Team Pitch - Project: Renew

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Game Name:  

Project: Renew

Category:  Educational / Environmental

High Concept:  

Solve various puzzles by interacting with many objects to reduce the global carbon footprint.  Reduce pollution, traffic, waste, and various actions that harm the environment.  Puzzles may rely on other puzzles within the current map in order to be completed.  Be wise in choosing how to solve the overall puzzle.

Target Audience:  

10 - 20 year olds.

Overall Description:

Come up with solutions to solving environment-renewal-themed Rube Goldberg Machines.  Each map will be made up of dozens of objects that make up a puzzle.  The map will have one major puzzle that is reliant on several smaller puzzles.  Each puzzle will reduce the carbon footprint and the world will grow progressively cleaner.

As the player interacts with each map, key points will pop up educating the player on how that action reduces the carbon footprint, why it’s a problem, and what they can do to be a part of the global effort.

Fantasy Fulfillment:

The fantasy is to transform the world from a crummy, dying, polluted planet into a colorful, lively, prosperous one.  This will be displayed by making colors dark and environments drab at the beginning and introducing a little more color and liveliness as they progress through the levels.

Gameplay features: 

There’s no single entity to control.  There are various objects the player interacts with by clicking and dragging and dropping.  It’s fun for the player to be able to interact with the whole environment around them instead of just with one key character.

Similar Games: 

The Incredible Machine, another cool game Dom mentioned...it eludes me.

Similar Entertainment Products:  

The Films “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Wall•E,”  and “The 11^th Hour.”

Vote Results

Here are the results for the votes. 1st ranked votes were worth 5, 2nd worth 3.  If you didn't elaborate I used a simple algorithm to randomize between the ones you mentioned.

The game we are doing is based on Nate's pitch.  Everyone please make sure you are familiar with the idea.  I am going to write up a pitch tonight.  We will elaborate on the recycling idea as we progress.

Tomorrow, we are going to discuss communication and get started on our Scrum meetings.  Try to be there.

Skyways Pitch

Name: Ellis Weiner

Game Name: Skyways

Category: Racing/Flying-Driving Simulation/Sci-fi

High Concept: A futuristic racing game built to model the highways of the future called Skyways. Race around a futuristic world, getting a feel for what it might be like to live in a world of flying cars while learning about the challenges and possibilities that come with planning for such a dangerous world. It's a concept game that can be used to model and propose the idea of implementing flying cars into the world.

Target Audience: Ages 16-21

Overall Description: Feel the rush of piloting your very own flying car. This world has been designed to model a real world simulation of floating highways and urban inclusion of this exciting technology. Race through cities high above the ground, getting a feel for the different obstacles and challenges that come into play when considering the general population flying through the air at hundreds of miles per hour. Customize your ships and show them off as you progress through the game. There will always be more challenges to earn and items to earn in this sci-fi adventure that could be our near future!

Fantasy Fulfillment: The player will be able to experience flying a car and racing it through cities and other exciting terrains. They can customize their experience through picking up and purchasing new parts and upgrades for their ships.

Gameplay Features: Customization will be a large portion of the game, letting players design their ships and add on to them. It will be an open world racer, where you aren't completely stuck to a set track, that way the player can make mistakes and learn about the dangers of piloting flying cars.

Similar Games: Wipeout, Need for Speed

It could even be like a funny "learning to drive in the future" kind of simulator with a computer voice guide (think portal) that will be both hypothetically educational and fun.

Fend The End Game Pitch

Fend The End

Game Idea Pitch

Written, Designed, & Created by Alex Stout

Category: Educational – Emergency Preparedness (possibly with advertisement)
High Concept: A tower-defense, strategy game that connects with gamers, but educates players the importance of emergency preparedness. (And possibly bring brand awareness to a particular Utah company).
Target Audience: E - Everyone. (Maybe teen, because I enjoy morbid things). But the goal is to teach people about preparedness, we probably want everyone to play the game.
Description (back of the box):
“Earth, 2015 — Hell is rising, Aliens are invading, Zombies are cannibalizing, unicorns are making rainbows...all thanks to the robots that travelled into the future to the distant planet kolob and opened the spellbound tomb of satan’s ex-lover kataka...Defend your fortress and obtain resources to fend off the evil-doers.”
Fantasy Fulfillment: It should feel like the world is ending, in a fun gloomy doomsday way. The player should feel like they need to scramble to gather resources and that they will certainly die if they don’t prepare for the next wave of evil.
Gameplay Features: There are three active protagonists. The player alternates between the three protags at will to defend various parts of the fortress. If a protag dies, they are gone forever. If all three die, game over. The fortress is defended with guns, traps, etc. In between waves, the player can collect resources. The better they prepare in down time, the better they will do in the next wave.
Similar Games: Age of Empires / Balloon In a Wasteland
Similar Entertainment Products / Cultural Relevance: Disaster intrigues people. It seems like Americans are obsessed with disaster. We also love zombies, aliens, robots, and demons with apocalyptic dispositions. And even more uniquely, in Utah, we obsess with Emergency Preparedness. So this game can educate these people on what they can do to prepare for supernatural disasters, with the intent to apply to natural disaster. 

