Final thoughts

The blog journey has ended, last week we had mojo and are now going through everything we collected, everything went well and was an incredible journey, we will now focus on exams and delivering the final report however we do have good news, we as a group decided to continue developing the game so who knows maybe we will keep this blog alive, stay tuned. Thanks for everything and see you next time

MOJO

Hi!
MOJO was great, many people enjoyed our game and gave us good feedback.
A huge thanks to all of you who played it!
I'll see you next time!!

MOJO

Yesterday we finally attended MOJO. Everything went according to plan and the surprisingly good feedback we got gave use the motivation to keep developing and finish the game. The team will now take a break and prepare for exams but we will soon be back better than never! Thank you all for the support and I'll see you soon.

MoJo

The team has attended MoJo in Tagus Park and collected the necessary feedback from the users. We now have a better idea and understanding of what is working and what is not. We alse know now what is lacking in the game. From here on we will be reviewing all the data collected and use it to improve the project.
The blog journey ends here, thanks and until next time.

Mojo

Hey guys so here we are, its that time of the year again, Mojo is tomorrow and we are giving the final touches to our game, hopefully tomorrow will be a good experience to receive feedback and access how our game is received by the public, hope to see you guys there. See you tomorrow

Preparing for MoJo

This week the team has been working on the game in order to get everything ready for MoJo. See you there!

Week before Mojo

I'm currently working on designing the levels for Summer, due to other projects and presentations i wasn't able to work on the prototype until now, our objective is to improve the prototype during the weekend in order to show it to our focus group on Sunday so that we can have a pre-feedback of what we are going to show at MOJO. Catch you guys next week

MOJO

Hi guys!
This week we worked (and still are) on the game for you to play on MOJO. I hope you like it!!
See you next week

MOJO is near,

Hello everyone!
MOJO is only 8 days and with the first "real release" of Recollections! Last week we were busy with documents for MOJO and this week we will be focusing on getting the game shown to our focus group. Hoping to get the same good feedback we have been getting  lately to keep improving the game!
See ya soon.

Playtesting

Hello everyone, this week the team has been focused in improving the conceptual documents and preparing the playtest for MOJO. The playtesting consists of some main objectives that we intend to reach, based on our user feedback during the event. Until the next update we will be working on the game and communicating with the team artist to get everything ready!

Playtesting and Docs

Hey guys so just finished the play testing doc we know have a clear objective for MOJO and a clear procedure of what to do, hope to see you guys there. I will now focus on the 4 levels for Summer hopefully next week we can test the prototype with our focus group before showing it on MOJO, see you next week

Preparing MoJo

Hi guys!
This week we are preparing the MOJO activities for you, making a small survey and improving the game.
See you next week!

Third Development Cycle

MOJO is getting closer but we still have lots of things to do! The third development cycle represents the final sprint we will be doing before the project is finished.  We're finishing the update on the docs and will be preparing the surveys for the players that will attend MOJO. I'll be in London this week working so it will be hard to also work on the programming side of the game, but I will do my best.

3 Development Cycle

Hi!
So this week I fixed the prototype from last week and we're updating the docs and working on the survey for the MOJO.
See you guys next week!

3 Development Cycle

Hey guys, so we received a ton of images from our game designer so you can expect a more enticing game, this week I'm focusing on the playtesting as well as improving our previous game docs and if I manage to still have some free time will start developing the rest of the levels so you guys can play them on MOJO. See you next week

Quick update

Another busy week passed. I was busy with other projects so there were no major advances regarding the programming of the game itself. We presented the game for the other groups to play and received some more feedback which will  be used to keep improving the game.
Cya soon!

First Tech Prototype [Late Edition]

On the past week the first tech prototype was finished and presented to our focus group and in the labs. Reviews and feedback were positive and we know we are on the right track. Our artist is also working on her side to make the project the best she can. We will be working on it during this week, fixing bugs, adding mechanics and structuring new puzzles and levels. We will also look into the conceptual documents once again, and start discussing how the team wants to approach the playtesting.

First Real Prototype [late edition]

So last week we finished the first real prototype and showed it to our focus group, to our lab collegues and to a couple of guys from Miniclip. The reviews from everybody were good.
See you this week with the developments from the current week!

