Romeo and Juliet Game Post-Mortem

An anonymous reader writes "Gamasutra is running a post-mortem on an interactive love story that was written by students. They were attempting a solution to the game designer's challenge from the GDC 2004. From the article: Interaction with video games is currently done at an almost entirely rational level. The player may react to a game emotionally, but the game will never know about it, and thus, never respond to it. We wanted to change this, and have the player interact with the game solely through his own emotions."

Comments

Half Baked + Rushed Schedule = DOA

[DingerX]

So they set out with a vague idea of what the game was, basically an "emotional interface", no idea of how to work out the game itself; no run-throughs of what the concept was. They had limited artistic assets, which were essential for an impressionist game, and these were squandered by the shifting scope and requirements of the game. In other words, they didn't have a clear idea at the start, nor a clear execution.

I guess that's why it's a learning experience. "great ideas" are very simple ones, backed up by a bunch of tedious execution.