Our game, Inkling, is a drawing game where the artist doesn’t know what they are drawing. Their teammates, together, choose a word from a pile of cards then take turns giving short instructions such as “draw a 5 inch circle” and “draw a 4 inch horizontal line to the right of the circle” to guide the artist to create a picture. The artist tries to guess the word.
Question 1. Are short simple instructions referencing only basic shapes sufficient to create a recognizable picture for the artist?
Importance: Our game hinges on the artist being able to interpret short instructions that reference only basic shapes, and then being able to correctly follow these instructions and recognize the image being drawn. If the artist is unable to do this, we will have to rethink either how detailed the instructions can be, or how difficult the words to be drawn will be.
Prototype: A simple implementation prototype with a single team. Everyone aside from the artist will decide on a word to be drawn, and take turns giving instructions to the artist in as simple of terms as possible. We would have the team try to give instructions in as simple terms as possible, only referencing basic shapes. It should become clear pretty quickly if the artist is able to interpret the instructions correctly to create a coherent picture.
Prediction: I predict that it will be quite hard to come up with instructions that are both easily to understand/draw and also that are limited to referencing basic shapes. I think that there will have to be some wiggle room for slightly more detailed instructions or for some kind of list of acceptable words for instructions apart from basic shapes.
Question 2. Does Inkling work better as team vs. team or multi-player co-op?
Importance: This question is important because it will help guide us as we develop more mechanics. If only one team draws at a time, perhaps a team vs. team setup will be boring for the non-drawing team, guiding us to develop mechanics for the non-drawing team to participate in some way or sabotage the drawing team.
Prototype: A relatively fleshed out implementation prototype with a set of concrete rules and setup. Ideally we would test out prototypes with both a team vs. team setup and a multi-player co-op setup and guage the player’s engagement, particularly the non-drawing players in the team vs. team setup.
Prediction: I predict that the team vs. team setup will foster more competition and engagement in the game, encouraging players to try harder to win. I also predict, though, that there will be some boredom from the non-drawing team, so some mechanics will need to be added to allow them to participate. This could look like a sabotage mechanic as mentioned earlier, or maybe both teams draw at the same time somehow.
Question 3. We are thinking of having a point system, and rewarding harder words with more points. How are we going determine the difficulty of each word?
Importance: The difficulty of the words/prompts we use will be very important in our game. First, we want to use words that are challenging, but possible to reasonably get our artists to guess. If they are too easy, the game would be boring, and too difficult, the game would be frustrating. In the case of different points for different difficulties, it’s important we determine the difficulties accurately so the game is fair.
Prototype: This would be another implementation prototype, where it’s a relatively fleshed out version of our game, with just a single team. We would provide several different words and see how many instructions it takes the team to successfully get the artist to guess each word. We would then look at the words that took fewer instructions and the words that took more instructions and find any patterns to help explain what is the determining factor for difficulty.
Prediction: I predict that both the concreteness of the word, and the number of basic shapes needed to portray the word will be the biggest determiners of the difficulty. For concreteness, take, for example, the prompt “dog” vs the prompt “struggle”. A dog is a concrete thing that exists and can be portrayed in a straightforward way. Struggle, on the other hand, is a concept and would be harder to portray in a drawing. For number of basic shapes, take “house” and “ceiling fan”. A house can reasonably be drawn with just a square and a triangle. A ceiling fan, however, would require many more shapes, making it more difficult, as my prediction.
