To define the problem and create an impact, we have conducted a small survey to define the problem that raised with corona pandemic. It was found that people got more anxious due to lockdown and other aspects of the pandemic. It helped to create a User Persona. At the same time, literature reviews regarding effects of video game in mental health, helped us to define the target audience, genre, and comparable titles. Overall, it set up the project direction with initial research. 

To design a casual game, the gameplay mechanics needs to be simple. On the other hand, the gameplay should not be complex to trigger anxiety or break the flow. Considering that, the basic gameplay was designed only with gyroscope for movement, and “tap” input for signaling. Even though, there are different functionalities/mechanics for the Game avatar, those were designed as context-sensitive. As a result, the user doesn’t need to learn multiple input method, but the main character provide multiple functionalities.

Primarily, the game was designed for a progressive Level design, with accompanying system based on player performance. A Dynamic Difficulty System was designed based on player performance vs time. It was important to keep the player in the flow state, as different players play differently according to their skills. 

However, due to time limitation and scope (6 week for the prototype), we could not built the whole system for level progression. As a result, I had also designed handcrafted multiple level for the presenting the prototype.

Even though, it is a casual game with simplistic gameplay, I have also design a narrative which express through the gameplay mechanics. The earlier plan is to having some text based scenarios to introduce the player with the game world, which we could not complete due to time limitation. Also, the whole Gameworld is designed based on our bloodstream and its functionality. Additionally, some mechanics such as – breathing is used as metaphor for showing user to breath more frequently based on the anxiety and stress that they are feeling during pandemic. It is a visual representation for reminding the player to breath when everything seems frustrating and stressful.

The First thing after joining a team, it was important to set up an online space and workspace to work together. It is important as in a regular semester the whole team likes to sit together and start the ideation phase. This time, it was different so we had to set up some tools in the very beginning to make communication easier for the whole team. So, we used discord, google, for constant communication Additionally, the whole team decided to adopt the Scrum method for project management using “Trello” to keep count on tasks and their progress. It took some initiative to keep the whole team safe from burning out. At the end of the project, we all feel burned out due to the corona-induced situations. But we had a prototype that we could use to calm ourselves down.