Poster

Okay so let's talk about the poster.
        We designed it to represent the game at Digitech, which was an students+technology event at our university. We wanted to have the game there and have people play-test it, but we had class for the majority of the event so it did not end up working out. Luckily, we did have the poster there to represent the game and the people looking after the poster told me there was some interest in it throughout the day!

        The idea behind the poster was to explain the elemental tetrad of the game (Mechanics, Aesthetics, Story, Technology) without boring the reader to death. We wanted the poster to be halfway between a typical game poster (lots of flash, little explanation) and a research poster(lots of explanation, no flash). We also wanted to find a way to represent all three philosophies of the poster without it being visually overwhelming. Over the course of drafting, redrafting and redrafting the poster we made some changes to the story and aesthetics, which I am personally very excited about. So without further ado, here is the poster.

poster that we made for Digitech
Here is a link! (in case that is your style)

        We managed to represent all aspects of the tetrad and have some flair! The title has a color to represent each philosophy: orange for Objectivism, sky blue for Kaniantism,  gray for Utilitarianism). Under the title there is a small blurb that explains the game: an educational philosophy game that focuses on the differences between three philosophies, higher levels simulate trolley car problems. The elements of the tetrad are spread around the poster, and story is at the top because it is useful to know when considering the aesthetic, as well as the overall design of the poster. The story explains that the translucent purple humanoid on the poster has no memory of himself, his values, his likes and dislikes. He needs your help to find himself and figure out why the little robed guys follow him around offering to help and to figure out how he keeps ending up in weird situations.
        The humanoid is standing in front of a 3-sided mirror and there is a different character in each face, one for each philosophy. The humanoid is one of the three characters, throughout the game he figures out which one. In the poster the humanoid is translucent because everything is uncertain for him.
        The minions in the background represent understanding of the philosophy (because you get more of them in the game by demonstrating an understanding of the philosophy).
       The black to gray gradient in the background represents the aesthetic, which is dark and blurry in the beginning (because that is how the mind of the humanoid is-fuzzy and dark and uncertain). As the game progresses the humanoid remembers more about who he is and what he values. As that happens the aesthetic get lighter and more detailed.
        The mechanics and technology have not changed, since the last blog post about them. I like the changes we made to story and aesthetic. Hopefully the thought we put into the poster translates to the viewer. It might be one of those monkey cage situations where it makes sense to me because I have spent so much time working with it. The people that saw it seemed to understand what we were trying to get across, so that is promising!

Kourality

WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eventually we decided to call the game Kourality, at least for now. 
I still like Die Ethik, but it sounds kind of serious (and this game isn't even a little serious). Kourality seems to better represent the game. It is a word we made up by combining Kantianism Objectivism Utilitarianism and moRALITY. We can change the title later if we think of something more fitting. It is very exciting to have even a working title!!!!!

In addition to thinking of a name I designed a poster to represent the game! I understand why it is not usually one person's job to think of concepts, design and model characters, create and debug levels AND make the posters. I really enjoy doing all of those things, but there are not even close to enough hours in a day to do it all. During the poster making process we decided it would be better to have the player play through the first 3 levels without instruction and to monitor them during that time and assign them to a philosophy based on that(but more on that in a later post.) The poster gave us new ideas for the story and aesthetic. We ended up re-writing the story and that led to us finally deciding on an aesthetic! WOO HOOOOOO! 

It was quite the action packed week, at least in terms of game progress. We are trying to keep up this momentum as we work on the weird bugs in the 3rd level and map out possible actions in the first 2 levels to certain philosophers. Next time lets talk in depth about the poster!