Weekly progress 4/11

The information provided by Maria gave me some good inspirations. I tried to use Kezie Todd’s way of thinking to consider my problem to help me design the mechanism of the room escape game at this stage. Kezie asked a few questions at the beginning to help write the storyline. I also imitated this method and asked a few questions:

1. Compared with the traditional escape room, what do I hope is the difference?

2. From the perspective of the game, what kind of experience I want to give users.

3. How to encourage users to cooperate.

4. What theme of the story should I set.

The first question is related to the technology I want to use. Unlike the traditional escape room, I hope to allow users to experience the game in a familiar environment. This is because I am very curious about what unique experience the mixed reality environment and virtual environment can provide users within this form. I assume that this is the only way to “bring the mystery to life effectively” (this is one of the goals Kezie wants to achieve). So this is the main difference between my design and traditional room escape games. Besides, my goal has become clearer: I am not designing and testing a better escape room game, but wanting to use escape room as content to explore the possibilities and development prospects of AR multiplayer games with cloud anchors. Therefore, key points of my escape room are mix virtual and reality, encourage multiplayer cooperation, make the experience real, and let the player take on the role. These key points have a lot of overlap with Kezie’s key research issues.

Realizing teamwork is the meaning of the multiplayer online function. I hope to provide players with a way of cooperation that is close to reality. It is not only communication cooperation like Tick Tock, but also interactive cooperation like the two people mode of Portal 2. The game is the same. Therefore, in the overall process, I should indeed provide parallel tasks as Matt mentioned, rather than single-threaded tasks. Besides, more interactive links that require cooperation should be designed to encourage players to do something together. An additional idea of ​​mine is to give players different identities and skills to force players to cooperate. The advantages of this design are that the game content can be distributed evenly and the players are aware of the importance of other players.

Steven Melendez mentioned in his article How to design an escape room that they used a modular approach to build the game flow. This is a good way. I also hope to complete the design of a module instead of designing a complete level and puzzles at this stage.

Based on the above ideas, what I am currently considering is a simple entry-level. Tasks are evenly distributed to players and contain some basic puzzles. I’m trying to design a theme story that is more compatible with this kind of interaction. This story should be close to real-life to provide players with a sense of reality. Basic technical implementation is still the focus of my research because there are no similar cases that can be used for reference, and a platform for actual testing is still indispensable.

At present, the bug of generating items has been basically fixed. The next step is to try to complete the online function, as well as redesign the background story and game mechanics.