Project Starting Point
learning a new language is always difficult for people: there is some interest at the beginning to motivate people to start up a new language but when the repetitive remembering process becomes dominant, people start to lose interest and the motivation to continue. there are not much better ways to help people become proficient in one language; however, if people begin the learning experience in a more interesting way, they will be more likely to continue learning in the future.
my language proposal is Chinese, on one hand, it is my native language that I am most familiar with, on the other hand, Chinese characters have such a long history that there are many interesting ideas to discover from the formation of characters (details can refer to background research section). considering the learning process for a beginner in a language
is similar to a glimpse of thousands of years of character evolution: from basic characters to combined more complex characters, learners can also adopt such a process of evolution and progression instead of remembering everything, like the experiences when I was a child.
games are the most effective way to engage a player, especially for such a boring task of adopting a new language. the key elements in games that differ from the real world are quests, experiments, and rewards. quests are goals that people want to achieve, which are key points both in games and real life. experiments and failures bring players the excitement of exploring and trying everything, which is so costly in the real life - in the game a person can skip several turns without a large penalty, and even he/she can retry the level as many times you want; however, there is not a second round for him/her in the real life. rewards are the key element in games that keep players attracted and focused - those short-term rewards at each level and after a quest is complete are motivations for players to keep on playing the game.
Project Statement
Flicker is a 2D platform game for young Chinese starter learners to learn and understand Chinese in a more systematic and engaging way through interacting with the evolution and formation of characters.
Background Research
the formation and evolution of Chinese characters can be categorized into several categories:
pictographic: the shape of the characters is mimicking the real-life object. these characters are usually simple and holistic (most parts are connected and mostly can not be further split into other meaningful characters). these are most of the earliest and most simple characters.
- 日 (the sun)
symbolic: some small indicators (like dots, horizontal/vertical strokes …) mostly added on the pictographic characters to indicate the focus of meaning.
- 上 (above)
combined ideograms: combine two or more pictographic or ideographic characters together to express the third meaning. e.g. 日 sun + 月 moon = 明 moonlight (Decode Mandarin Chinese, n.d.)
combined pictophonetic characters: combine two character together - one indicates the meaning and the other indicates the pronunciation. e.g. 女 (woman) + 马 (reads: ma) 妈 = (mother, reads: ma)
most of the Chinese characters, no matter complex or simple, are formed of these “rules”. the principal elements are the pictographic characters and all other characters are just combining previous characters following those rules. there are definitely newly formed characters day by day that no one can answer the question about how many characters are there; however, as more simple characters can have multiple combinations (and sometimes there are multiple combinations from two characters), more complex characters will have fewer (and even no) combinations, the focus of the game will be those simpler characters.
sources:
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/346802483
https://www.decodemandarinchinese.com/character-formation/
Targeting Audience
the major targeting players are children around middle school and some university students. one of the reasons is the best age to learn a new language is around middle school when their memory and learning ability are at their peak. the other reason is that games and entertainments are more attractive to the younger generation, while they are faster learners and willing to try new things. also, students will have more spare time to develop a new interest in a totally different realm rather than older people working at industries.
Beat by Beat Core Pillars (and Requirements)
1st ranked pillars
players can flick the character tokens on the playground to form other combined characters
players can combine characters with the goal character in order to finish the level
desirable 3-4 moves at the beginning levels, and should increase the difficulty as the level gets higher
the goal characters should be the missing parts of the following dialogue - players could not push the storyline if they do not finish a level
players should see hints when they are stuck on some character they do not know how to combine
players should see the definition after they perform a good flick
there can be a stacked definition if there are several collisions in a single move
players should see score change/special effects/sound effects if they perform a good flick
the style should reflect the character and learning theme, the current desired style would be water ink
score change should be shown as a number with some randomity on the UI layer
collision effect should be adjusted by how hard the collision is: the larger the strength, the bigger the effect
the background story should reflect the theme of learning the language, the characters should start at some simple point and move harder as the player progresses
players should see the preview lines that indicate the direction and strength of the flicking
2nd ranked pillars
players can grab characters from the dialogue blobs and put some in the playground to make their starting deck
they should not grab so much, desirably 3-4 in the beginning levels
some character tokens can be destroyed and there should be a reward at some moves to win new characters in the playground
maybe if the player performs a streak of collision in one single move, or if reached at some score threshold
there should be some danger areas where players will lose the token if they flick any token inside (or abyss at the edge)
also, some obstacles that will minus the score if players stepped inside
3rd ranked pillars (and some undecided mechanics)
maybe players can use some player skills, like duplicating, adding several moves, shuffle the playground. etc.
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