Damian Harrop

Overview

Solo Project

Book Hunt was a game originally made for a Systems and Mechanics class during my junior year of college. For this project we were given the genre of Role Playing Games, allowing players to make decisions for themselves and seeing the results of said decisions. I decided to go with a library game and allowing the player to choose a book. We also were tasked to do research to back up design decisions, which can be found below! 

Documentation

To back our design decisions, we were tasked to conduct research on our subject. For my research I focused on childhood development and childhood reading rates. 

 

To give a brief overview of some of the reasearch:

When comparing child students and undergraduates, over 50% of the children students did less than 50% of the reading assigned to them, or did not do the readings at all. In comparison, over 75% of undergraduate students did at least 50% of the readings assigned to them, with very few not doing any readings. When asked, interest in the subject was a main point as to why students did the assignments, as well as if the reading was used in classes and seemed meaningful to the student. 

 

I used the importance of having interest in what a student is reading to be a basis of the project, giving the player freedom to pick out the book that they wanted to from the choices given to them. 

 

To read more of the documentation, including more articles and planning documents, click here! 

Changing Dialogue

When making the project, I planned on having the librarian have unique dialogue based on what book the player chose. I wanted to use the dialogue as a reaction based on the players choices. 

First Pass: Systems and Mechanics

I started with the basics, just enough to show off the mechanics of the game, with not a lot of focus on visuals or the level itself. 

Second Pass: UI + Player Feedback

After the project was over, I spent time over the summer adding more feedback to the game such as books glowing and UI indicating that the player can pick a book. I also touched up the UI, environment, and librarian.