Posted March 13, 2020 by Kez
#2D #Game Design #Redesign #Process #Mystery #First-Person #Atmospheric #Story Rich
The Arcadia Report is an immersive murder mystery unique to you, transforming your city into an escape room. Travel to real world locations, unlock clues, and uncover the secrets of Arcadia as you delve into corrupted records of a failed startup with murderous consequences.
In week 3, I was deep in rounding out the new tutorial case that sees you rebooting (or attempting to reboot) the mysterious Arcadia database full of dark secrets that might point to why the founder turned up dead. You can read more about that in the previous dev log. This meant hopping between testing with old and new players while rounding out the case and honing the visual design. So with that done, the goal was to bring a bit more focus to the work and focus in on the next stage: solving the murder of Arcadia’s founder.
I set out to do a ‘content bash’, focusing in on the story of Arcadia, working out knots, and polishing up the clues for the first case before prototyping it out in the new designs.
All good, all going well. Then I started properly analysing the results after the final session from the latest round of testing.
The second half of the week then brought on an abrupt gear shift, going from content focused to rapidly prototype a v2.5 streamlined design which tackled the key points of feedback. In hindsight, I should have kept my focus and finished out the sprint, letting the design wait until next week. However, on the upside, I now am entering week 5 with all the essential ingredients and ready to bring it all together.
So after the unplanned but valuable detour into rethinking how to improve the design not just based on issues users noticed but the root cause of those problems, it’s time to buckle down. My goal is to have a prototype of the next mystery up and running to road test the new design. This is also a chance to start having more fun experimenting with the visual imagery, glitches, and corrupted clues you’ll find scattered around Arcadia’s creaking database. So now it’s back to plotting a murder (fictional, of course).
Until next time, stay safe.
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