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DANA STEINHOFF
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Creating a Dynamic System for Linear Dialogue - Design (Part 2)
Spirit Island Development Update: For my third Unity prototype, I created an "interrupt system" for the player to interact with and impact a linear dialogue chain. The goal is for the player to feel like less of an observer and more of an active participant during a dialogue scene. Part 1: Inspiration + Research Part 2: Design Part 3: Postmortem The “cop car scene” is where I’ve tested out my own “interruption system.” The Sheriff is taking Emma to her father’s house to allow
Creating a Dynamic System for Linear Dialogue - Inspiration + Research (Part 1)
Spirit Island Development Update: For my third Unity prototype, I created an "interrupt system" for the player to interact with and impact a linear dialogue chain. The goal is for the player to feel like less of an observer and more of an active participant during a dialogue scene. Part 1: Inspiration Part 2: Design Part 3: Postmortem I had made a bold claim when I first set out to design Spirit Island. I had decided that the majority of the storytelling would come through au
Making a Badass Puzzle - Part 3 Postmortem
Spirit Island Development Update #4: For my third Unity prototype, I created an "interrupt system" for the player to interact with and impact a linear dialogue chain. The goal is for the player to feel like less of an observer and more of an active participant during a dialogue scene. Part 1: Inspiration Part 2: Design Part 3: Postmortem In-Person Observations It was fascinating watching people play this game. I received a very good spread of testers, ranging from people who
Making a badass puzzle! Part 2 - Design
Spirit Island Development Update: For my third Unity prototype, I designed a difficult puzzle for a touchscreen device that required three steps of logic and relied mainly on audio clues. The goal was to for the player to experience a moment of joyous surprise and a great sense of accomplishment after completing the puzzle. Part 1: Research and Concepting Part 2: Design Part 3: Postmortem The Nitty-Gritty I designed and implemented this puzzle in Unity, using Procreate (a dra
Making a badass puzzle! Part 1 - Research and Concepting
Spirit Island Development Update: For my third Unity prototype, I designed a difficult puzzle for a touchscreen device that required three steps of logic and relied mainly on audio clues. The goal was to for the player to experience a moment of joyous surprise and a great sense of accomplishment after completing the puzzle. Part 1: Research and Concepting Part 2: Design Part 3: Postmortem A well-designed puzzle inhabits that ideal gameplay state that we aim for as developers:
Florence: How touchscreen interactions can add to story
Florence is an iOS touchpad game released just a couple of weeks ago on Valentines day. It was created by a tiny (four person) team called Mountains out of Australia, and published by Annapurna Interactive. It is a short, linear narrative game about romantic relationships which is playable in about an hour and which may or may not make you cry (speaking from personal experience). Florence tells a single, linear story, and the game element is figuring out which interactions wi
The Room Three: A Deconstruction
The Room Three is a first person adventure game for iOS and Android devices wherein a player explores mysterious, highly-rendered environments while progressing by solving “puzzle box” style puzzles. It was developed by Fireproof Games, a small indie outfit who have grown (slightly) bigger following the success of their The Room series, their first games as a studio. Audience Analysis The Room Three is a game for explorers, through and through. The only player objective is to
Lara and Nathan: How complex characters make good stories
Take two games which are more alike in all ways than they are different: Uncharted: A Thief’s End, and the 2013 redux Tomb Raider. Both are
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