Optometry (Prototype)

CURRENT PROTOTYPE:
You may have heard the term “Seeing the world through the eyes of someone else”. What if we could portray this in the form of a game? In Optometry, explore an evolving overworld that changes depending on what kind of glasses you are wearing. Furthermore, encounter emotional enemies that require different lenses and perspectives to take down in an RPG-style battle system. Whether you “kill them with kindness” or beat them up in a fit of rage, learning some new perspectives may help you utilize new abilities in your toolkit moving forward.

Game Loops:

• Explore an overworld brimming with mysteries unseen by the naked eye and use different glasses to adapt and solve puzzles throughout
• Encounter enemies that you can defeat with either sheer force or emotional wit, whichever one prefers!
• Overcome adaptive bite-sized minigame challenges to sway your foes, rather than just beating them senseless

Created in cooperation with Adrian Kum, who implemented combat design and the UI built around it.

REFLECTION:

I think that the loops displayed in our prototype are great representations of two different gameplay aspects to the thematic whole. We talked a good amount about emotion playing into the battles, but the emotions connected to the glasses don't exactly reflect in their overworld usage. Despite that, I think it did good at demonstrating the idea of changing perspective for puzzles, and utilization for emotional effectivity in battles quite well. These would both be mechanics being used in the final product, so despite the disconnect I think it was good to demonstrate our scope.

Overall I believe this was a successful prototype to answering how players respond to adaptive gameplay. Our tester's playstyle had a good mix of experimenting with glasses to solve the world puzzles, as well as finding and mixing his favorite combat moves around. The fun-ness of the appeal moves were a good motivator to fight enemies in more unique ways, but I didn't see him trying to match types and glasses (this mechanic was only implied so it definitely wasn't too obvious without lots of testing). Complexity isn't necessarily a bad thing, but not everything can just be implicitly learned by the player so it would be a good idea to introduce it in some more external explanatory way.

If I could change things about this initial prototype, I would have liked to create more variety in overworld elements. While they currently have defined purposes, it feels like there could still be some tweaking to add more juicy puzzles and creative solutions to the existing layout. I also would have loved to create more visual variety, but that aspect of the design is a little outside of my comfortable ability range.

If I could progress this prototype, I definitely want to lean into the thematic variety that me and Adrian initially came up with. We'd do this by adding more glasses that are collectible throughout the game that widen the player's ability range and evolves the way interactions in the world can go. I don't think this would be an incredibly large game in scope, since limiting its size could be an opportunity to create a more diverse set of specific interactions based on glasses usage.

ORIGINAL PITCH:
Inspired by the unique fighting mechanics of Undertale and the fun world of Earthbound, take hold of a milquetoast protagonist who sees the world as any other would, until they find a pair of glasses on the side of the road that give them a glimpse into the demise of the world. Approaching many enemies, taking form as monsters, people, or invisible aliens will require more than brute force to conquer your foe. Maybe taking on a different perspective will help you progress?

Gameplay Loops:
- Explore an overworld filled with random enemy encounters and puzzles to solve, while discovering new glasses to utilize in your journey.

- Engaging in battle with enemies can be approached from many ways, but the most effective is to exploit the weakness of your foe and neutralize them rather than kill them. Victory awards items, glasses, or helps satisfy an invisible ending condition.

- Switch between different glasses to change the perspective of the world, or to transform battle constraints to give an edge on the competition.