User testing

Alpha test with Level 4 juniors.

total of 9 participants

1. Is the narrative understandable?

All answers are yes. Some even noticed and mentioned that it is a remake of Alice in Wonderland.

2. Is the experience too long or too short?

Some said just right most said quite short. 

3. Navigation system

-Is not clear enough, need more indications or instructions.
-Need some feedback while roll over or glow around the object.

4. Does the user enjoy the game?

For this question, I noticed a different pattern between girls and boy.

Girls:  They enjoy looking at the animation and commented that they like the cute illustrations, they dont mind having little interactions but wanted more animation to see

Boys: Thinks that this is just a narrative game, it is just a story with interaction, boring. some prefer more interactable items and more actions in the scenes.


5. Speech bubble vs Voice Over

All users lean towards speech bubbles.

One commented that this could be made for people with hearing problem, as they can only see but not able to play. I could make a game that is internationally understood and don't have to create many different languages.

One of them also commented that there may be a con of speech bubble which is blocking the scene behind. Voice Over can be good too, but subtitles are needed. As my target audiences are kids, I think wordings are not helpful in my artefact as they still cannot read many words unless they have their parents beside them to teach.

6. Extra comments

Good illustration, but will more animations it will be clearer and more fun.

Should add more interactions in the game or it will be boring.

Add some indications for instruction, or wouldn't know where to click.

Underwater scene Progress

These are the final scenes. Alice confronts the queen to save her friend. 

 There are some coding error in this scene that does not allow me to add the scene which is the snatching of the necklace with the queen. It affected the animation and other scenes. Therefore, I just make a slide show to temporary show the scene's happening.

Testing with another Adobe Flash file to find another solution to solve the problem. 

The ending is then shown that the girl is awake from her dream. From the first scene, it shows a difference that it was in the evening. 

*the stone is missing here*  I make a few changes to take the seagull away and put back the stone.

In the ending scene, it is not clear that the girl woke up from coma. I will add in an ending cinematic animation to enhance the narrative.

External Guest Critique 2

Guest : Benedict Tan > Formal Creative Group Head from Grey G2, now a Freelancer

1. Add more clickable items

Each scene there are some 'hidden' objects to click, not just click to go to the next scene. Kids like colourful things, they may not need very good graphic, but they will love to see animations.

2. Sounds plays an important role

Adding more sound gives feedback to the kids and they will be amused. Then, they will try to find more things to click and get more feedback.

3. Highlight and guide

Have a clearer instruction to show how to navigate with the objects.

Menu

I had decided to add a menu page in my artefact as the user will be able to click into a specific scene if they would like to replay it. This will be very useful because some user might not want to play the whole game all over again just to go to a scene that they want.

This is a sketch of the outlook of the menu page.

I digitized the page with the screenshots of the scene so the user will know which scene that they would like to look into.

I created a Adobe Flash file to test code with the menu page. This is an external coding which i need to link all scenes files.

As I'm done with the coding, i use the actual file and put it into the final working artefact.

External Guest Critique

Guest: Stuart Godwin - creative director from Cheil

There are some things that I should take note in my artefact.

1. Social Media

In the landing page, there should be a link that directs to a page that describes and shows the progress of my FYP. It could be a written link or a clickable link.

2. Kids are smarter than we think they are

The interaction is not necessary to be very simple, it can be slightly complicated as kids are not as stupid as we think. Kids loves to explore new things, they will click and see anything they saw that is moving or interesting.

3. Adding more sounds and animations

Kids love hearing sounds. If they click something, it gives feedback like sound and animation, this will encourage them to continue clicking . It will indirectly guide them to click.

4. Slight gruesome plot twist that surprise the kids.

It is nice to see there is a plot twist at the end that shows a surprising ending which will makes the kid excited to see something unexpected.

Instructions

In my artefact, to allow the user to learn how to navigate, I have added some simple instructions to allow them to learn where to click and interact.

As Machinarium is my artstyle benchmark, I use a similar approach like it to guide the user how to play.

This is a scene in Machinarium. It shows an indication of how to interact.

And this is my artefact, using dotted lines that guides the user and show them where to start.

Underwater scenes 2

Initially, I painted this scene in psd and wanted to use it as the tea party scene where Alice meets the mad hatter, but i changed as it I found a better solution.

Then i changed the scene which has a similar colour palette with Alice in Wonderland. This is a forest-like scene and added some coral plants and bubbles to make it looks like it is underwater.

 Using this scene as a reference, I created my scene's colour palette with a similar look to it. 

These are some screen shot of the digitized scenes.