My plan for the upcoming three prototypes would be to test out the overall style and atmosphere of the game, the story/storyboard of the into animatic, and the mechanics and level of enjoyment of one of the minigames. This plan may change depending on the feedback I receive as I might decide to just continue to focus on one aspect of the project. However, what I listed was what I at least have planned at the moment.

The first prototype would be regarding the overall style and atmosphere of the game. To test this, I will have a very basic and short demo of the game opened up on Unity for people to try out and see. What will be included in the opened demo would be a basic background soundtrack, a few basic sound effects, one area, and two characters. As for mechanics, the only thing the players would be able to do is walk from one end of the area to the other (arrow keys to move left and right) and interact with the one npc provided (spacebar to interact). Interacting with the npc will bring up one dialogue box with only one line of dialogue. And then clicking after the dialogue’s finished would just let players exit the dialogue/close the dialogue box. All of these actions are repeatable. The purpose of showing this demo/prototype would be to gather feedback and answers the following questions:

1. Does the game look nice?
2. Does everything seem to go well together/match in style (ui, sprites, bg, music, sound effects) or do some elements not fit the puzzle/need to be switched?
3. What type of atmosphere do you get from just this short experience? Is it a relaxed mood?

The second prototype would be the showcasing of the storyboard I’ve created for the animatic and what frames I’ve finished by class time that day. There isn’t much in terms of what people would be doing as it’d be just them looking through the file I’d have opened up on my laptop. However, the purpose of this prototype would be to gather feedback and answers the following questions:

1. What do you think is happening in this animatic? Can you tell what the story is?
2. How is the flow of everything so far and does it make sense? If there are parts that are confusing, why is it confusing? Do you think there are some frames missing, some that should be removed, or if there’s some other type of change that needs to be made to the storyboard?
3. Does the style I’ve drawn the animatic in match the game? When put side-by-side, does the animatic look like it’d belong in a different game or do the puzzle pieces fit together well?

The third and final prototype would be me testing the mechanics and level of enjoyment of one of the minigames. For this, I’d have a basic, demo version of one of the rpg’s minigames opened up on Unity for people to play and test out. The basic idea of the game is that you are on a grocery run. However, to buy the groceries on your list, you need to play a game upon reaching the store. The game itself would be a simple ‘match/pair up the cards’ type of game where players would be clicking on two cards at a time to flip them over and see what they are. After that, they’d then try to flip over a matching pair. The goal of this game however isn’t to match/pair up every card but to only match/pair up the cards with the picture of the ingredient you’re trying to buy. And then each match/pair you make decreases the amount of money you start the game with. If you get to zero without buying everything on your list you lose and then vice versa, you win. The only game mechanic here would be mouse clicking and the difficulty wouldn’t be that high. I’m not sure what progress I’d make by the time class starts, but if I wasn’t able to do enough, I’d probably do a paper prototype of the game instead. As for what the purpose of this prototype is, I’d be trying to gather feedback and answers the following questions:

1. Was this game easy to understand/play? Were the rules clear?
2. Is this game fun? Is it stressful? Is it stress-free?
3. Any changes you think I should make based on what you’ve played so far?