I spent time this week defining milestones and designing a mechanic for SenseU.

Milestones

I broke the game design and development down into parts and steps, then prioritized them.

Game design

I previously wanted to have the game exist in another world and for players to be guided by a mysterious being. However, instead of continuing to focus on the story without having defined a mechanic for the game, I decided to step back and figure out the game’s functionality instead.

I used a set of ideation worksheets I designed for a game development workshop to write down as many ideas as possible. After writing down 8 ideas, I expanded upon one of them

I did the ideation process twice. The “x” marks are over ideas that didn’t seem interesting or possible.

After deciding on the idea of solitaire for conversations, I did some sketches to figure out what the interface could look like.

Next, I created a basic interactive prototype using InVision.

My next step is to build the mechanic into the game. Wish me luck!

Diagrams

I created a mind map of my paper using Omnigraffle.

Finally, I created a mind map of the story for the game. Instead of the old story I mentioned above, you play as a resident advisor in college, supervising the students in your classes who also live in the dorm. Part of an RA’s job is to resolve conflicts between students in their dorm. This will fit well with the goal of my game.

That’s all for this week! Until next time.