towards a specific emotion while still surviving the current adventure.  A player can fight the current battle and only focus on winning - but if they do they’ll have to face the consequences in the future battles, where they will be properly destroyed. This offers a new layer of strategic depth (in theory!).

Players were not planning ahead in version 1.3, and for good reason! We gave very little information on what the next battles were - players could only see what the next adventure’s main emotion were through the map, which is seperated from gameplay. Another issue was that there was no distinction between levels which allowed the players to prepare for future battles, and levels designed to test  if players had fulfilled the emotional goal.

Solution 1 - prep here, test here

To solve this, we have added this distinction and now call levels either trial or prep levels. Trial levels are longer, more emotionally homogeneous, and enemies have higher levels. To enter a trial level with the wrong emotions will almost certainly grant a loss, forcing one to retreat and adjust their team’s emotions.

Solution 2 - more information!

The minimap in the battle scene will now also show the next trial level - giving players a clearer goal of what the next major challenge will be. We have also added the minimap to the emotional report as well - so that players are constantly reminded of what their goal is.

Problem 3 - The UI is hard to read!

Most of Rock Paper Feelings is spent looking at the game’s UI. Working on the previously mentioned solutions, it was natural to also update the UI continuously so that it could host them. Almost all UI elements have been updated to be more readable and better looking. I feel as though we’ve still got ways to go with the UI (particularly in the battle and map screen) but this is a step forward.

I am writing a second post explaining the design process behind the new UI - but that’s another blogpost! 

Old UI at the top, new UI at the bottom 

Time for testing!

That is Rock Paper Feelings 1.4! Now, a period of testing begins. I will try the game on friends and non-friends to see if our fixes have solved any of the game’s problems or if further iteration is needed. (It usually is!)

Would you like to playtest Rock Paper Feelings?

Follow this link to sign up as a playtester and download version 1.4!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEkERC3weqPQ4waHB-GAM_sIeaIIdvfOjBKunO8FGYDhUUqg/viewform?usp=sf_link

That’s all! BYE

[mnniska]

Some progress pictures for the updated bird idle animation I made today. It was tricky to get a groove on without making it look like the bird was dancing/walking around! 

[mnniska]

Rock Paper Feelings!

Last week, I went to Tallinn to participate in a 48 hour game jam. The whole trip was arranged by Game Camps, an incentive to get peeps across the Nordic countries to cooperate more by encouraging them to make games together!

I didn’t know anyone going into it, so it was a pretty intense week of game building with initially strangers. It was super exhausting for sure, but I am super glad I went. My team had a total of five members - two programmers, me, one marketer and one audio designer. I took the role of artist and game designer - however we took care to carefully discuss and test the initial design together so I was certainly not the only one designing in the group :)

Anyway! We ended up winning, whaaat!

From the left; Jazeps Rutkis, Mika Simula, Sebastian Larsson (that’s me!), Jean-Philippe Dumont. Kristaps Auzins, one of our programmers, is sadly missing from this picture! 

People have been asking what this magical game was about exactly, so I figured I’d do a quick overview and share some details about the process!

WHAT IS ROCK PAPER FEELINGS?

In short, Rock Paper Feelings is about integrating strategy and drama into one experience, allowing both to influence one another.

You play as the leader of a bunch of individuals set to ~save the world~. Here is the catch - you are all birds, and birds are very driven by their emotions- meaning a bird’s abilities is a result of their current emotional state. You, as their leader, must manipulate your fellow bird friends into the right emotions for current and future battles in order to combat increasingly emotionally dramatic enemies.

Screenshot from the finished prototype

ORIGINAL INSPIRATION

My original inspiration for this comes from Persona 4, which is a combination of a JRPG a dating simulator. Here players must deepen their NPC relationships in order to create creatures of higher and higher power. As I became more proficient in optimizing my relationships, I noticed that my actions were driven by what I thought would make my digital friends like me the most - rather than what I personally felt. This shift from genuine interest to straight up manipulation was not addressed by the game - but as a player I felt like a sociopath, optimizing for most value rather than my own feelings!

Main character Yu in Persona 4. Hero or manipulative butt?

Original pitch

I was inspired to explore this theme further, and thus the idea of a leader manipulating their party to enter a certain emotional state emerged. I quickly realized this could be quite destructive if not handled properly - as a result I decided to make everyone anything but humans to distantiate it from real manipulation, and to keep the tone quite light. The initial pitch was simply that of a leader manipulating their team of birds to feel certain ways in order to succeed long term. A combination of strategy and drama.

