Admission Project

15-02-20 For my admission to HKU I was tasked with designing a game that helps aid boredom and loneliness in senior citizens. I decided to make a game teaching the basics of the platformer-genre in a way even people who have never held a controller before could pick up and complete my game.

Playing videogames helps keep the brain fit, and is an exciting and relatively cheap pasttime that one can sink many hours into.

To communicate effectively, it was important to keep the player from being overwhelmed with new information, and has clear instructions at any given time. I also wanted to keep the gameplay elements easy to recognize. This is why I chose classic platformer elements such as the lava and floating platforms.

New concepts such as jumping or breaking blocks are explained the first few times they appear, with a clear animation of which button has to be pressed, and in what action this button-press will result.

After I finished my first prototype, my grandparents helped me test the game. This was an experience I learned a lot from. My original design proved to be challenging, and especially combining inputs was difficult. It was very interesting to see how someone with no experiences with videogames uses a controller, and navigates a level. Things that come natural to seasoned gamer, were very difficult concepts for someone with less experience. The unspoken design language of videogames has a steep learning curve, and is very alien to newcomers.

I believe that the gaming community could really benifit from being more accesable to newcomers, as it could bring many new enthousiasts, young and old. Most games give you little to no explanation, and throw you in the deep end, which can be extremely overwhelming to an inexperiend player, and lead to frustration. A player might even decide to put the controller down, and never try another video game again, thinking it's not for them.

I hope my game can be an entry point for people interested in gaming, but with no idea what videogames are all about.