Final Round of Critiques on Paper Prototypes

Aquila: Rise of the Emperor

I was unaware that the Roman emperors had war planes, but maybe my knowledge of history is lacking here. It's also possible that I've misunderstood the game's setting, or maybe the planes could be a placeholder for something. Nonetheless, I was confused by them.

Regardless, it is impressive that the team had a digital prototype working at such an early stage of the project. Although apparently buggy, using temp art work (at least I hope so), and small in scope, their prototype seemed to cover the primary mechanics of the game. It appears their testers at least enjoyed it, which bodes well for the final game. Also, their testing seems to have uncovered plenty of bugs and missing functionality (such as stat feedback). All in all, this thing looks rather promising, even though it's being made in GameMaker.

Deep Field

Uhm, a strategy game within a spatial field? I guess it sounds impressive but I'm clueless as to what it means. Apparently it all comes down to blocking balls and throwing them at targets. Not sure where the strategy is to be found in that. I also didn't understand how the 'acting it out' testing really worked or what they discovered from it. The mechanics seem so dead simple that I can't imagine it taking more than a few hours to make a prototype in Flash or GameMaker, which seems more useful, unless 3-dimensionality is somehow absolutely critical.

Somehow I got the feeling that the following phrase was used sometime during development: "Okay guys, we can't seem to figure out what we wanna do, so let's just roll around in chairs and throw balls at things."

The Legend of Chopstick Chung

I rather liked the visuals in this presentation and the game looked surprisingly polished considering the early stage in the process. The idea was also communicated well and seemed well thought out. As a concept it's pretty simple, but it allows for a lot of creativity and opportunity for expansion. It is important though to focus on the presentation and polish of each minigame rather than churning out too many half-developed ideas. But it looks like this is exactly what the team is doing, so I wouldn't be too worried.

Dynasty

A bit confused by this one at first but reading the testing doc cleared things up a bit. I'm still not sure what role the MSN games played in the testing, but I was quite impressed by the look and feel of the paper prototype. I remember seeing this 'paper window' approach in 312 as well, and it really fits well with the RPG genre. It just makes sense not being able to see what's coming up. The history and puzzles add plenty of additonal points of interest, and at least make it sound different from a lot of other RPG concepts, even though the game's working details are still rather unclear. But keys and moster fighting are involved, which are always fun.