Wait, how do we do that? 

After assembling a team based on interested people (which were from Latvia, Canada, Finland and Sweden!) we started defining just how one could integrate social manipulation and combat. In terms of feelings, we did not know what feelings would be included, how they would affect combat, or how one manipulated them. Due to our time limit, we decided to keep it simple and make combat grid-based and played out in a single round - no enemy AI or multiple step battles. As a further attempt to simplify, we decided to implement a simple rock paper scissors system with feelings - where one feeling always beats the next one in a circle.

Integrating feels into combat

The next question was how to even affect feelings. Originally, we theorized that the player could manipulate feelings in the journeys between battles - allowing the positioning of the team members to affect their emotional state. However, we quickly realized that if we could implement the feeling manipulation directly into combat - we could convey our entire intention within one core gameplay loop! This was great, because the strategy and drama would be intertwined.

Thus, feelings were designed to be changeable through combat. We came up with two parameters players could manipulate.

Lonely <-> Friendly

Brave <-> Scared  

The player can change their bird’s friendliness to loneliness parameter by placing them close or far away from other birds. Bravery is affected by a bird’s individual battle results - meaning a bird which continually loses a battle will become scared while a winning bird becomes braver.

Paper prototyping! 

After defining these rough overarching mechanics, we created what would become the foundation for our next two days - a paper prototype! Since the game was turn based, it was quite easy to test our ideas on paper. We spent at least six hours just discussing our core design and iterating on it it using this paper prototype.

Except for confirming our envisioned implementation was indeed quite interesting (on paper!), we also found that the player was given two goals;

1. To win the current battle.

2. To change the feelings of their birds to fit future fights

These two goals does not always work with each other - for example  one may need a scared and lonely bird for a future battle - forcing the player to make at least one bird always lose! We have a short term goal of winning the current battle, and a long term goal of manipulating the birds to fit future demands. Thus a tricky trade-off is created where the player is constantly balancing short and long-term goals.

Makin’ it

After we had established a tested core design with our paper prototype, it was pretty easy to implement this design in a digital prototype. The rest of the work was largely about implementing and communicating the mechanics of the paper prototype in a cohesive way and drawing a ton of birds. Smooth sailing in terms of design work! 

As the lone artist, I got to draw almost everything! Lots of fun! C: 

Final result

According to testers, the prototype succeeded in combining strategy and drama, at least to some regard! Players seem to experience the conflict between short term and long term goals, and there is at least a vague sense of drama created from changing the emotional state of characters - depending on the person playing it. I am very pleased and surprised that we were able to realize our goals in only 48 hours.

We still have some polishing and talking to do before releasing our baby bird to the world, but if you are interested in testing the prototype, feel free to DM me and I’ll send you an .exe ! :)

[mnniska]

Game of Fika in practise

About four weeks ago, we launched Game of Fika - an ubiquitous faction-based hide and seek game designed for workspaces. You can read more about the core design here.

Since I wrote that post, the game has been live and kicking for about four weeks now. I think this is an appropriate time to analyze the results so far to see what worked and what failed miserably.

But first! I’d like to show you some pictures of the implementation to give an idea of how this worked. This was pretty fun to make - physical UI design is weird..

Here is how XP and the two factions are represented. People must find small boxes, take their food, and puts it into the preferred Royal box (pictured above)

Each morning, a moderator comes in and updates the XP based on the food turned in previous day. Oh and there’s quests! We’ll get to that :)

Each weekend, we buy tea and coffee based on the levels of each faction and let people drink it all week. At the end of the week the boxes are integrated into the game as box people to be found and checked in for XP.

Okaygreat! As I was saying..

To get some data to base iteration on, we ran a specific quest last week

We posted this flyer everywhere in our school building and encouraged everyone to give honest harsh feedback. In total we received about 20 answers - which for such a small place as our specific school building is most likely somewhat representative of most Game of Fika players.

So hey, what patterns can we see?

Game of Fika’s core loop encourage loners to play

In our form, we asked people what actions in Game of Fika players had performed and how often they had played. The response was very interesting in that only four of our responders had actually contributed XP!

The rest had found and hidden small boxes - but nothing more than that.

I would attribute this to the fact that Game of Fika’s core mechanics does not encourage team play. On paper, we thought people would cooperate by letting other people on their team know where they had hidden boxes - so that friends could check in boxes if the person who had hidden them were not in the building on the given day.

