Reflecting on Narrative Design Process

Game Idea:

    The first idea for this project was to use music as the main subject area of learning. I was envisioning a game that rewarded players for reading music notes correctly. Since music can be a very broad topic, I chose percussion music thinking it was going to be simpler. Then I realized, as a author for this project. I barely know anything about music. In order to not make the project complicated for the learner and myself I switched subject areas. I switched to math and basic algebra problems. For example, Solve for x:

2x+1=3

Answer: x=1

With that in mind I started designing and writing this prototype and realized how difficult it is to incorporate learning into a game. The thing about video games is that the story for the game doesn't have to make too much sense because it's a video game. It just needs to be established in a way that convinces the player to engage with it. The premise/story for this game was a robot invasion and the player had to fight back for the future of humanity. Simple right? Well then when you introduce math as a main part of the story that drives it forward. It's hard to make it sound interesting without being too silly. How can be math be used to combat robots? I wanted to incorporate in a way where the player knows it doesn't make too much sense but who cares let's just play the game.

If I were to change anything I would probably take more time to have a better implementation of the subject area into the game because the story right now is a little silly. I also would've liked to expand the game itself a bit more because right now it only introduces the player to the story and how the game works entirely.