Citadel Siege
ICT & Game Design and Technology
Client company:Bar Menthol, Varna
Borislav Kamburov
Dima Pakhuta
Project description
Create a competitive game that can be played by 2 teams on a single device, with a strong focus on party decision making.
Context
The game was made for entertainment at a local venue that focuses on social activity. It was made for a demographic of adults over the age of 18. The platform had to be a mobile device, such as a tablet or a mobile phone. The event is going to be held after the month of March due to Covid-19 restrictions in the country of Bulgaria.
Results
We were tasked to incorporate our game into an event situated at a bar in Varna, Bulgaria. Adapting our game to the venue was a big challenge that made us conclude, for example that the platform should be on tablets for better playability and also streaming the gameplay for the whole audience at the stage area. Another grand part of our process was adapting our UI to the user's needs. This was discovered with 2 major user testing scenarios, where numerous people with different occupation and age group could play test our game and give us feedback on how to improve our UI and overall playability. Consulting various tech experts in the field of Front-end and UI development as well as Graphic Design to enhance our game to the best of our capabilities.
A link to a portfolio will be here :
https://borko151815.wixsite.com/my-site
Methodology
Challenge: Adapt the game to the Menthol Bar environment.
Method(s):
Explore user requirements (Field), Brainstorm (Workshop)
Approach:
I discussed with my Teammate - Borislav and our stakeholder -David, what we can do with the existing Citadel Siege prototype version of the game to make it suitable for the Bar environment and fit the stakeholder’s needs. David provided us with footage and pictures of the venue.
Results:
We discovered that the bar had limited seating options on the stage. This made us realize that we had to do something that makes all the participants enjoy the event. This is why we decided to have the games streamed on a white panel. According to our client, the game for the bar should be more fast-paced, have less important decisions, easier rules, shorter game sessions. We realized that some modifications to the game had to be made to ensure people's engagement.
Reason:
The bar is also a hotspot for people of all occupations and backgrounds, this in turn meant that we needed to make a game that is simple and easy to play, while limiting the play time!
Challenge: Receive valuable feedback from regular players/non game devs or experts in the field
Method(s):
Product Review(Showroom) NB! with non experts, Observation(Field)
Approach:
We wanted to understand which aspects of our game were working for our users and how we can improve on them. Major questions we needed to be answered were:
Is our game easy to understand?
Is our game intuitive and easy to play?
What was not understandable in our game?
What do you think we should improve?
So we gathered a group of 6 people that were from different fields of occupation and different age groups. The test was performed with friends and family that fit this description.
Results:
We received quite a lot of positive feedback. Our users enjoyed the flow of the game and were genuinely having fun. That being said, they did point out various things that needed our attention. Such as not understanding how one of the cards works and having issues with the Visual Design of our UI. To quote: “It does not match the theme of your game”. This gave us good pointers on what we needed to improve and also what people see when in first contact with our game. Specifics of our result could be found on my dev log.
Reason:
This way of testing was a good opportunity to introduce our game to multiple not affiliated people with our work as game developers. We wanted to check if this game could be enjoyed and understood by the majority of potential clients to Bar Menthol’s event
What?
The new UI has been added previously to the game but it had no functionality. Our job was to add this functionality as well as some additional functionality as well.
Why?
Based on playtesting sessions of the previous version of Citadel Siege, we discovered that the UI was not informative and pretty enough and some buttons were not so easy to click. We talked to Borislav’s friend who is a lead web front-end developer to make a better UI design for the game. Based on that draft, Borislav made the UI in unity and I have made it functional.
How?
The usability testing (lab) allowed us to identify the issue. After talking to a UI specialist (library: expert interview) and coding (workshop: prototyping), the UI was ready.
About the project group
We are both following a bachelor's degree in ICT and Software. We both have 2 specializations in game design and game development as well as a minor in the same subject. The time spent on the project is roughly 2 months. We worked on this project for around 4 days per week. We focused on exploring original ideas to create a new mobile game.