Player testing

Writing only now, since we only finished our prototype today. The first levels are now fully playable and all the game control mechanics are implemented (save states, warps, menus). We got some users from the focus group to test the "game" and managed to get some really nice feedback which we are gonna use to improve our game! See ya soon.

Tech Prototype and Player testing

Hi everyone! This week the prototypes are being developed. We will be conducting the player testing, after meeting in group and finishing the prototypes this upcoming weekend. Everything is going well up until now. See you next week!

Prototype Improvement

Hey hey guys, hope everything is well, this week we focused on improving the prototype, we will offer the testers more levels, working menus and more mechanics we will also meet this weekend in order to assure everything is up and running for next weeks prototype presentation. See you next week

Prototype, Conceptual Document and Players’ Feedback

Hi! So the title says it all. This week we improved our prototype, fixed the conceptual document and this weekend we'll be collecting some players’ feedback. Next week we'll show all the results and the prototype on the lab.
See you next week!

A little bit of everything

This week was a bit complicated. Did not manage to work hardcore on the project since we had other projects to deliver. Nevertheless the information retrieved from the workshops has been sorted out and we are hoping to release the Spring levels by the end of next week. Stay tuned! :^)

Tech Prototype

The team is now working on the Tech Prototypes. We are facing the usual challenges that programmers go through when working on new projects, Time to work even harder now!

2 Development Cycle

Still sorting trough the information received from the workshop, as well as improving the prototypes, hopefully you guys will be able to play the first entire season of Spring, didn't really advance much on the prototypes this week due to other projects and exams but this weekend and next week we are gonna go full charge again. See you guys next week, cheers

Development Cycle #2

Hi guys!
So this week we worked on the results from the workshop and started to improve our prototype with the results. Next week we'll be continuing the prototype development.
See you next week!

Holidays

Hey guys so our name changed, yeah that happened, we thought that the name "Recollections" was more suitable for the game taking into consideration the lore of it... Although this week we were on holidays i didn't really focus too hard on the game because i'm swarmed with other projects and exams and also i wasn't really available due to personal issues, however we did as suggested and created a workshop and We're now updating the previous conceptual documents and sorting trough the workshop results.

Workshop + Game improvements

This week was a complicated one. We managed to gather up our focus group in order to discuss game ideas and improvements without any type of testing involved. Just a nice and friendly chat.
We are currently working on finishing the conceptual documents while doing some programming to finish the game physics and puzzle mechanics.
Cya next week :^)

Workshop

This week we had a workshop with our focus group in order to discuss game ideas and such. We received information and additional help that will guide the team through right path. Concerns, problems, flaws and gameplay were the main focal point of our meeting. We are now working on the revision and update of our conceptual documents. Until next week!

Recollections and Hollidays

I'm spending this week with other projects and a small easter trip.

See you next week!

PS: Our game now is called Recollections, so do not be surprised if some of the stuff on this blog change

2nd Development Cycle

We got some important feedback from our focus group which was used to improve the future game. Only posting today because we were up last night programming some minor tweaks. We hope to have some levels finished and the all the puzzle mechanics implemented by the end of this week.
Cya soon™

Second Development Cycle

Hey hey guys, so we finished our first approach of the prototypes and we also managed to get some important feedback of what's working and what should be changed, we will now tackle those issues and hopefully improve the game to the standard we want to make it. The fist set of levels are almost complete there is just 1 missing, during the break i will focus on completing the first set and hopefully the second set as well, as soon as i'm finished we will try to implement the mechanics on Game Maker so we can start testing if the level difficulty is appropriate or not on Android devices. Cheers guys catch you next week.

The past week we tested our prototype with our focus group and with our colleagues at the lab. Overall we received good feedback, but we still have a journey ahead and a lot of room for improvement. We will now start working on the actual coding to build higher level prototypes. Also it is worth noting that the team, including Mariana (artist), decided that the name of the game was not the most appropriate, and we will be changing it as soon as possible!

Testing

Hi guys!
So this week our first prototype was tested by the focus group and by our colleagues on the lab. Also two guys from Miniclip showed up and tested our prototype. The overall review was good and we received some feedback to improve the game. This week we'll be preparing the workshop with the players.
See you next week!