But this is what ends up happening;

A person finds a box, checks it in, and goes to hide it. However when searching for hiding spaces, they naturally find new hidden boxes in the places they’ve searched - causing them to get even more boxes to check in and hide again! And thus the loop continues until all boxes have been found.

I have seen a lot of players go through this loop, taking most of the food for the day in a single swoop. Since each box can only produce one XP per day - this means all of the gameplay is done by a single person while the majority of players only find already used boxes.

Game of Fika does not encourage teamplay - it encourages elite players to do all of the work!

How do we fix this?

The most obvious solution is to restrict players to only turn in one box per day. That way the game becomes much more about checking in every day and contributing as a team rather than one person finding all boxes single-handedly. This puts much more focus on teamplay, which leads us into the next point..  

Do not create teams based on taste

Here’s a fun stat from our questionnaire;

Almost everyone in our workplace prefers tea!

This is not entirely accurate - we know two very dedicated coffee players who have singlehandedly contributed XP to coffee and kept up the coffee honor. However they are still just two persons - up again 19 tea drinkers.

This is a bit of a shame because all of our playtesting is super skewed in that there is little to no competition. I think that from this one can learn that while dividing teams based on taste is very powerful emotionally and that it feels intuitive (one knows which team they are on from the start), it is not always what is best for the design of the game.

This is a tricky issue to solve, because our beverage-based teams gave a very low barrier of entry initially - one can participate without signing up or anything - just start contributing to your favorite beverage.

I am a bit stumped for how to solve this without abandoning the accessibility of the game. We do have balancing factors to help the team which is lagging behind - but when the team division is this obvious it becomes quite hard to balance for. For now I think simply dividing the teams based on balance rather than taste might have been an answer.

It’s hard to switch mediums

Game of Fika features a quest system!

Each tuesday, we would post a new quest designed to shake up the state of the game by using the existing mechanics. Quests worked this way; Each tuesday we would post flyers in our school building, instructing players to perform a quest action and report it online using Game of Fika’s facebook group.

We had a pretty grand vision for quests, but ultimately we found that our players did not feel like doing them for a simple reason- when your game is played in the physical world, people do not like to switch to the digital one. Game of Fika has a super low barrier of entry as there is no software to download - but getting people to take the leap to facebook (and especially considering how public facebook is!) was super hard.

I think the best way to solve this is by making sure that the whole gamer takes place within the same interface. If the core mechanics are physical - the quest system should be too. This way we could have kept our low barrier of entry and kept the game within the established magic circle.

That’s it!

I think Game of Fika was a really fun first step into the world of ubiquotous game design. I’m actually already working on a tiny second project to explore this field further (and in order to pass the course, mind you). I’ll let you know how it goes!

Thanks for reading!

The royal boxes with their loyal box people :)

[mnniska]

Music video game - Weird fishes

A while back, I came upon Music Video(game) jam. It is what it sounds like - a game jam about creating a game which is to be played while listening to a specific piece of music. As it turns out, the game jam will run through all of next week so if you’re into the idea - this is good timing!

I find designing a game to fit the mood of a piece of music to be a super tasty way to approach game design, so I decided to try it out! I had no idea when it game jam would run though so I just decided to do it independently on my free time this week. I chose the following song to music-gameify:

Radiohead’s Weird Fishes from their album In Rainbows.

What’s up with the song?

What follows is my interpretation of the song. I realize that song analysis may not be super exciting to you. If that is the case - feel free to skip to the next section where the goals for the  game is established. The song itself obviously has a bunch of different interpretations as well, below is just my take on it!

Okay let’s do this.

INTRO (00:00-00:50)

This is an instrumental part running for a good minute establishing the mood.

SETUP (00:50-03:03)

Here the lyrics come in. As they continue, the music also intensifies (in lack of a better word) to a crescendo continuing in the next segment. The lyrics are;

In the deepest ocean

The bottom of the sea

Your eyes

They turn me

Why should I stay here?

Why should I stay?

I'd be crazy not to follow

Follow where you lead

Your eyes

They turn me

Turn me on to phantoms

I follow to the edge of the earth

And fall off

Everybody leaves

If they get the chance

And this is my chance

I interpret this as someone with an obsession of some kind. It could be an abusive relationship, or simply an addiction. The main character is being manipulated by someone (“your eyes they turn me”) while simultaneously questioning their actions (“why should I stay here?”). Finally, the character follows their obsessions to “the edge of the hearth and fall off”. The unsustainable obsession has finally tipped over, forcing a change.

