The Start of Something..

Impossibly ambitious, but nevertheless a serious look into how games can change lives for the better.

This is the blog which will document the dramas, the frustrations and hopefully the successes of developing a game designed to help diagnose Asperger's Syndrome in children.

Since we as a team have been heavily digging into research surrounding AS, we've established that we are looking at a 4:1 ration of boys to girls, and that we are roughly looking between 8 - 11 years as a core audience.

So far the discussion has been mainly involving the concept of story, one which although it is classed as a serious game, we don't want to take away from a rich story line/style. Because of the intelligence that AS children show, we need a compelling game to keep the attention.

My personal idea centres around the use of a carnival esk game world, surrounded in Venetian masks (a possible play with the inability that AS symptoms show to read emotions well). I also like the idea of theatre involved someway in this world, which could be integrated into the puzzles. A team member had a good suggestion of developing the world as a play of split personalities and the struggle to control the emotions, which seems a really nice concept.

Whilst the concept of story is still being worked out, I have a good idea of the sort of style I would prefer, a sub-mixture of Brian Froud/Terry Gilliam/Henry Selick/Del Torro and the updated Monkey Island. How to merge those styles in another matter completely, but generally picking out aspects like the colour scheme from Henry Selicks 'Coraline', I personally would make for an interesting art style for the game, concentrating on lighting and colour to give a fully creative experience for the child.

A quick concept to give a colour palette -