Browsing by Author "Vapaakallio, Lassi"

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Designing climbing games - Creating shadowlings for ValoClimb
(2020) Vapaakallio, Lassi
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Motion games are games which require physical exertion to play. They have grown in popularity over the last decades and there have been major technological advancements in the field. At the same time, indoor activity parks, such as trampoline parks, are becoming increasingly popular globally. This has created a demand for games designed for a specific setting: activity park users playing together on an actual sports game platform. This thesis presents a real-sports, co-operative motion game called Shadowlings. The game is played on a climbing wall, using projected graphics and camera-based player tracking. Shadowlings was made on the ValoClimb platform, which had 6 previous games. Through analysis of existing games and literature on motion game design, a set of guidelines was created to direct the design of Shadowlings. In addition to guidelines, a smaller set of goals was set to address a need for a cooperative game for young players played in an activity park setting. Shadowlings is based on a novel interaction, where players' real-life shadows are used to move game characters on the climbing wall. By moving on and in front of the climbing wall, players are tasked to move cuddly shadow creatures from their starting points to a portal. This requires players to climb and work together to overcome obstacles in the levels of the game. The game was released in December 2019, and gameplay data was gathered globally for one week in January 2020. The data was collected from 187 different locations and includes 436 hours of play time. The data was then used to assess how successful Shadowlings was at meeting the guidelines and goals set at the beginning of the project. Based on the data available, the design of Shadowlings was successful. It fulfilled the expectations set at the beginning of the project and became the second most popular game on the ValoClimb system. While there's room for improvement in introducing the shadow interaction as well as optimizing the gameplay time, the game ultimately filled the niche that it was designed for. After designing and analysing Shadowlings based on the initial guidelines, a new set of guidelines was created and is presented in this thesis. While the refined guidelines are intended for the context of climbing games and an activity park setting, they can also be a useful tool for the design of other types of motion games.