ROCK BOTTOM

Here, the music suddenly calms down, as if in the eye of the storm. Everything slows

I get eaten by the worms

Weird fishes

Get towed by the worms

Weird fishes

Weird fishes

Weird fishes

With the change, the character is consumed with whatever they were fearing, consumed by the reason they had their obsession in the first place. In the unhealthy relationship reading, the character breaks up with their partner here.

ESCAPE

Here the music speeds up again to the final crescendo of the song

I'll hit the bottom

Hit the bottom and escape

Escape

I'll hit the bottom

Hit the bottom and escape

Escape

Here, the character has accepted the change which consumed them, hit the bottom, and moved past it. They are able to escape from their obsession, ending it on a happy note.

Okay so what are you making?

Good question! Now that I had established what the song meant for me, it was quite simple to define what my little music game should provide in order to communicate my interpretation.

I need to establish..

OBSESSION. The player has some sort of obsession. As in, you are actively avoiding something, or collecting something, or working towards something. Ideally the tempo and tension is also built up during this part to match the music.

ROCK BOTTOM. The player is consumed by their obsession, or the thing they were working against.

ESCAPE. The player is changed and thus allowed to perform some power fantasy magic. They are freed from previous gameplay loops which trapped them and allowed to move freely. In short - a power trip which is the reverse of step number one.

How are you doing that?

Originally, I thought of the abusive relationship interpretation and considered having a companion which helped the player but ultimately stopped their progression. The player would be forced to get rid of their companion and learn to deal with the problems the companion helped with on their own.

For example. The player eats food pellets to grow bigger. The companion protects against enemies which try to eat the player, but will also hit the player if they grow too big - never allowing the player to grow bigger than the companion. In the end the player gets rid of the companion but is eaten by the enemies (“I get eaten by the worms and weird fishes”). Instead of dying, they are somehow transformed and sent on a powertrip!

I felt as though the companion was a bit heavy-handed however and decided to keep it simple. Avoiding enemies, being consumed by enemies, changing and ultimately being able to escape did sound like a pretty tasty setup however, which would still follow the plot points established.

So here’s the plan

Part 1 - Obsession.

You play as a bright tasty circle in the ocean.

Your goal: eat other tiny bright circles to grow. Avoid enemies which will attempt to eat you.

I may throw in a way for players to defeat enemies in act one as well, as long as the player never feels powerful - they should constantly feel like they are at the end of their ropes, barely making it.

As you play through the song, the camera automatically moves downwards, lower and lower into the ocean. The player starts near the surface and continues down until the next bit.

The white blobs and fishes are the obsession - the player’s quest to avoid a perceived danger and consume white tasty blobs.

Part 2 - turning point 

(3 minutes in) Here, the camera reaches the bottom of the ocean and stops there.

The player is consumed by fishes. I still need to figure out how to do this without it feeling super scripted since it needs to happen exactly 3 minutes in. I could spawn a ton of enemies close to the three minute mark, ensuring the player cannot escape no matter how skillful they are. Will need to think on this.

At the end of the day, the player is consumed in the following way

This transition is the main reason I am striving to use contrasting colors between the fishes and the player. When consumed, the player assumes the same color as the fishes. The player has been eaten until inverted. 

Part 3 - escape

Here comes the power trip. In this part, the player gets to chase and consume the fishes which were previously causing them so much trouble. I am also thinking the camera starts moving upwards again here, taking the player from the bottom of the sea to the surface. Admittedly most of what is planned for this is “eat fishes, grow big, feel powerful”.

I may just let the player grow bigger than the size of the screen and write “fin” on the player’s body as the song ends. We’ll see. 

Implementation

I spent about three days experimenting and running into dead ends. During thursday and friday I finally started on above plan and thus far we’ve got a moving player, blobs to eat, and enemies which moves in groups towards the player. I’ve worked for about 10 hours on implementing above part so far and expect it to take at the very least 50 hours. Hype!  

OKAY I’M DONE!

I will be continuing this project and let you know how it goes - it has been pretty tasty to not only get back into programming, but also work on conveying relationships and stories completely through gameplay.

I’m looking forward to continuing when I have more school to procrastinate! :)

Until next week!

