Game Log 3 - IMAGINE

Process and refinements based on results from the IMAGINE phase

During the IMAGINE phase, we incorporated targeted refinements to enhance the user experience, drawing insights from both the expert council (gathered during the PLAY phase) and the playtests from this phase. First, we introduced a cheerful audio that plays when the player collects all the oranges and places them on the serving dish. This «happy sound» not only rewards the player but also signals that they’ve reached the «good world». 

Next, our goal is to strengthen the game’s thematic alignment with the EU values of Freedom and Human Dignity. However, we’ve decided to defer these enhancements to the next development phase–once we’ve got the core gameplay mechanics–so we have a solid foundation on which to build these themes. 

Method used from the IMAGINE Methods

To evaluate our core interaction and player experience, we used the Interactive Mockup method. Using Unity we created a simple mockup to visualize and test the “stand-still vs. movement”- and the orange collecting mechanics. The mockup showcased this by adding trees that did not have leaves while the player stood still, and upon movement the trees would gain their lush leaves. The players could also grab oranges and place them onto a placeholder cube, which would simulate a table. 

During our initial playtest, the oranges did not yet appear or disappear in response to player movement. We partnered with another class group to do the playtest of our interactive mockup in order to gather insights into player interactions and overall experience. 

Building this low-fidelity mockup forced us to prioritize which features best communicated our core gameplay. By focusing on the essential mechanics–movement feedback and object manipulation–we identified technical constraints (collision boundaries, table anchoring) and confirmed that our core loop felt intuitive even in a pared-down form. 

Game concept

Below are screenshots and a video from the interactive mockup we playtested. This prototype brings us closer to the cultural gameworld and the empowering gameplay experience we envision by allowing testers to grab virtual oranges from trees and place them onto a virtual box, which we later will replace with a real table.  Although the stand-still vs. movement wasn’t fully implemented, it still showcased trees blooming when the player paused and shedding their leaves when players moved–helping playtesters understand how their behaviour influences the world.

Pictures of the trees.  Left is trees with no leaves (displayed when standing still) and right is trees with leaves (displayed during movement).

Interactions in the mock-up. Left is grabbing the orange, and to the right is when an orange is placed on the virtual box, it turns green for feedback.

Short demo of the mock-up: 

Interactions & AR Integration

Our gameplay revolves around two main  interactions:

1. Grabbing & Dropping Oranges: Players reach out, pick up virtual oranges, and place them onto a real-world surface. 
2. Environment Switching: Movement reveals the «good world»–trees bloom with leaves– while remaining stationary returns the scene to the «bad world».

To turn this concept into an AR experience, we leverage the Mixed Reality Toolkit’s Anchor Prefab Spawner (part of the MR Utility Kit). At runtime, the script scans the surroundings for a table and anchors a game object to it. We will place a real silver platter on top of this table for players to drop their virtual oranges onto. 

By combining real-world detection (the table anchor), physical props (the silver platter on a table), and virtual elements (the oranges and other virtual environment effects), we blur the line between the player’s environment and the game world–delivering an AR interaction that feels both natural and immersive.

Insights from  playtest

The interactive mockup revealed multiple areas for improvement. Playtesters struggled to recognize when they’d completed the game. To avoid this confusion, we have introduced a cheerful sound effect that plays once all oranges are placed on the plate, to signal success and reach the goal destination.  However, we suspect some of this confusion stemmed from the mockup’s limitations: Players couldn’t place oranges on a plate, but only on a box, and the visibility of oranges never changed - where the end goal is to have oranges appear in the “bad world”/when standing still and disappear in the “good world”/during movement, unless they have been collected. It was also not implemented that the player would stay in the good world, once all oranges had been collected. 

A tester specifically noted that the plate would make the placement goal more intuitive—validating our original concept, which we had not yet implemented in the mockup. Overall, these insights confirmed that our core mechanic is both intuitive and engaging. The playtesters found it satisfying to change between the two worlds based on their movements. 

So generally, we need to refine our prototype and implement more and better feedback mechanisms, such as sound effects, smoother transition between the worlds (so it does not feel buggy/laggy), and making it clearer when the game has been completed.