Market of Impossible Things Critique

Impossible Things Market Critique
by Group 30

“Each theme provided another layer of complexity in the construction of this “true” story while recognizing the elusiveness, if not impossibility, of absolute truth.”
“Image as text: Truth and Memory in Family History” Elizabeth Suda

The Impossible Things market based itself on the concept of time, split into three sections; past, present and future. Time itself can be considered an ‘impossible thing’, particularly as something you can buy/sell at a market.

The market ran on a charity/experience system; none of the stalls charged any concrete currency. One stall in particular charged in time, making players give up 60 seconds by waiting before giving them this time back as play time. This itself is a good example of ‘impossible things’ as nothing tangible was every exchanged.

There was a wealth of variety across the stalls, aided by the three section theme. The stalls in the ‘past’ section all felt very similar, as they based off the shared nostalgia of New Zealand childhood. They provided just enough context for the participant, then inviting them to “construct meaning … based on what they know and believe”. (Suda)

The present and future sections were much more varied. This made these sections feel less cohesive in theme, but did allow for a broader range of activities. The use of dark space in the future section created a good mood, but not all of the stalls fit in with it.

Player Survey

A last minute addition, but I had a thought of how we could make our stall more of a two way exchange, which is something we've struggled with from the beginning.

After the game, we give the player a survey to fill out rating their experience. This way, we get a judgement of our own character based on how we presented the game they just played.

These answers are very silly. Possibly too silly. But, like the story, we want to survey to be funnyand interesting so it doesn't feel like a chore to the participants.

Result Card WIP

Initial design for the result card we'll be handing out to players.

Keeping it simple b/w to keep printing costs down. One the day, we'll look at the results page from the player's game and fill in the numbers based on their actions. The 'Assessment' section is for whatever comment we feel like giving to the player, like "nice hat" or "bad at memory games". Just to make it more personal for everyone.

Story File WIP

An updated version of our story file, in preparation for our test run tomorrow.

New:

• Image background
• Stat counter
• End card

Still to be added:

• Final fight (Kezia and Michael side)
• More route options (Michael side)
• Possible changes to accommodate new mini games (Kezia and Michael side)

[DOWNLOAD HERE]

Game Mechanics Update

I've been working on a different organization method. We didn't want to have any choices end up being useless/unimportant, which meant keeping track of them all.

Originally I was doing this manually:

[hell.png]

This very quickly became a mess and waaaay more work than I could do (3 choices x 3 choices x 3 choices etc = thousands of boxes).

The new method is taking advantage of some coding Twine has built in, which allows you to keep track of characteristics, so the game can have a money system, keep track of if you've picked up certain items, etc, and change dialogue based on this.

This allows me to keep track of personality traits and give a more personalized end result while keeping the behind the scenes tidier and easy to work with. (It looks the same to the player, but with less of a chance of mistakes since I don't have to spell check 10000 passages.) The traits I'm using are Passive, Aggressive, Curious, Cautious, Fun, and Serious.

[new structure]

I've also been working on the style sheet to make the game more interesting to look at than black text on a white background. I'll look at adding more once I've got all of the technical side sorted.

Week 9 Update

This week was the Impossible Things market, which we attended as critiques. It was a lot of fun, and definitely set a standard to live up to. We each got around to nearly all the stalls, and took a lot of notes we now need to put together into a 200 word report.

[Waiting room selfie ✌]

Our market is next! We've been making good progress on our stall over this week.

• Sam is working on a title sign for our stall
• Kajal is sorting out decoration
• Michael has gotten a stand display for our stall as well as buttons.
• Kezia has been working on finishing up the story and game mechanics.

We've also each been woking on mini games for the final. We'll be having a meet up on Saturday to test out the whole set up and games before the market on Wednesday.

Story WIP

Kezia's half:
Download here

Michael's half:
Download here

Together! (Still in progress)

Game progress

I'm still progressing on writing my part of the story. I have it all planned, now I just need to get it written up and linked together.

One issue I'm running into is, as shown in the above image, there's a lot to keep track of in terms of choices and their outcomes. The plan is to make sure every decision counts and is counted on the card. Doing this in Twine will mean we won't have to be keeping tallies on the day, along with everything else we're taking care of. However, it does mean a spaghetti junction of boxes to wrangle with.

The other thing I'm worried about is whether the story is going to be too long, which will hold up lines and potentially get boring for players, but this can be tested tomorrow at the proto-market.

Cuba Street in the rain

Some photos I took on Cuba Street in the rain the other day. Fitting for our game illustrations.

Also some quick sketches based around our idea:

Finalising Ideas for the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Story

The Narrative - Further Thoughts and Ideas (planning)

Concept for the Narrative: Wellington and Elements

Updated Colour Scheme

Week 7 Class

We got time in class today to break off and discuss our stalls as a team. Michael and I explained the story to the others and we talked about what kind of decorations we could have, how the stall is going to run, etc.

What we need to do by next week's proto-market:

• Finish the story (will still be editted, but the main storyline should be done)
• Organize equipment
• Interlaced minigames
• Buttons? That do things hopefully?

^^ By Michael ^^

Colour Schemes

We told Sam what our story was about and he started making up a palette to use when decorating our stall.

Themes: flooding, water

More Story notes

[add Michael's notes]

THOUGHTS:
I think 5 choices is a bit much, especially if we want to them to make quick decisions. It would be better to have similar choices split off into more specific ones (e.g. “Approach person” = confident, which can then split into “steal phone” (confident + mean) or “offer help” (confident + nice).)

I think we can avoid the “final choice is the only one that matters” issue by just making sure not to link choices; make each path unique so we know exactly what choices they made the whole way through and give an ending based off that.

This sounds like more work but we could still copy/paste scenarios, we would just be able to keep track of the events up until that point. This would also mean we wouldn’t have to stick to just 5 traits, we could look at the overall combination of choices and deduce their character (hopefully without making this too complicated haha;;)

Another idea I had to combat the inevitable “well I’ll choose this because it’ll advance the plot” issue: sometimes instead of action choices we give emotional choices. E.g.

“Do you enter the big interesting building or not?” < everyone’s just gonna enter the obvious plot building, even if it might look dangerous.

“You see a big building, the only one around for miles. The door is open, beckoning you inside. You feel...
> Anxious about what is to come.
> Eager to see what’s inside
> Resigned to the fact entering this building is your only option”

This would let us get an image of their personality while also advancing the plot to another choice that won’t be as obvious.
Other traits:
* Self preservation (don’t risk life for others, just try to get yourself out)
* Curiosity (exploring everything)

I did some further possible plot on my own. I kinda focussed on something mystic involving water, since we already had the protag waking up in a fountain. Including magic stuff also allows for more possible pathways and more intense scenarios.