MiniGame: Mixed Letters

Testing procedure

Total tests: 2

• Variations
  1. MixedLetters_alphabet
  2. MixedLetters_spelling
• Difficulty Levels: ininfluent

Shared Difficulty

• Timer decreases with difficulty

Shortcuts

none

Variations

1. MixedLetters_alphabet

Player must find the correct letters in order.

Scoring

• 3 stars if…
• 2 stars if…

• 1 star if…

  2. MixedLetters_spelling

  Player must find the correct letters in order.

Scoring

• 3 stars if…
• 2 stars if…

• 1 star if…

  Developer notes

Issues

Warnings to be fixed

Optimization

Game Design Docs

Objectives

Pedagogical: Spelling and letter orientation.

Play: Recompose the anagrammed (and disoriented) LLs in the correct order.

Mechanics

Time-based (single timer per round), multiple rounds.

Each round begins with a giant LL showing the full word. Antura arrives running, a fight begins (dust particles to hide it) and the giant LL will become a scrambled series of regular LLs with a letter each. The player will have to place them back in the correct position, and also rotate them correctly. The main challenge here is usability (considering dragging and rotating).

• When Antura scrambles the letters, they lie on the ground, with their face towards the player. Their arms and legs are NOT present, and will NEVER appear in the whole game (otherwise the player will be able to understand if they’re upside down just by seeing their legs upwards), except in case of a failed endgame.
• The player will have to drag each LL to a series of UI squares (each representing a letter position) in the sky. Each UI square will also have a button. Pressing it will rotate the letter 90° along the Z axis.
• The instant the player got the right combination, a POOF will happen, and the giant LL will reappear, with a victory animation and VICTORYRAYS behind.

A note on why the “rotation” buttons: they seem the most usable option to allow a kid to rotate LLs without getting crazy, while keeping the actual LL interaction just for the dragging (from the ground to a UI square, or from a UI square to another).

Antura

Antura appears only at the beginning of each round, to scramble the giant LL.

Difficulty variations

Gameplay

Less time, more letters (also pedagogical).

Pedagogical

• In initial levels, the word to form is shown in the top center of the screen, as a visual aid.
• More letters to reorganize.
• Letters rotated by 90°
• Letters rotated by 180°

Endgame

Each round will end under one of these conditions:

• The timer elapses: fail
• The LLs are correctly reorganized: win

The game will end when the given number of rounds have been met.

Success

A POOF will happen, and the giant LL reappears, with a victory animation and VICTORYRAYS behind.

Failure

Condition: timer elapsed.

The LLs fall back on the ground (if they were in the UI squares), their arms and legs reappear, and they run to position themselves in the correct order (the giant LL doesn’t reappear though). They utter some gibberish sound that represents disappointment and the original word appears in the center of the screen.

Game variations

Alphabet version Instead of a word, the LLs have to be positioned in the right alphabet order. The rest would work the same.