Devlog by Braeden Hammill

Making a Change 

My team was having doubts about our core concept. Our main mechanic of plugging into things was confusing and any ideas we had for puzzle concepts weren't interesting enough to carry an entire game. We were also struggling with the narrative and how our gameplay would connect to it. 

We decided to make a change. Puzzles will no longer be the focus of our game. It will keep its core gameplay hook of changing your environment with an Augmented reality Headset, and it will keep its narrative themes of technology and how it can disconnect us from our humanity. That is the core of our game and the idea of puzzle solving is what we decided to let go. Puzzles will still be present in our game, but they are taking a significant backseat to our new focus on mini games.  

Mini games will take the form of daily household activities like cleaning dishes or passing the time with a boardgame. This allows us to make a much stronger connection between the narrative and our gameplay because the tasks will be quite mundane but are “improved” by wearing the augmented reality headset, the protagonist's reliance on technology to improve his life will be reflected during gameplay as the player decides if they want to complete a task the boring but rewarding way or the fun but self-destructive way. 

Creating Concepts

With this new change, I immediately got to work on concept art. 

This storyboard illustrates how a mini game would function. It starts with the player approaching and interacting with it. The interactions are simple and not very stimulating. If you decide to wear the headset, your inputs are the same but your actions are presented in an entirely new and exiting light. I thought using the Augmented Reality Headset to enhance the experience should have a consequence so i had an idea where the player got so excited while in the virtual world they played too rough with the toy and it got destroyed.

After I presented the storyboard to my team, they were happy with the result but noticed that I was still featuring the plug which was a left-over mechanic from when the game was still about solving puzzles. We agreed the plug was no longer necessary and the player should be capable of entering Augmented Reality whenever they want. This meant I needed to design a Heads-Up Display that would appear whenever players wear the headset. 

This HUD concept shows the players task list on the left and their messages on the right. 

Gathering Assets 

My final job during pre-production was to source free asset packs. The original plan was for me to create all assets, but I have now taken on other responsibilities like designing mini games. This means I will have less time to create assets so the team thought it would be best to source more generic objects like furniture and food so I can focus on a smaller list of assets that need to be made from scratch. 

This is a spreadsheet I made to organize potential asset packs.