Start and Stop Progress

Stuck 
We seem to have been stuck for a while. Something about the first levels is not quite right and we keep rethinking the way they should be to accomplish the bigger goal . Now we are thinking that instead of forcing the player to pick a philosophy blindly we should let you play through the first few levels without any instruction. During those levels we will monitor the players in-game actions and the combination of those will determine which philosophy you align closest with. Then the player will play through the rest of the game as that philosopher.
I think that if we go this route we will have to have the first few levels for monitoring, and then the next levels will be about instructing the player about that philosophy? But that sounds like it could get boring, so perhaps we could have the first 3 levels for monitoring and then for the following levels implement the sliding scale idea in which the player sees a sliding scale with an ideal range that the player tries to stay in by performing certain actions. See? There are so many ideas floating around, it is hard to just pick one to implement and test.

Style
I still have access to the HUGE book about Game Design by David Perry, I think it would be beneficial for me to schedule some time with the book daily, just to think and what have you.
Also I regret to inform you that there has yet to be a style commitment. It feels like something that should develop naturally, yet I do not see it happening; so that is cause for some concern.

Digitech 
There is a small thing at our university where students show things they work on that are technology related. We would like to have the game there to see some people play-test the game. This will be beneficial so that we can continue moving forward with the education. If it seems like people are picking up on the subtle things we are trying to get the player to learn in the first few levels then thats great! But if not, we will need to return to the drawing board. This also might be a good opportunity to create the several versions of the first 3 levels that we keep bouncing between and we could have people play different versions throughout the day and see which one gets the better response overall.

Two very important things that we need before the event (besides a working version of the game):

1. a title for the game 
• or at least a working title, just SOMETHING
2. a poster to represent us and the game 
• since we have classes the day of the event we will not be able to be in attendance all day
• but we still want the game to be represented 
• it is unfortunate that there will be times when people will not be able to play the game because when we are gone, our computers will be gone
• perhaps we can have the poster to represent and also have some sort of "contact us if you want to playtest this game for us!" type of deal, but I do not want to just have my email lying around for everyone to see..hmm.. any ideas? 

okay so, think about all of that over the next few days. 

Ker Blam!