Final Project Essay — Shuyang Cai

Project Title

Darkness Rhapsody

The project statement of purpose

For our final project, we intend to create a game that requires players to find their way out of the darkness by listening to the sound of the wind. During the game, people will come to crossroads and need to decide which way to go. It is when they need to tell which direction is the sound of wind come from and head for that direction. We also intend to simulate how it might feel like to be a blind person. Although such simulation is not very close to the real situation, it more or less gives people the experience of not using eyes but using ears to find the way. Moreover, by emphasizing the importance of hearing, this project also serves as a reminder to those who always fix their eyes on smartphones while walking on the street, showing them walking without looking at one’s way is rather dangerous and they should always pay attention to the sound on the street to keep safe.

Project Plan

The first step we plan to take is to use processing to create the main scene of the game. We will need to realize the effect of walking by moving the background. Although we haven’t decided what should be the background yet, we are thinking about design it as a two-dimension map of a building that includes an entrance, an exit, and several rooms. As there are around three weeks left, We intend to finish this part of the project during the first week. For the second week, we will focus on the Arduino part. We need to find a way to enable players to control which direction to go in processing. We are currently thinking about using a joystick to realize it. We will also need to prepare the sound of footsteps and the sound of wind and connect them to earphones so that people can hear the sound better. What’s more, we intend to add background music to this game, which will also serve as instructions or hints to some extent. As this part is more difficult, we intend to spend one and a half week to finish this part. For the rest of the time before the due date, we will run user tests and try to improve the project according to the advice we can get.

Context and Significance

According to my preparatory research and analysis, I think there are two efficient ways to engage people in the interaction. The first approach is to make sure that people have to use their sensation during the process of interaction. In our project, it is very important for people to use their ears to find the way out. The second way is to make the game enough entertaining and changeable. If the game requires people to pay a little effort to figure out, it would be more interactive and have a better user experience. Therefore, we decided that there will be enough crossroads for players to explore. It is also possible that people cannot make it get out of the map because they turned into the wrong direction. By adding choices and possibility to fail the game into our project, we intend to make it more entertaining and interactive. Although there is no specific segment of people we are targeting at, we think it is important for people to experience how it feels like without eyesight while having fun playing the game.

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