[mnniska]

Game of Fika on paper

Last week, we made a Faction-based treasure hunt tea and coffee-generating game, played in workplaces! Allow me to explain. 

I am attending a design course specifically focusing on ubiquitous games - that is, games which are played in the real world and not only via a console, PC, cellphone etc. Games where the magic circle is extended beyond the computer screen. It’s interesting because when the area of play is extended to the real world, reality in itself more or less becomes a game. An ubiquitous game can give feedback in the form of lights, location-based apps, newspapers, twitter feeds, band recorders hidden away, QR codes or phone calls - it is limitless in input and output but limited in that it must be compatible with the conventions of the real world.

I’ve just started experimenting but it is very interesting how different the design process becomes when play can happen anywhere and the input methods are so diverse. So far I’ve cooked up two ubiquitous thingymajigs, below is an overview of one of them.

A game for a workplace!

So! I go to a game design school on an island in the middle of the baltic sea. All of the game design students typically hang out in a common building, called the F building. We work on videogames each day, we talk, we go to lessons and we hang out in this building. The building also contains a lunchroom where people can microwave stuff and sit together to eat.

So here’s an idea - let’s put a game in the F building. Let’s take this work environment and put in a game which is played simply by visiting the F building and interacting with it on a daily basis. A game designed for workplaces. The main reason for designing a game for this setting is that I had an excellent testing ground for the game already, which would allow me to iterate properly.

I came up with a vague concept - have a box, which generates free tea or coffee if users interacts with it.

It was a very simple system, a jumping off point. The interesting aspect was that the box would be a person in itself - going through character development and changing based on how people treated it. This really scratched a narrative itch I had, but it did not much more.

At this point, I decided to ask a couple of my fellow classmates also attending the course if they’d be interested in joining (you get more points by cooperating!). I joined forces with three friends and we continued defining it.

But what do you DO?

The problem with the initial concept was that it was very strictly a quest -> reward system, with each quest being hand crafted. It required constant inputs from the game creators. The game was a conversation between artist and player - constantly requiring original inputs from the artist to work and providing no framework for play.

That was not in itself a bad thing, but with three more people we needed a bigger scope and in order to push the game to places beyond our particular F building, we’d need core mechanics - a game loop which players repeated over and over that was not dependant on constant inputs from creators.

We also had no clear goal of the game - it was a set of quests leading nowhere.

So then this happened

“Fika” in Swedish means to have a cup of coffee/tea with something sweet on the side. It’s an opportunity to get together and talk while consuming things.

We set up two factions - Coffee and Tea. The game would not only feature one box living in F, it would have two, each responsible for producing either coffee or tea. This way players could invest themselves in two different sides - it immediately creates tension and sets up a clear goal - beat the opposing faction by performing a core mechanic. The team who plays the most wins.

Mechanics for checking in

But we still needed a core mechanic - an action which users performed each day, built into their routine. In short - a way to register their devotion to their faction. We had a couple of different options. We could use twitter - each box could have an account - to check in people could either tweet @ the box or post a photo of the box. However this is a rather tricky core mechanic and requires twitter - not exactly a low barrier of entry. We mulled this over a while and finally came up with the concept of small boxes.

Open up a box, get some food, feed it to royal box, get tea or coffee. 

Small boxes are hidden away in the workplace (starting at ten boxes in total). Players gain XP for their faction by finding a box and checking it in with their preferred faction. This way all of the initial play is in the form of finding objects and checking them in - no twitter or download requirements, one simply begins play. With this another mechanic emerges - hiding boxes in the building after checking them in so that the opposing faction cannot find them. Thus the core loop becomes find box -> check in box -> hide box.

This seemed like a somewhat engaging core mechanic. We decided to continue defining this system and try to employ it!

Except for the act of finding and hiding boxes, we wanted to define how interactions between players who are holding boxes would play out. What happens when a player of the tea faction holding a box meets the player of a coffee faction? Can the coffee player do something? We did not want to resort to struggling since that could easily escalate. We needed a mechanic which would encourage players of different factions to engage with each other while still not souring the mood. Initially, we figured a player could get a box simply by asking for it - thus the delivery of a box would have to be secret. However this seemed a bit transparent and too easy for defending players. Then, we came up with the bribing system.

By providing a person carrying a box with their preferred hot beverage (either coffee or tea), the person carrying the box is forced to hand over their box in exchange for delicious tea or coffee. This approach carried with it a set of benefits. First and foremost the act of giving would be a mechanic, which we felt rather pleased at. It also meant that to use this mechanic to defend one would have to put in some effort.

