People who reviewed my concept document were confused by the controls. They understood the concept and narrative, but could not picture the moment-to-moment gameplay. To remedy this, I updated my concept document to much more explicitly describe the mechanics of Sphere of Influence.

What I focused on most this week was visual iconography. Sphere of Influence is a pretty simple game, so I want the players to understand at a glance what is happening on the screen. The most important thing to nail down was the change that occurs when dots go from being your friend to losing interest in you to resenting you to cutting ties with you. This is represented by dots turning from green to gray to red to black. Also, I changed the player ring so that it is half-transparent when collision is turned off. I also turned the best friend pegs transparent when they were not able to be befriended.

Something that I spent a lot of time fiddling with that I still haven't perfected is movement. Right now, I think the player ring is too difficult to control. It is almost impossible to build up any sort of consistent momentum, so the player can't predict where the ring will fly when they turn collision off. Instead of the movement being controlled by forces left and right, I hope to code a physics system where forces will be applied at an angle, making the swinging motion much more consistent.

I prototyped my game in the same engine that I plan to create the final product: Unity. Instead of making a level, though, my prototype is more of a showcase of the basic game mechanics. The friends turn to resentment much quicker than they will in the final game. This is to show the color-changing visuals without boring the playtester.