B3 Bachelor A Spirit Tale

Any potential new features were discussed in team meetings and then added to the Ideas list of our trello board. Once we agreed that the new feature was something we wanted in our project we moved it to our Backlog list on the trello board. We then decided on its importance and urgency and labeled the trello card accordingly. If we thought this task was suited for one team member specifically or somebody expressed interest in doing the task we assigned them to it. Some tasks were not immediately assigned and therefore left open for those who had finished their tasks and were free and able to do them. It was then up to the assigned members to move the card to the In Process list when they started working on the task and to open a corresponding Git branch. If the corresponding team members thought that the task was done sufficiently, they opened a pull request on GitHub and assigned other team members to review and test the branch. The trello card was then moved to the Review & Testing list. Only if the group agreed that the task was finished and all merge conflicts were resolved, was the branch merged into the main branch and the trello card was dragged into the Done list. During the semester we created two prototypes of the game where we integrated all finished features into a playable version of the game. We used these prototypes to show our progress to our supervisor and to thoroughly test the game as a whole.

All design decisions in the game were made with the goal of maximizing the visual pleasure for VR glasses and for the player to experience it. So that the player will be able to feel a sense of accomplishment, stress-relief and joy while playing.

A Spirit Tale consists of four different scenes: the main menu scene, the temple scene, the medieval town scene and the desert city scene. For the main menu, we wanted to make the player more immersed in the virtual space before they start the actual game. So we tried to design the room to look as ordinary as possible with some subtle but noticeable hints towards the game, such as the tutorial text on the couch table or the game menu on the tv screen. The idea for the game scenes was to place the player at the center of a once beautiful place that has now become grey and desolate. There they have to fight the spirits of the previous residents, coming from the four cardinal directions, all while experiencing their tragic story through the form of story papers and also restoring the place to its past beauty full of colors. Moreover, we added multiple self-modeled items around the player, which they can interact with to increase the immersion. For the scenes we tried to have diverse cultural backgrounds and a distinctly different atmosphere from each other. For the first level, we have an abandoned Japan inspired temple, where everything is a bit bland, even after the place was restored. As the second level scene, a medieval village is designed. This scene has more objects and its visual effects have been further strengthened with more colors, than the previous one. For the last journey of the player, we designed an abandoned orient inspired city in the midst of a desert. As the final stage of the game, we designed the scene with more intense and bright colors. We were sure that with the design of the scene we would give to the player more visual impacts with more colors and a different color changing procedure.

We hope that A Spirit Tale will bring the player positive experiences inside of the game, which is why we removed the option to move around using the controllers, to minimize the chances of motion sickness during the game.