03/02/2025- 19/02/2025 (Week 1-Week 3)
Lizzie Tanaka (0362065)
Major Project 1 | BDCM | Taylor's University
Task 1: Proposal Development
LECTURE
Week 1
On week 1, we were briefed on this semester's module and tasks. We put
ourselves in groups of 4 depending on our specializations and we thought of
our first ideas.
Week 2
On the second week, we consulted our idea development with our supervisor
and gained feedbacks to work on the PPT.
Week 3
Week 3 was our task 1 presentation.
INSTRUCTIONS
Weekly Progress:
- Week 1
On week 1, we were briefed about the module and the end project for this
module. Then, we divided ourselves into groups of 4 based on our
specialization. My group consists of me, Aisya, Sheryne, and Ying-Ying.
Right after week 1's class, we discussed a bit on what we want to do since
we had tutorial schedule the next day.
We came up with a few ideas such as creating a zine, boardgame, card games
and our general theme of involving Indonesian and Malaysian culture. We
brainstormed it and recorded it. The next day, we suggested these main ideas
to Ms. Anis
Along our long discussions, we were settled on using culture as our theme
but instead of general culture, we were interested on doing our project
based on folklores and traditional games since we found that there is some
that is very similar.
- Zine on Malaysian and Indonesian cultures, specifically (possibly) about traditional games or folklores.
- Board game that is (possibly) inspired by Snake and Ladder.
- Card game
- Japanese makeup magazine
We spent time researching on existing card games' mechanics that we can
take inspiration from. However, we had a hard time finding a simple,
engaging game mechanics that would work with our folklore idea.
Fig 1.1 Brainstorm on W1-W2
Below is our feedback from Ms. Anis. She suggested us to continue with the
card game idea and adopt only Indonesian folklores. She also suggested
having 3 levels of difficulty for a twist and advised us on how to divide
the tasks.
Fig 1.2 Week 1 Feedback
We decided to collect and data the folklores that are derived from the 5
main regions of Indonesia:
Jawa, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Papua. All the data is compiled
in this slides:
Fig 1.3 Folklore PPT: Link to PPTWe compiled a PPT to show our progress:
Week 2 action:
- Improve and enhance the game mechanics and concept
- Do the task 1 proposal development PPT.
- Week 2
Before the tutorial session for week 2, we still couldn't come up with a solid idea. Only on the d-day that we get the idea of doing a matching card game with the folklore characters but using the description of each characters.
After the tutorial schedule, we met up and talked about all the game
concepts and rules that would work. We also thought about the game names and
other deliverables we could add into.
Fig 2.1 Week 2; Further discussions
Sheryne also made a PPT to compile art guide for the patterns and motifs.
During week 2, we worked on our game mechanics and concept. We were
settled with the idea of a matching card game where players match one
folklore character card with its matching characters based on the same
folklore by reading and understanding a short description in the
cards.
With this mechanic, players must read and somehow understand the
given keywords/hints in the description and get a gist of the folklore. We
planned to write down intriguing and a more interesting approach for the
description to attract players to read the more complete story in a
guidebook that we will provide.
The game mechanics are as explained below:
Cerita Rakyat: Tales of the Olden is divided into 3 different levels. The game has 2 card decks; the question card and the answer card. The question card are main characters from the folklores. These two decks will be color coded in only 2 different colors. The main card design will be the same so that players must read the description to understand the folklore.
Instead of the usual memory game where all the cards are opened and closed, our answer cards will all be opened for the players since they need to read the description to match. Each time they take the question card, it will be random, so they cannot predict which character they will get.
The levels are as follows:
- Easy: Players match 1 character card from the question card deck with 2-3 character cards from the answer cards.
- Medium: Players match 1 character card from the question card deck with 4-5 character cards from the answer cards.
- Hard: Players find all the characters from the folklores based on a card that only explains a short description of the folklore. There is no illustration on the description card.
Other game mechanics were also considered by us (see Figure 2.1), such as:
- Providing bonus card deck to determine a winner in a tie score or just an optional twist with more points added. It could be a pop quizzes, riddle cards, or a speed round, etc.
- Players have around 30 seconds to find the answer cards. If they fail to find the match or pick the wrong card, no points will be given.
- If a player is able to match all the cards before 30 seconds, they can keep going until the assigned time runs out.
- Each player earns points that we call 'coins' if they can match the cards. The winner is the player with the most earned coins.
Sheryne and Ying Ying created some sketches as well.
Fig 2.3 Sketch by Ying Ying
Fig 2.4 Sketch by Sheryne
With this, we continued to finalize our slides for the presentation, working on the game rules and collecting moodboard and references for the card design, packaging, and branding identity.
- Week 3: Proposal Presentation
On week 3, we presented our ideas in front of the class based on the guidelines Ms. Vitiya gave us with three sections: Introduction, Objectives, and Game Mechanism.
Final PPT:
Fig 3.1 Final Presentation Slides
FEEDBACKS
Week 1
Ms. Anis suggested to go with the card game direction and integrating the culture of Indonesia and Malaysia. Make sure the game is fun and simple, highlighting the culture aspect.
Week 2
We were suggested to proceed with Indonesian folklores only, can divide the cards into the Indonesian regions.
Week 3
Consider the replayability of the game. Once players memorize the description, it wouldn't be fun. Can try considering ideas such as collectible cards so ensure the card material is high quality and the illustrations are good. Maybe can consider releasing based on regions or releasing special editions.
REFLECTIONS:
Experience:
To be honest, I didn't expect that the time for me to start working on my FYP would come so quick. I don't feel like I'm ready at all but thankfully it's done with a group. The ideating experience was more fun than I had expected as 4 brains in a group means we kept spewing random ideas that accidentally turns into a solid one. Truthfully, I personally would have avoided the game approach for this project but since we wanted to incorporate culture into our project, I thought that it would be interesting. Doing it with members who are passionate and interested in the topic also made it much easier and bearable.
Observations:
Having 4 people to think is both a good thing and a bad one, honestly. It's good because there's so many ideas and there's a lot of help going in. But the difficult part is achieving the same understanding and vision, in terms of game mechanics and visual aspect. There's a lot of times where we just had to sit down and explain how we understood the game mechanics in our brains only to find out we all have different understanding.
So, overcoming these misunderstandings were definitely something I observed as a crucial thing in group projects. Healthy communication is required so that we're all on the same steps and understanding.
Findings:
Though I really liked our idea, we found that it's probably not the most replayable. Suggestions from our peers and lecturers pushed our brains to solve this main problem. While we loved this idea like our own child, we'll probably move forward with a slightly different idea.
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