P2 Refined Prototype – Noe Chicas

Link to the game in progress: Google Drive (outdated version)

My game is an interactive fiction piece set on Riley’s old computer, late at night during a storm. Riley returns to a shared whiteboard filled with drawings and memories of their friend pip. The two talk and spend time together the way they used to. It is a quiet story about friendship, grief, and what remains after losing someone. The current prototype has two playable phases: the computer and a 3D world called Craftopia.

This weekend, I playtested with three groups: Lucas (for the second time), Ngoc, and Riley and Julianna together. I changed the game after each session, so the order matters. Ngoc’s feedback led to the Craftopia map that Riley and Julianna were the first to play.

Who played and what I was gathering:

• Lucas is one of the course assistants for this class and had played an earlier version, so his second session showed me how the game had changed since and helped me catch bugs. He was also the first person to play the new background version.
• Ngoc is a former Stanford student, so she gave me a perspective from outside the class on pacing, how much pip talks, and whether the choices felt meaningful.
• Riley and Julianna are friends from back home who played together, so I could see what they noticed and missed, how they reacted to the story, and how it felt to two people sharing it.

Lucas (second playthrough) feedback:

• Lucas mainly found bugs. Leaving and rejoining loses progress, spamming photos leaves pip stuck in dialogue, and the weather shows the wrong time. Fixed most of them after the playtest.
• He didn’t notice half the drawings disappearing after the first power cut.
• He couldn’t tell his drawings apart from pip’s. I gave pip a consistent drawing style and started the board with some of pip’s artwork already there.
• Scrolling felt strange, and he wanted a scroll bar. I added Back and Up buttons and resizable windows. The scroll bar is still planned.
• Some of pip’s lines felt unnatural, like asking about Riley’s diary. I rewrote the conversation and removed unnecessary dialogue.

Ngoc feedback:

• She loved that the anole turns brown when upset, so I kept it as one of the little details players can discover on the computer.
• pip talked too much, so I shortened their lines and gave riley more text so it feels more like a conversation back and fourth.
• There were too many choices that didn’t feel meaningful, and she felt lost. “Less was more.” I simplified the interactions and made phase 2 a single path where players walk through the world without clicking on everything.
• She missed Craftopia entirely. I added a Craftopia map and desktop shortcut to make it easier to discover.

Riley and Julianna feedback:

• They were the first to play with the Craftopia map. Players choose a house material and one landmark from a pond, great tree, or lighthouse, which determines what appears in the 3D world.
• Neither noticed the background changing.
• Julianna wanted a more depressed undertone beneath the casual conversations.
• They missed the email and news, so I’m adding notifications.
• The walking section felt slow. I’m shortening it or adding more details along the path.
• They suggested an Easter egg where photos showing two of everything change to show only one object after the power cuts, quietly representing pip’s disappearance.
• Other suggestions included fixing the timing of “if only it had rained this hard that day,”
• I also noticed Riley (the player) immediately start drawing back the missing drawings after seeing them gone. I want to add some type of dialogue for this.

Figure 1: The Craftopia map in phase 1, which Riley and Julianna were the first to play.

Figure 2: The beginning of the path through Craftopia in phase 2.

What came up across all three:

• The story felt more natural after revisions, but players wanted a stronger undertone of sadness.
• Parts felt too long, especially pip’s dialogue and the walking section.
• Players missed important details, including disappearing drawings, Craftopia, notifications, and background changes.
• One player didn’t understand the storm. I want the heavy rain to represent depression and grief without feeling random or unexplained.

Something I realized is that making players notice something and making them feel something are different challenges. I want players to become attached to the small things Riley and pip shared before gradually noticing what is missing. Rather than explaining the loss, I want the environment and interactions to communicate it.

Changes to be made:

I’m adding notifications for Dani’s email and the news after the power outages. Dani is a friend Riley has grown distant from, and their message mentions that school might be canceled because of the storm. I’ll also make the background changes and disappearing drawings more noticeable without directly explaining them.

I’m adding the photo Easter egg, including a blurry picture of Riley and pip close to the camera at Maple Hollow. I also want to improve the pacing of Craftopia while making sure the world reflects the choices players made earlier.

Questions for feedback:

1. I like the heavy rain as part of the depressed atmosphere, but one player didn’t understand why it was storming. Should I explain it more directly through the news, or leave its emotional meaning open to interpretation? How can I tell whether the atmosphere is actually coming across?
2. I’m adding notifications because players missed optional parts of the computer. Are there other ways to encourage exploration naturally without making it feel like a task list? I want players to discover things through curiosity rather than being directed toward every interaction. However, I don’t want players to feel loss.