Christina's Game Pitch - Era

So here's my game design. The image is a quick ref of what I had in mind.

Underneath it, I've put all the text again, just you can read it without having to enlarge the image.

- Christina

Individual Game Pitch

Name: Christina Butler

Game Name: Era

Category: Educational (A puzzler game, revolving lightly around the topic of animal extinction awareness)

High Concept: The animals are fading away! Gather up their tiles to build them back.

Target Audience: E for Everyone. Probably meant a bit more for younger children, as it is more of a matching (sort of memory) game with animals.

Overall Description: In Era, the idea is to match up similar tiles as quickly as possible. There is a mechanical sphere in the center of a dark room. The sphere opens up like an orange as you reach specific checkpoints, and there are tiles covering both sides of the “peels” and the inner core. You only have a certain amount of time before each tile begins to disappear, so you have to pair up as many as you can!

The goal is to essentially “save” the animal that each pair of tiles represents. After you collect all the pairs that relate to a specific animal, it will appear below the sphere and walk around underneath until the game is over. As you “save” each animal, the timer will increase to give you more time and a few more tiles will appear, to give you more of a chance.

To keep it a little simpler, there will only be about 3-5 animals, and they will be ones that are in a more critical threat of extinction.

Fantasy Fulfillment: I want them to be able to associate certain traits to each animal. There will be tips in the corner of the screen that hint at each animal as well as give you some facts about said animal. So the idea is to subtly get players to think about these animals.

Gameplay Features: The fact that it’s in a 3D environment is the key feature, I think. The player will be able to rotate around the sphere and the “peels”, so they have to seek out and find each tile. Ideally, the player would also be able to interact with the animals they’ve “saved” after beating the game (while seeing their score) and in the pause menu.

Similar Games: Mahjong, matching games in general.

Similar Entertainment Products: Extinct animal associations, in particular, would probably find this a good game for kids.

Nate's Game Idea

Game Name:  Constructing Recycling Contraptions

Category:  Educational/Environmental

High Concept:  Fill in the missing pieces of recycling contraptions using parts from a bin to complete the assigned recycling tasks.  Missions have more than one way of completing them so be creative in how you want to be part of the recycling solution.

Target Audience:  8 - 15 year olds

Overall Description:  Invent clever ways of filling in the gaps in a recycling Rube Goldberg machine.  Select parts from a bin and place them in the world so that they interact with garbage and other objects to complete your recycling goals.  Objects behave in specific ways.  Chain these behavors and reactions together to get garbage from wherever it is to where it belongs - in the recycling bin.  Learn about different ways of recycling various materials and see how you can make a difference in the world by just doing your small part.

Fantasy Fulfillment:  Educational as the player learns about recycling and the various ways it can be done effectively.  Puzzle solving accomplishment as they player discovers various ways of completing the assigned tasks.  Humor as the player watches a completely unrealistic (but funny) way of accomplishing a seemingly simple task.

Gameplay features:  Teaches players about recycling in such a way that they don't feel like they are playing an educational game.  The player enjoys watching the completion and execution of Rube Goldberg machines that ultimately recycle objects.  Since the player feels that they are having fun rather than learning (if the target audience looks at learning as the opposite of fun), they are likely to continue to play and subconsciously start thinking about recycling.

Similar games:  The Incredible Machine,  some other game that I swear I saw on the iOS app store that I can't seem to find now that no one else knows what I'm talking about.

Similar Entertainment Products:  Many.  A Google search of Recycling Game, Recycling Sorting Game, or anything else similar shows a slew of games with similar target audiences.  Kids that age are curious to learn new things.  Especially when they feel that these new things allow them to be part of something bigger than themselves and contribute to solving real world problems even at such a young age.  Schools, social gaming sites for kids (pbs kids and such), and similar venues for kids could get the game widespread in a hurry.  Adding leader boards could drive kid's interest even higher.

