The project goals were to:
The Getaway team (myself and Emilia Poyiadgi had to refine the project scope at the beginning of this semester as the proposal we produced in semester one was too ambitious for a 13 week project. We refined and simplified the project in a way that was achievable in the time given and have created a smaller version of the experience.
Getaway is a project that is meaningful for both us and we succeeded in creating an experience with the purpose of mental health support and regulation. Getaway provides a safe space for students to manage feelings of stress and overwhelm, bringing them comfort through tailored gameplay that calms the mind and body through music, gentle body motion and immersion.
This project provided us with the opportunity to grow our skills as designers and developers, levelling up in many areas such as animation, technical development, project management and collaborative work. The project was extremely challenging given the many limitations and technical obstacles faced along the way but we are so very happy with the final outcome, receiving plenty of positive feedback that reassured that we have created something unique and innovative.
My personal goal was for the Getaway project was to improve my technical ability. By taking the role of technical lead on this project, I was tasked to manage the moving parts for our physical game space, and lead the development of the Getaway build. This involved learning how to use new coding languages, working in Javascript, html and CSS. Where I could have improved my work on this project, is in the planning and problem solving at the beginning of this project as well as the distribution of tasks. I spent a lot of time working on a prototype in VR while we feared that a physical game would not be achievable and I regret not using my time more efficiently, as well as putting more time into improving the player experience and developing my understanding of the gesture system. Towards the end of the project, I improved on this and put many hours into studying and improving the script to the best of my ablity.
As a team we did a really great job at supporting each other along the way, giving critical feedback that was helpful for each other to improve our individual tasks. We always tested assets as they were created, making the most of the time we had and working efficiently, using the agile method.
The technical limitation of this project made meeting milestones and creating the experience that we imagined very difficult making the initial planning, design and problem solving a great challenge that consumed a lot of time. But we were able to adapt to these challenges at every stage and managed to produce a successful product by the deadline.