Hello everyone here is the update on week#2 of Playful Futures!
This second week we focused on research and devoted some time on the design document to clarify what is that we really are trying to explore with the project, you can read it here.
We played some of the games that emerged from the list last week and went deeper in others, in particular we played
night train by lucy valk quill
Hemophiliacademics by Jaqueline Bryk
Night watch (from the series of games The Sundered Land)
@vidityavoleti and @awhitney please comment with your impressions
Night Train is a quick game for two players, one is a person in a night train the other is a presence, they are both in the same train compartment and they have scattered dialogues during the evening.
The prompts are randomized by a deck of card, and based on the color is one of the two characters that start speaking or asking a question.
Interestingly some of the card move time forward and the train ride can be also pretty quick and incomplete, as sometimes are the interactions with strangers.
Hemophiliacademics premises are that vampire as real and being a vampire is dangerous, so to be accepted inside Academia is a way to be saved from the bigotry of humans. The game take place as an interview with candidates that tries to get accepted, some of the characters are real vampires while others are humans trying to pass as vampires. Just one spot is available so players have to convince the admin that they are vampires and they research will do very good.
One interesting dynamic in the online version is that you’re able to watch without listening the interview of the other candidates, and this give an unexpected sense of spatiality.
H. was very fast in term of world building because everyone knows vampires and everyone experienced the stress of an interview process
In Nightwatch players are together during a night watch and they tell stories to pass the time. The premise is that often the stories are incomplete or exaggerate, so there is an interesting dynamic for which players can challenge the storyteller and ask them if what they are saying is really the truth.
When everyone has told a story the night is over and the team discover their destiny.
NW was great for the improv element, in the sense that it was really easy, thanks to the challenging mechanic, to build on top of each other stories, also a night watch is a trope in a lot of movies and books so it was easy to enter in the space. We added a moment before start telling stories in which we asked our characters to describe what they were seeing in front of them and to situate themselves reciprocally in the space, we felt that that was really helpful.
Finally in the last meeting (Monday) we shared all our knowledge about Witness, we highlighted quotes and elements that will guide the design, and talked how the game should incorporate what.
This week is design time, this Friday we will share the first prototypes ideas and playtest them, so, for next week to be able to start doing some open play-test with the community of Edgeryders.
Thanks for reading!