Fiximupim modeled the system of dating (from a woman’s perspective). We took inspiration from ideas of women who make their boyfriends better before they eventually break up, leaving him a better person and leaving the girl with none of the credit. Our game spoofs this concept with the player acting as Cupid, who has come down to earth to fix the men to help the human population. Cupid takes these men out on dates to help improve their skills/attributes, which we selected as the 6 general qualities people think about in their partner.
I really, really loved working on this game. When we first started system games, I wasn’t really sure what they were, but when our group figured out that dating sims could maybe be system games, we went all in and it was so worth it. I learned a lot about what it takes to make a dating sim (both more simple and more complicated than I thought?), and I feel like I learned a lot more about playtesting through this experience as well. I was really engaged in watching playtests and seeing player reactions to all the things in the game, and while I still need to practice staying out of the way of the player, it was cool just how much I learned and changed about the game through observation.
I learned a lot through making this game, and some of my most important takeaways have been 1) spreadsheets are a godsend and 2) balancing gameplay and story can be challenging. As we move forward with fiximupim in p4, balancing story and mechanics is definitely something I will be thinking more deeply about. I want to understand how I can make the mechanics work for the story, instead of against, and how to balance player engagement with the story and their success in the game itself.
However, the truly biggest thing I’m taking away from this project is the feeling that I can actually make a game. I know we’ve been making games this whole class, but this game is the most complete video game I have ever worked on. Though the finished product for P3 has a long way to go in terms of refinement and improvement, I’m proud of what we made and I feel so excited about continuing to work on it and making more games in the future.
