Josh Lee

This summer we were fortunate to have kids come in during the University of Utah’s summer camp program and play-test our games. While one might question the amount of children around such expensive equipment, having actual kids play our game was worthwhile and showed us a lot of the issues with the poses that I had concocted for the game. For example, I imagined the cat pose as one that is similiar to the Japanese Lucky Cat –  The right arm is bent 90 degrees at the elbow with the hand up, and the left arm is bent 90 degrees at the elbow with the hand low. To me as a previous dancer, it was a move used many a time in Hip Hop choreography, but it was clear that it’s a hard move to pull off for many people and kids. Our culture is one where we don’t fully explore body movement – we sit in desks and travel passively in cars – so we don’t move our limbs in odd ways. The move felt very natural to me, but people have issues wit hit. Below is a picture of a kid awkwardly in the cat pose. I think it’s funny. but I was able to see the challenge for kids in looking at the pictures afterwards.

Another issue was the rat pose. We went through a few iterations of it – from a grounded pose to one where players hold their fingers over their head like they have mouse ears. In the gallery below you’ll see Brandon guiding a young child through the pose. Though it’s a cute one, I don’t like that it’s not very active. It’s also focused too much in the body, and sometimes the Kinect has issues recognizing it. This will definitely be changing due to the fact that we’re cutting all the animals and modifying poses. The rat’s pose is completely going away and will be something different for the rabbit that is replacing it.

Overall though, it was cute to see our target audience play the game and enjoy it. This event in the summer has given us a lot of thought about the game as we move forward into the future and this has been a guiding force in our decisions. We’ll be applying what we learned about the poses and kid’s behavior as we create the Beta build of Zodiac.