Posted January 22, 2026 by RiversideService
First dev log for the thesis project!
For this project, I want to make a video game (not sure what it is yet), but the narrative would definitely be a big part of the game. From January to March is the brainstorming period for this project, and I hope to get a better idea of what I want to make and set clear project goals.
Week 1
Week 2
Inspired by Yoko Ono's "Painting To Be Constructed In Your Head", I took the verbs "mix" and "collect" and brainstormed some ideas I could be using in my game. I'm a big fan of puzzle games, so the instructions immediately sounded a lot like a puzzle to me. I pictured a game mechanic of breaking things apart and taking pieces from them to construct something new in a way the object was not originally designed for to reach a new goal.
To prototype this mechanic, I cut up three pieces of cardboard each with a different print on it and put the pieces into a box with holes on the three sides. The player needs to shake the box 66 times in any direction while counting out loud, then collect the pieces that fall out. In the end, the player is asked to summarize the pieces with a word.
Week 3
The action of shaking the box reminds me of shaking the box to get the fortune-telling piece out in Asian culture, which could be a potential puzzle solving mechanic. Also, after the first piece came out, the player would want to see more things come out of the box when they continue shaking, which would raise their expectation of what happens at the end of the action. But if the instruction of shaking the box is too detailed, players would also migrate their attention to the shaking action instead of what falls out of the box, so there's a balance that needs to be weighed.
That's my progress so far. What's gonna happen next? Idk. But stay tuned for more!