Introduction:
First, our task was to create an asymmetrical game, which means, different players/characters have different abilities and strengths to coop or combat. Our group decided to create a coop game where 4 players have to help each other to solve the puzzle and escape the room/place. However, we also wanted to add a little bit of combat element to spice the game up. After we chose your mechanic, we started to build the theme of child abuse and their way of escaping reality using imagination/fantasy. 

Level Design:
In terms of level design, our group had several ideas for the puzzles, which ironically created a great confusion to clear out the levels. Therefore, our environmental designer, Nicole, gathered all the ideas and she developed them into gradual learning curve levels: Introduction level, puzzle and enemy combat level and lastly, boss level.

Character Design:
The character designs and environment designs were based upon a child’s dream so our team wanted to illustrate the child playbook art style yet using olive tone colors to resemble the darkness. As I, the character designer, wanted to enlarge the head to empathizes with their characteristics and show their emotions. However, in the build, it was hard to see their expressions because the camera is zoomed out too far. I wanted as the diversity into this game by mixing various races. 

Inspiration:
Through this process, we were inspired by the film, My Life as a Zucchini, because it is about a boy who was sent to an orphanage house after his alcoholic mother’s death and learns how to build friendships. We thought his movie was a perfect story and concept for our game.
On the visual side, we were inspired by Knight and Bikes color palettes and their character designs. Also, their objectives and mechanics helped to develop further because it is about 2 kids exploring the island and facing different obstacles. Both portray a storybook aesthetic through the kid’s perspective, in which what we wanted to achieve. 

Triumphs:
The great success of our project is to create a cohesive environment and family and friend oriented aesthetics. From the start of this project, I enjoyed adding the structure of our main theme of child abuse and their escapism using imagination. Due to a dark story, I really wanted to uplift the art to give a strong plot twist at the end. During the playtest, we realized that players were communicating with each other to figure out the puzzles and what their abilities were. I thought this was a successful result of creating a cooperative game where players are interacting and communicating to solve the problem.

Struggles:
Our group encountered many problems, and the main issue was that the game was too buggy. We did not properly organize the codes and layers, which resulted in the non-interactive game where players cannot combat the enemies and solve the puzzles. Also due to the lack of time, we could not create understandable endings where players could grasp the story even though we added visual clues of alcohol bottles and a monster mom. Which also resulted in the aimless goal of the game. Players were confused about what to do throughout the playtest. Another struggle was to balance out the levels and character abilities. We received the comments where some players are doing nothing while one player is solving the puzzle. Also, we did not make one character more powerful than others so witch character was stronger than other characters since witch has the big range to attack.

What I learned:
From this project, I realized that communication with the group members are so crucially important because when one member needs the help, it was helpful to receive help right away. However, if it was hard to contact any of the members, it was really hard to start anything before I get approves from members. Time management and focusing on one idea was also important because our group was so ambitious that we end up spending so much time on getting the right story and aesthetics. Which stressed artists to draw quickly.

Conclusion / Next Step:
Firstly, I will fix the layers and restructure the codes. In this way, players could actually play the complete game without troubles. Other than technical problems, I would like to add pieces of story and reality to give some hints for the players, I thought this way players will understand the story. Furthermore, I would like to have the beginning and ending animations.
The levels should be more furnished because I feel like other puzzles are too generic and we implemented too many combat materials than we planned. This itself does not cause a problem but it ruins the cooperative and family-oriented tone. Therefore, we will add more thoughtful puzzles in the game for the iteration. Lastly, I will add more soundtracks and UX/UI elements to add the juiciness of the feedback.