Thursday the team was visited by game developer Ross Klettke, who expressed interest in learning more about the Milwaukee Waterscape game based on our conversation at the February meetup. Ross is excited to release his team's own game, BombSworders, on console in the the coming months. (Congratulations, Ross and team, on this great accomplishment!)
We were excited to share our thoughts, process, and current concepts with Ross to toss around some ideas. Hopefully our excitement was contagious. We arranged for a social paper playtesting session next Friday, March 16 at Arts @ Large. (If you would like to playtest the game and help make it awesome, drop us a line!)
Much of this week's work focused on wrangling together the list of needed art and UI (user interface) assets. Then we did some conceptualized sketches of how these assets can relate on the AR table.
Our upcoming task list now includes articulating scopes of work for game programmer and game artist, identifying reference imagery for all assets, prepping playtestable cards, and exploring technical options regarding Unity, Google Earth, and Linux.
Bryn Summers walks Ross Klettke through our character role concepts. Each character possesses two special abilities.
Justin Hegarty discusses the AR hardware with Ross Klettke. The current iteration of the table is the tip of the iceberg of possibilities.
The visual core of our game concept is an overhead map of Milwaukee that evolves as players make choices that affect the collective "waterscape." We've devised 15 role-play scenarios inspired by Milwaukee's actual water history and the drivers of change identified in the Great Lakes Futures Project. In the game, there are five scenarios per level representing past, present, and future.