How do we get players out of their comfort zone while making sure the game isn’t intrusive?
A key part of the appeal of this get-to-know-you game is capitalizing on healthy discomfort/awkwardness between strangers to create emergent fun and new relationships. However, we need to create this dynamic without being too intrusive and scaring off players. We used a couple heuristics when brainstorming mechanics, like asking ourselves whether our round themes would make us uncomfortable to play with strangers or not. I think the most effective method of prototyping will be running a practice round with beta-testers to see how they organically react to the questions the game asks of them. My guess is that people will be more okay with pushing boundaries than we expect, as long as the game rules are appropriately calibrated.
What kinds of questions/round themes are most interesting/exciting to new players?
Our potential round themes are a pivotal part of the game – couples will play mini-games centred around the theme to create the gameplay dynamics of Love Island: The Game. As a result, it’s vital that the round themes are. engaging to new players, while also replayable enough for returning players to enjoy multiple times. We plan to workshop/solicit suggestions for round themes from our friends via a survey, in addition to the themes we brainstormed ourselves, to understand what kinds of topics players would want to discuss with strangers. I would guess that the final themes will correspond pretty closely to the ones we initially brainstormed – I think they cover the most interesting topics while being distinct.
How do we keep eliminated couples involved in subsequent rounds?
We want the game’s fun to be accessible to everyone for the duration of play, so having mechanics that incorporate eliminated players will help keep the game engaging. We plan to prototype this by testing a ‘recoupling’ mechanic each round, where the couple with the second-least votes (i.e. the couple that isn’t eliminateed) can ‘stay’ in their couple or ‘steal’ from the pool of eliminated players to shake things up and ditch their partner. Our initial plans for including eliminated players were overall too complicated, and this felt like a simple but effective way to shake things up for everyone each round. I expect that this will be a really valuable part of the game, as it injects drama/randomness into the game state.
