Robin Koman - Launch Pad - Week 3- "Invisible, Like Me" (Leaps and Bounds)

[rkoman]

Metaphorical leaps and bounds have been very welcome this week--we're avoiding literal leaps and bounds here at Story Tonic in the hopes that our app will be challenging cognitively and emotionally, but not cause physiological discomfort.

With our renewed determination for audiences' need of this product, pre-production has moved in some very fruitful directions in the past few days.  The most important step, I think, came in the form of an in-experience UI element that will be stylized projection of a smart phone screen. "Invisible, Like Me" is a tale rich with magical realism, and one of the elements of that is that suddenly the protagonist's phone has a map that shows where other "fading" people are, and can help the user to draw connections between people that they've discovered have things in common, things that would unite them.  The power of this is that it pulls from all the accessibility and extrinsic knowledge of real-world smart phones and their users (I can't imagine too many instances where a VR customer wouldn't be at least functionally familiar) and allows the appearance of this UI element to be diegetic, where the protagonist can react to sounds and alerts to bring the user's attention to the menu, as it is a part of the world of the experience, versus being separate from it.

Another piece taking firmer shape is the setting of the game, which will move through several locales in a small, southeast downtown, each with different people to meet and to connect.  Right now the plan is for outdoor spaces, likely to include the exterior of the protagonist's work place, as well as their home.  There are two main directions being considered, a physically constructed set, and a diorama-like digital space that would have textures to give a more handcrafted appearance.  The look of each space will change as the user makes connections for the protagonist, and the music will shift to reflect mood as well.

The character designs are underway, both for concept art and for psychological design.  We have many different types of characters, many types of connection, that we'd like to illustrate, but we're trying to be very mindful of our scope.  Paired with our five regions, we'd like the number of characters in each to be scoped appropriately so that players aren't forced to play for too long a swath of time.  This is both for comfort, and for the heat sink issues with the Gear VR.

I feel that we've crested the top of a hill, and from here we can see the sun sinking into a smoke-gray see, while the inky expanse of the sky begins to be dotted with stars, and a Strawberry moon.  In that soft light, we can see the horizon, our goal, clearly but not starkly, waiting for us.  There's work too do up here, but soon we'll be headed down the other side, full speed ahead.