As an example of the gameplay of The Incredible Machine that the idea is based off of, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAL9TjyzUJI

Game Pitch from Dom

So, here is my idea. I don't believe it is really do-able in the scope of unity/this project, but its not a horrible idea i don't believe xD

Name: Self-Starter: Drive Towards Health

Category: Exercise Game

High Concept: Exercise program you can track online and see how you stack up against your peers

Target Audience: People looking to become more active/healthy 

Description: A game that contains a large selection of exercise routines (cardio, aerobics, resistance training, yoga, etc...) that the player can select from a list and follow along with. Weekly, monthly, or three-month programs can also be toggled which will provide a different training video each day as according to a set workout regiment. Diet plans will also be included, as well as an online tracker so the player can see how they have progressed from start to finish, as well as compare their health journey with peers around the world. Points will be given according to consecutive days using the program, or recipies being accessed, but the main reward will be health.

Fantasy Fulfillment: Less of a fantasy fulfillment as it is a means to achieve a healthier body if followed constantly and played each day.

Uniqeness: This game will make an exercise regiment more interesting; while many people will not have a strong support system (aka they are exercising by themselves and thus dont maintain a routine) this game will track your stats online, making it feel more competitive, leading to the player sticking to their goals trying to be as good as if not better than their peers. 

Similar products: P90x, Insanity, Wii Fit, Tae-bo with Billy Banks, etc...

So here is my game pitch again on here. Sorry I wasn't in class to actually do it, hopefully we can figure out who's game pitch sounds the best this way. 

Game Name: Avalanche Runner

Category: Educational

High Concept: A game that teaches about the dangers of avalanches in the backcountry and how to recognize when one could potentially occur.

Target Audience: Skiers and Boarders interested in backcountry, as well as people generally interested in avalanches.

Overall Description: Top down ski simulator where the player must navigate an avatar to the bottom of a backcountry ski hill that has high avalanche potential. As the player makes their way down the hill, they must decide what line is the safest, however still a fun line to take. After reading a little about avalanches before each level the player will need to choose a line accordingly in order to avoid avalanches.

Fantasy Fulfillment: The player should feel the thrill of living on the edge, while learning about the dangers of backcountry skiing and avalanches.

Gameplay Features: On rails ski simulator where the player controls where the skier goes down the hill. Directing the skier over certain terrain can unleash an avalanche if the player isn't careful. If an avalanche occurs, the player can attempt to ride it out or avoid it, but often times it will overwhelm and kill them resulting in a tip of what happened at the game over screen.

Similar Games: SkiFree, other ski based games.

Similar Entertainment Products: ... Skis?  

Pitches

K, so we pitched game ideas today for our teams.

By Tuesday 1/29, we have to have decided what game we're working on the rest of the semester.

Everyone please share your game pitch on the blog so everyone can see them and feel free to post more here.  Post references, more details..go crazy.  It would be nice if we can really nail it down and ask some in depth questions about the game we'll be working on by Tuesday.  So we need everyone to look at the pitches and be educated on the various ideas.  And for those of you that weren't here, we pitched the Avalanche one (Kyle's) and Era (Christina's) to the class.  But all ideas are still on the table at this point so feel free to keep thinking about them.

We also need someone to play the role of the consumer in our group.  This person's role is to back themselves out of the developer perspective and really think about what the consumer experience, what they expect, and what they learn/feel.

I hope to see your posts to the blog. See you all Tuesday.

Alex

Alex - Game pitch rough draft.

This is a link to my pitch from Game Dev I.  This is the underlying idea for my game pitch for our serious game this Spring.  I would like to wrap this idea in an agenda that pushes Emergency Preparedness.  Anyway, I'll write it out and share my pitch on Thursday.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxxu4RugfMUcMndDRDc0cnJRZnc/edit

Welcome

Welcome to the Naked Cat Studios home page.  This page was created for the University of Utah Film 3720 - Alternative Game Development class Spring 2013.  Team members are:

Producer:

     Alex Stout

Programming:

     Nate Anderson

     Ellis Weiner

Design:

     Dom Koewig

     Austin Wiecek

Wildcard:

     Tyler Keeter

Artist:

     Christina Butler

     Kyle Pieper

We will chronicle the life of our creation of an alternative game.  Check back often for updates and get a glimpse of the experiences and lessons learned from the making of a game.