Reflections: The Date

The Date is the other game I've been working on this semester and that have for good reasons taken a back seat compared to the massive Octave project.

However I'm actually quite proud of it and did not feel like working on this game was annoying or a burden. I might even say this game is a more "complete" package than Octave is.

The vision was to create a game where we wanted to link the player's compulsive actions to an OCD patients compulsive actions and thereby create awareness around OCD and how there is a fine line between just being cautious and actually being OCD. Also we wanted to question players' natural score hoarding and how irrational it actually is and hold it up against an OCD patient's actions.

Positives:

• Consistent artstyle. I seem to say this about every game I make, but it is very important to maintain looks, whether you like it or not, graphics are a HUGE part of games. The art duties were not dependent on me solely (for the first time) but was shared with another artist. I was responsible for characters, the interface and the end/start screens whereas he had the game objects and their animation. Sharing duties was a very interesting experience and furthermore to keep it consistent as if one person had made everything also shows the flexibility that both of us had. Another thing I'm proud of with the artstyle is that it is interesting despite being so simplistic.
• Fun factor. One of the things we were worried about while making this game was that it would not be any fun because of the simple interaction scheme (Spacebar + arrows) and the fact that the game has absolutely NO challenges whatsoever. In order to counter that issue, we wrote a lot of dialogue (monologue) for the character which has received a lot of positive feedback and created a lot a fun. The speech bubbles also acted as a heavy motivator for interacting with the game objects.
• Theory proven true. This game was built on a theory we had in the group, that gamers  for whatever ever reasons would often be so compelled to gain high scores, regardless of whether the game was challenging/fun. This proved to be a good enough reason to actually build the game on as they did indeed behave in the way that we had anticipated. Scores are very strong incentives to make players do things.

Negatives:

• OCD communication. As this game was actually about OCD, we might have fallen a little short on communicating the message to the player. Originally the plan had been to actually integrate OCD information into the actual game and let realisation hit the player, that he was the one contributing to the character's disorder. However we ended up cutting most OCD related topics in the game and putting it in the end. This is a bit of a "screw-you" design as you pull the rug from under the player's feet and revealing what the game is really about. It runs the risk of being skipped and players feeling tricked.

I am quite happy with this game as I feel it provides a good play experience. Whether it is a good awareness game about OCD is very questionable, however even if it isn't a good awareness game, I feel players will still be able to take something away from it.

The Date is playable from here.