Our hope is that team play is further encouraged as well using this tactic - the two factions can have coffee or tea bearers, waiting at the opponent’s box, ready to offer tea/coffee in exchange for boxes. By constantly communicating a team can organize themselves to defend their small boxes, ensuring they gain all the glory.

Rules detailing bribing!

All of this XP gained leads to level ups, going from level one to five. The higher the level, the better a team’s coffee or tea deliveries will be. The first team to reach level five wins the game.

That’s the basis of Game of Fika. We defined this design in a little less than a week and are preparing the physical components of the framework this week, meaning we are yet to launch the game. Next week ( 13/2/2017 ) we are running our first iteration of the game. Excitinggggg 

The royal boxes for Coffee and Tea, ready for feeding. Just have to add an XP bar! 

I hope you enjoyed this brief design overview of Game of Fika. I will be reporting how the first week of play went in my next blog! Did players enjoy the game? How many of the people visiting the F building played? Did people use the bribe mechanic? Did people organise themselves into teams? All will be answered, with the help of testing!

Until next time!

/Sebastian and/or Mnniska

[mnniska]

Rooted webcomic #1

For higher resultion, view the comic on imgur!

If you have 5 minutes, please leave your feedback in this form so that I can improve! :) https://goo.gl/forms/hiKhWHizZ8mDkjXI3 

Thanks for reading, and happy 2017!

[mnniska]

This is my new project! :) Would love to hear what you think 

Rooted introduction

Hi!

Recently I have been creating a new world to set stories in. I am creating a series of shorter games and comics exploring this world.  While I am not completely done, I feel as though your feedback would be very much welcome. I want to include you peeps in the development process.

What is it?

Rooted follows a town built on top of a giant creature wandering through the world.

The town is mostly self sufficient - they grow crops and trees on the creature, harvest the giant fur to sew clothes and other materials, and mine the horns of the creature to create more sturdy things such as weapons and foundations.

Every once in a while, the creature ceases their endless trot to slumber. For a short while, the giantfolk can visit the ground to trade and mingle before the creature wakes up.

To the people living on the creature there are two worlds. The familiar and constant soft and furry world of the town set in the fur of the creature, and the ever changing, moving world of the ground. The world of the ground is always different , forever changing as the creature continues walking onwards. The creature folk are forever moving this way, but also forever rooted to the creature.

Intent

I want to explore how life on the creature is. To explore their world and use that in context of my own worldview to gain a better understanding of myself.

Does the townfolk ever feel trapped? Do their youth run away to the unknown ground world? Does the town traditionally reproduce with people from the ground world to increase their gene pool? What does the ground world think of the creature? What if a city is trampled down, does people get angry and what do they do about it? What happens when they meet another creature with a town? What if their giant is a predator, for example a spider?

Those are some potential plotlines set in this world. For now I am still creating the world and establishing just how it works though!

View from a small settlement on the edge of the giant.

What do you want from me?

I am involving you in the development of Rooted, if you would like to!

Here is how it works;

Every week or every other week, I will post a new update on the project. I will give you guys a script, a comic, a prototype or simply some artwork. In the same run, I will provide a feedback form, you will hopefully give feedback, and based on your feedback I will pivot accordingly!

While I have a vision, I believe it is important to listen to your audience and iterate from there. If you’re into it, I would love to take your opinion into consideration.

Okay, let me join!

Into it? You can leave some feedback and sign up as a tester here - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfs_tElhyRJ2VJ0tuiVjBKdcRynAH2Zihld8DfQm_xjpVZe9Q/viewform 

Aside from watching this space, I also have a twitter where you may find more frequent updates. 

[mnniska]

People living on hairy hills..? Drawin’ some landscapes!  

[mnniska]

A short comic about being tired I drew to procrastinate ~

[mnniska]

Drew a lil’ color test!

[mnniska]

also magical

Catch of the day! Work in progress shot for an animation project. 

[mnniska]

magical!

Rough concept for an animation project

[mnniska]

Drew a wanderer girl. Feeling a bit rusty. 

[mnniska]

I attented a gamejam this weekend, and drew a bunch of art for that. We made a game about being a hero who has defeated their nemesis and is now left unemployed. Here are some gifs I made for the intro, middle section, and outro of the game.