Devlog 3

The development for the rest of the game is so far going quite a lot smoother than I anticipated. After receiving feedback related to how certain information is forgotten (especially when it comes to newscasts) before making decisions for each character, we decided to create buttons for showing that information whenever they want (see the right attached image).

While I was worried that the implementation of that would take a decently long time, we actually managed to figure out its functionality relatively quickly, and created a pretty functionally sound system where players can view the necessary information whenever needed.

Another thing that I felt slightly worried about that seems to be working well is how our game's financial literacy and subject matter is delivered in a way that is actually pretty easy to understand and get behind. For example, when playtesting with some people who were completely unaware about what a GIC is, the explanation for GICs was delivered in a way that was simple enough to understand on a high level (see the left attached image).

That being said, it does not really seem like our game does the best job at delivering the messaging related to financial inequality due to inflation and lack of financial knowledge, for people's interpretations seem to be pretty subjective. For example, some people found it to be just a simple financial literacy educational game, while others managed to pick up on the idea related to financial inequality due to the characters with various incomes and backgrounds as well as some characters (such as Beatrice) questioning the moral ethics of taking advantage of inflation when it comes to housing.

On top of that, in terms of the game's audio, people's responses have been pretty mixed as well. This is especially true when it comes to the dialogue SFX. To create the sound effects for each character, I took samples from the  movie Surf's Up (and one sample from the song "Watch the World Burn" by Falling in Reverse) and looped them in a similar way to how Toby Fox of Undertale fame created his dialogue noises through samples. 

While this method had the potential to bring out the personalities of each character, those samples are very loud in execution, especially when it comes to the character Coco. The "YAYAYAYAYAYA" noise that she makes during every newscast took a lot of people by surprise, with one playtester even reporting that it felt as if there was something wrong with his computer.

Regardless, overall, I do feel very happy with the game we created so far, and it looks like the rest of the development will just involve small bits of polish, mixing, and re-writing.