Today we had our first mentoring session with Ubisoft. Overall the were really positive and genuinely intrigued about our idea. In their own words, “unique is an over-used word, but that seems to be the only word that works with your game”. One of the guys kept picking up the tablet and had to be told by his colleague to stop playing and actually talk to us! We can’t ask for more engagement than that!
They did have some good suggestions for us. Our game is all about exploring, and instead of limiting our environment, we should be inciting the player to try and explore further by enticing them with little islands or ledges which makes them think ‘how do I get up there?’. We also need to think about how open our landscape is, can the player fall of the world, or are they stopped by invisible walls?
After the session, we held our own meeting and came up with an idea to finish off the game. We had been wondering about what sense our fifth child could see in for a while, and after discussion, he can see ‘in the past’. I.e. he can see what used to be there. For us, in our demo, there are broken bridges. They can only be crossed by using the past child to see the completed bridge, and then crossing. To finish our game, the player will cross a bridge to a larger landscape before heading into a tunnel in a cliff which will be the end of the level.