There’ve been a couple of posts alluding to the current thesis prototype. Now it has a name:

Playful is a game about hide-and-seek. Two little kids, who happen to be a dragon and a knight, are chasing each other through a forest. Since the dragon has some natural advantages (most notably the ability to breathe fire), they agree that the dragon can’t go for the win until the knight has spotted the dragon twice. If the dragon can avoid getting tagged in those moments of risk, it’ll be possible to breathe fire on the knight and win the game.

One of my goals with Playful was to explore a form of conflict that isn’t within the violent norm of video games. We as humans compete all the time, but only a very small number of those forms of competition appear in games. I’ve been enjoying bringing kids’ makeshift, balanced-on-the-fly competitions into video gaming.

Playful is also meant to capture the notion of engaging with the risk posed by an opponent rather than controlling the opponent to negate risk; a few of my classmates summarize the idea as “honorable competition,” and I think that’s a good way to put it. Again, this is something we routinely do, giving one player small advantages or imposing limitations to ensure that a game is fun for everyone. Capturing that negotiation has been a lot of fun.

I’ve enjoyed working on Playful enough to want to polish it into something releasable, even if just as an interesting proof of concept. That process is ongoing now. Look forward to it in the coming weeks . . . .