Dragon Question is my current ETC project. We’re plotting out an adventure game and a rhythm game based off the original game’s principles of simple interface and cooperative play. I’m the lead designer on the project, and recently received the swanky new title of “director.” Ooh!
The original Dragon Question was a three-player cooperative game, set in a pop-up storybook and based around minigames and story sequences. I was a game designer and the scenario writer.
Dragon Question was built around a large (huge, actually) rotating, lazy-susan-style table, containing the players’ controllers on one side. The controllers consisted of one input each, all of them utilized in different ways for each minigame. The first player (as Vincent) used a single rotating knob, the second (as Alexander) used a sliding knob, and the third (as Elric) used a vibration sensor set to detect blowing. This necessitated frequent use of the word “blowing” when I explained the game to players, which was a great source of fun.
Another, more intentional, source of fun was the rewards we handed out to players after each minigame. The rotating table was originally designed to give people different inputs for each game, but in two weeks that proved impractical. We were left with a rotating table that wasn’t for anything. Good design principles dictate that you throw something out if it no longer does anything. Awesome design principles dictate that you figure out something cool for it to do. In our case, we curtained off the backside of the table and used the “backstage” to load up treats and treasures that we’d rotate out towards the players between minigames .
Giving people chocolate is arguably a cheap shortcut to winning hearts and minds, but we do what works. But we also had some very cool games and a fun platform to play them on, and we got people to have fun playing together.
More on the original Dragon Question:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
3-minute Trailer
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