The first prototype

Hey everyone!
This week we put our minds into creating the first prototype (made of paper) that will be used tomorrow in order to get some feedback from the users. Things are working according to plan, which is great :^)
Cya next week 

Low-fi Prototype

This week the team was focused on drawing and sketching ideas for our levels and puzzle designs while keeping the low-fi prototype necessity in mind. Alex already posted and uploaded the sketches photos so I won't be doing that. The prototype will now be used to get user feedback, by testing it with members from our focus group. We also met in person with our Design Artist for the first time to make sure everyone is on the right track and know what is going on. Until next week!

Prototypes

The low-fi prototypes are finalized, today we tested them with our own game designer Mariana in order to get some feedback before presenting them(the prototypes) to our focus group. Tomorrow we will start the real testing with players from our focus group and hopefully get even more feedback that can help us improve the project. The tech prototype is almost finished as well it just needs some final tweaks hopefully by Sunday everything is complete and functional. Here are some of the photos we took during the meeting, where you can see some of the low-fi prototypes:

Drawing, drawing, drawing...

Hi guys!
So, by the title you should know what we are doing this week (yeah, it's drawing). And that is all we did this week. This weekend the prototype will be tested by our focus group and we'll collect more data to analyse.
See you next week!

FDC (part two)

Hello everyone! Finished our first conceptual document, the game theory is taking shape and we managed to get enough replies to our survey in order to get a solid focus group. Time to start coding now and implement the basic game mechanics. What are the game mechanics you ask? I won't say, stay tuned and find out next week :D

Our conceptual document is now finished and delivered. From the survey we created next week we selected 7 people to accomodate our focus group. The selected people were chosen taking into account different types of players and free time, because it will be needed for our game testing. For the rest of this week our team will focus on building low-fi prototypes, generate more ideas and contact our focus group in order to get proper feedback. Until next week!

First development Cycle (part 2)

Hey guys so our first conceptual documents are finished, we now have a better idea of what we are up against, we also selected our focus group with different types of players so we can test and get feedback from different perspectives. This week i'm gonna start working on the low fidelity prototypes to hopefully test it with the focus group as soon as possible.

First Development Cycle (part two)

Hi guys! So this week we finished our conceptual document. We got over 20 people responding to our survey and with that solid data. Our focus group is decided and is composed of 7 people. In the next weeks we'll get in touch with them to test our (not yet done) prototype. Now I need to focus on two other projects and a test. See you all next week and thanks for following our blog!
PS: 69 days for MOJO guys (May 30th)!

First Development Cycle

We are making progress! I was assigned the role of lead programmer for this project and have been working on the android development setup. As of yesterday, all libraries have been installed and we can now export and debug the "game" on an android device!

Tool setup: ✓

First Development Cycle (part one)

Hi guys! This week was a busy one. We started to really get into the Conceptual document (more than half is already done), we did a form to get data and create a focus group and we talked with our designer from Faculdade Belas Artes. We are also perfecting our ideas for the game to make it better. See you next week!

First Dev Cycle

The team has been working on the conceptual documents this week. We built a survey to gather info and a focus group, reviewed some of the competition that is currently in the industry, analysed the domain and started creating scenarios and personas. Our ideas are getting more solid by the day and we are looking forward to what comes next. Cya next week!

First Development Cycle

Hey guys, just a quick update we started working on the First Development Cycle we already have some of the work done, currently waiting on feedback from potential focus group players. We also divided goals and responsibilities I'm in charge of level design and I'm also the one responsible for the team. Currently working on some basic levels while also working on creating "Player personas" so let's just hope my imagination doesn't betray me, wish me luck : ) See you next week.

Hello World

Hello everyone and welcome to our blog. My name is João Varandas but you can call me Elektro and I am one of the developers of the amazing game ActionReaction :)
Stay tuned to find out more about our game as we develop it !

Hello world

Hey guys I'm Alexandre Peres, you can call me Alex and i'm a part of the team that's developing the "Action Reaction" game which is a puzzle game for android. I think we have a really interesting idea and hopefully everything goes right.

Hello World!

My name is André Saraiva and I'm a member of the dev team for Action.Reaction game for the Game Development Methodology. The team has some solid ideas in mind, we hope it works out as we plan!

Hello World!

Hello World!

This is our first message to the world. My name is Duarte Botelho aka brigadinhos and I am one of the four developers of the mobile game ActionReaction. Here you can watch the progress of the game, step by step.
I hope you enjoy our work and I'll see you soon!