Concept Challenge – Lady Lovelace and the mystery at sea

By: Simon Lundgren / October 13, 2014 /
Program: Programming
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A chance to test out our skills and prepare ourselves for future assignment, the random narrative concept challenge had us pick a narrative randomly and then make a concept pitch about it.

Your main character is a fun-loving 50 year-old woman. The story begins in a boxing club. Someone is haunted by a traumatic experience at sea. It’s a story about prejudice. Your character approaches the situation extremely carefully.

We really liked the potential of this character. Our first focus was on the 50 year old woman and the traumatic experience at sea. This screams horror/puzzle game and we went from that.

Aesthetics
The aesthetics becomes:
Narrative: Story engagement
Discovery: Investigation
Challenge: Logic Puzzles, Stealth

The perspective is third person.

Story
We loosely defined the story, a woman looking for her husband in a spooky environment. It starts at a boxing club with a patron having a accident at sea and knowing something about Lovelace late husband. It the game, the lady will go trough rough city blocks and uncover something much larger than she expected.

MechanicsThe mechanics are:

Walking around
Talking with NPCs
interacting with objects
picking up objects
Using picked up objects


Death by enemies

Dynamics
Sneaking around enemies (Investigating, stealth)
Solving Puzzles (Logic puzzle, investigating)
NPC social puzzles (Investigating, logic puzzle)
decisions based on story (story engagement)

Core Loop
Solve Puzzle -> Story Progression

Key Features
No inventory – only one object may be carried at a time. This enhances the puzzle-solving aspects of the game and encourages players to think about the challenges before them, rather than simply hoarding items and using trial-and-error

Feedback
Adam really liked the no inventory feature which also made sense on context of what we’re trying to do with the game.

Takeaway
I noticed something doing this analysis. Firstly, it is a pretty boring format. I am mostly analyzing the system and not features in the system which makes them work. I think this is a pretty big mistake which I realized doing this post. In the future I will be more focused on features rather than the MDA.

About Simon Lundgren

2014  Programming
Tags: 2014 , 5SD018