In the past, I’ve faced the reality of building a product to find out that it wasn’t the right product. This is a deflating experience. It’s so easy to get excited about an idea and think that you “know” that it’ll be great. My favorite part of Fullerton is the focus on play-testing and working with low-fidelity prototypes. I embraced play testing, playing and finding a game that worked. We used a whiteboard version of the design canvas and mapped concepts from Fullerton onto it.

Beyond Fullerton, I enjoyed using the Grow-a-game cards to think about values. Getting input from both of our coaches was helpful. And, just continuing to play the game, adjusting rules, concepts and approach was invaluable (and fun!).

What could have been done better? More play testing with other people outside our group.

I found game assets via Google, this included images and audio. I did make some of our first low-fidelity prototype cards (the hand drawn versions). I took a pass at creating the game logo in Keynote. I used the sounds that were sourced in the AR app.

I hadn’t created an AR app before. I searched for a development platform to use and evaluated Vuforia, HP Reveal and Blippar before settling on ZapWorks. I used tutorials, documents and experimentation to get the AR app built.

We found that our game approach wasn’t a good fit for Twine or RPG Maker. I searched for other platforms and found RPG Paper Maker, Gamesalad, and GameMaker Studio. I was hopeful with GamerMaker Studio, but as David’s demo highlighted, that would have been a very tall order. I found a tutorial for building a Pokemon style card game, but the tutorial was 19 parts and 10 hours! I hope to come back to the tutorial later, but for our workshop timelines, I felt it was too much and too risky.

I think that Pot LUCK? is for everybody. The collection of foods could be made broader, but the mechanics, cards and scoring should help to keep the cards accessible. The game has some reading, but it is optional. As a social, party-game the interactions and experiences will depend largely on the people playing the game.

We played our game and had fun! In a busy, hectic week, the game gave us a chance to bond, be silly and laugh together. There were many moments of fun especially when trying to describe the foods being added to meals, attempting to name meals, or cringing as we consider the awful collection of foods being put together in a single dish.

I would absolutely introduce the game to family and friends. In the weeks ahead, I’ll work with my kids to print out a set of cards here at home. We play games as a family and with friends. I’m looking forward to introducing them to the game I built. And as an added bonus, I’ll get some “help” from my kids with the AR app.