Eating, Dressing, and Development Updates

Building on top of the latest round of playtests and conducting some concentrated feedback sessions with trusted friends, I'm starting to get into full CONTENT DELIVERY MODE. This means that the "bones" of BoJ are pretty much set and the core game loop is fully functional. There is one important element that I still want to prototype and I'll talk about in a separate post when it's done. For now, the important thing is that I can begin to move on from the architecture devwork and start creating/iterating more minigames.

To that end, the two minigames I've been developing over the past couple of weeks have been a feeding minigame (shown above) and a socks minigame (shown below). Both of these use similar timing mechanics that require the player to interact at a certain time, but the feeding minigame has more "risk" involved since feeding the baby at the incorrect time will lead to more stress (and potential mess).

I'm not wholly convinced that the socks minigame is "challenging" enough and I'm worried that I don't exactly know how to increase the difficulty of this for the second & third visits to this challenge. I can't remember if I ever mentioned this, but after the first one or two times of visiting a minigame, a new element will be introduced to increase the challenge. For the socks minigame, I'm not exactly sure how this might become more difficult, but I'm open to ideas.

With the completion of these two minigames (and their subsequent polish this week), there are now SIX challenges featured in the playtesting demo (which you can sign up for here). I want that number to reach to eventually reach 15 total (with 1-2 tiers of difficulty per minigame). I've started to expand the scope of what I want to include and want to diversify the kinds of interactions/challenges themselves since I feel like these last two are pretty similar (timed events based on a bit of random baby behavior). One of the next minigames I want to work on is more of a memory game, and the other will incorporate input sequences (almost like a typing game). Some of the feedback I got a while back said that the interactions were a bit too similar to one another and I agree that offering more variety will add to the chaos.

The last item I want to share is an update to some of the UI and plans for the end-of-day sequence. A big element of the game is providing space for the player to reflect on their play experience (and by extension reflecting on their "parenting"). When the player reaches the end of the day, they're asked to reflect on their parenting, and this will become a journal that they can access during the day, and (perhaps) interact with during downtime. However, I felt that the way the story was being delivered in these end sequences felt aesthetically distracting and pulled me (and playtesters) out of the experience. Below you can see the changes I've made, and I'm planning on doing something similar in downtime activities.

Additionally, when players submit end-of-day responses the game "reacts" to their statements. When "negative" language is used--specifically language used that denotes a certain amount of doubt and/or frustration--a pop-up prompt encourages the player to consider using positive self-talk and encourages them to keep going even if they feel like they're not doing a "GOOD" job. This positive reinforcement is an important element of the game loop, and I'm considering how to add a "gamified" layer to enact a bit of social/emotional change. I'm a bit reluctant to do this because I want this to feel innate, but I'll have to try it out and see how players feel.

I think that's mostly it for this update. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on at the moment including SFX work (more soon!), some additional illustrated backgrounds for each scene, some updated shader work, and some exciting collaborations for growing the audience for BoJ. I'll be sure to update everyone as things continue to develop and now that my teaching duties are done for the summer, I'm planning on kicking things into pretty high gear!

Thanks for reading and talk more soon!