With the final project coming around, Paulami, Nick and I started brainstorming about what it is that we want to make for our Physical Computing final.
I was mesmerized by a game called Spaceteam. It is “A cooperative shouting game for phones and tablets”. The idea is that all of the players are in a team that is flying in a spaceship, and they have to work together to keep the ship flying and out of danger. It involves a lot of communication and teamwork.
Jumping off from the game, I started trying to boil down the principal ideals that makes Spaceteam such a great game. For me, what makes it so great is that Spaceteam tries to explore the idea of facing imminent doom in a comical way. It is both absurd and scary, and the natural reflex to cope with that is somehow humor.
I try to push this idea of “facing imminent doom in a comical way” in our brainstorming sessions. During our brainstorming sessions, we try to think of things that we might want to make, we include concepts, interactions, and themes. Here is some of the result.
Concept. The concept of our creation is that we will make a game. It will be a cooperative game between 2-4 people. We want it to be fun and is immediately graspable. But we also want to have a deep backstory so that it is not easily forgotten.
Interaction. We want the game to have a lot of physically tactile interaction such as turning on knobs, sliding on sliders, switching on switches, shaking things, or even jumping. We also want to force the players to work together in a way that makes everyone is responsible for everyone else. And we want it to be loud and rowdy.
Theme. We try to go with “facing imminent doom” as a starting point. We landed on the backstory where the earth is falling apart, and all humans have left the earth, except for the people who are playing. They must then work together to try to leave earth. But plot twist, they really can’t. Death is imminent, but have fun (maybe).
