WHAT PROJECTS LINK TO MY BRIEF?   REVIEWING EXISTING PRODUCTS:
I was thinking about the following games because they increase interest in themes and topics without being explicitly educational.

Sid Meier's Civilization isn't an educational game that beats you over the head, but it CAN teach you about historical periods. I could try to replicate this kind of game by having players go through the historical periods of Nottingham, re-enacting well known battles. It links to the brief because of the client's discussions of the rich history of Nottingham being described as a "city of rebels"

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Epic Citadel is educational in that it is a demo for the Unreal Engine 3. It sets the player in an environment and allows them to explore it. Free exploration can be linked to the brief with the client's mentions of the culture, buildings, and "secrets of Nottingham" – things like hidden alleys, vibrant architecture, and incredibly interesting places hidden amidst the streets, like the still functioning Green's Windmill nestled in the middle of Nottingham.

Treasures Of the Aegean is around Minoan Greece. The game isn't 100% educational, but if you're stuck in a puzzle, you can get a small hint by opening your history book for a few of the facts discussed in the game. Despite being a loose stretch with the quasi-historical information, it's still a fun game that gets people interested in Grecian subject matter, Making a quasi-historical game could be a viable route for my projects as my game would still show off interesting things about Nottingham, despite maybe not being 100% historically accurate.

GETTING FEEDBACK – CONDUCT FOCUSED RESEARCH
I need to get feedback on all these ideas I came up with. As the Confetti College is a very large area populated with multiple people aged 16 to 25, I could give a well-made form to the college and get my feedback from the student body. This will give me a large variety of multiple people's thoughts and opinions of Nottingham. I also have multiple siblings in other colleges, so I could make my intelligently written form and pass it off to other colleges via my familial network. These are the kinds of questions I asked:
1:  I ask the reader for their opinions on a basic premise.
2: I ask the reader how the player should get controlled, and to give their reasons why.
3: I ask the reader what the scope of the project should be and why.
4: I ask readers what they'd expect as a special mechanic for the various premises.

You can view the form using this link:  https://forms.office.com/e/fS9R00PsqC

You can view the responses using this link: First_Form_Forms_Analysis_Link

HOW PEOPLE RESPONDED:

• All respondents like an interactive room with actual interactability, as this involves more player control.

• 2/5 wanted realism, and 3/5 are fine with any art style.

• All 5/5 enjoy look-around rooms – a room where there isn't anything to do except look at stuff like in Epic Citadel.

• I used Google Maps as my example of a look around room so 2/5 advised to not use Google Maps, as it may be copyrighted.

• 4/5 people wanted an area with multiple objectives.

• 3/5 readers think you pick up interactive things via the E key.

• 1 recommended a 3D object turn around when you pick up an object, like Uncharted.

• 5/5 advise an interactive room for this project.

• 1 advised a Robin Hood Theme.

• 1 advised a theme about Nottingham Castle.

• 3 had no opinion about the location

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When I asked for verbal feedback from 12 other people, I was told by 8 that I should do the Goose Fair Idea. 5/8 thought the absurd premise would work, and that the topic was Nottingham-centric enough. One person thought that exploring the Market square was a good location, but believed that using a larger area of the City was a better idea as it would focus more on the city. Most people who voted for the Goose Fair idea said it sounded similar to the Untitled Goose Game and enjoyed the idea of being a "little goblin guy hunting down geese". The other 4 people chose the "Explore Nottingham like an RPG Hero" premise, citing the large locations to explore as the main reason they would enjoy playing it. I can combine the goose concept with the RPG one by having a more expanded Nottingham to explore, but use the Goose Game premise for the main adventure.   

While I was reading through my digital form responses, I was confused on why so little people filled out my digital form, but were happy to partake in my verbal questioning. I searched through other student's forms and old class presentations on form-making looking for common denominators to explain what was going on, and I managed to figure out what I was doing wrong: My digital form was about 14-15 questions with no visuals of what I was talking about, and every question asked you to explain the thoughts every response you gave in depth. I was overloading my readers with incredibly dull questions and never letting up on them. The verbal questioning I gave people only required them to answer five questions, and I got better answers without much fuss. To make sure I avoid having such an annoying digital form again, here's the three things I learned from my experience:

1. Give people something to grasp at. Assume that people don't know exactly what you know and explain to them what you're trying to do.

2. Use visuals. If you want help with how something looks, you need to show them what you're using to make the look.

3. Limit the questions. People fill the form out to be nice. They're not interested in something long, so don't give them a form with enough questions to write a Herman Melville book. 

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THE CHOSEN PREMISE:
I have been advised by the majority of people to do the Goose Fair project, so I went with this. I will use low-poly assets. This will simplify the workload of this project since I don't think I'll have time to make realistic building models. If I go with this option of making low poly models for my project, I could also collect low poly assets from the Unreal Store or the free to use asset creator, Kenney. The main area to explore in my prototype would be Market Square where you round up the geese. I want to ease the player into the game and the city. Quite a few games have a short intro where you navigate through a small tutorial location before heading along a path into the main room, and I can do the same to allow the player to explore a little bit more of Nottingham before leading into the Market Square level. I'm going to use the Robin Hood statue near the castle as the player's new starting location. This small tutorial starting location will also be small enough to be used for the prototype I need to build. 

Why is Robin Hood's statue a good idea for a starting location leading into Market Square?

1. Robin Hood is incredibly iconic and Nottingham based. If you say Nottingham, people respond with "Oh yeah! Robin Hood's place."

2. The Robin Hood Statue is right outside the Nottingham Castle, so we can have a bit of time for the player to test their moves outside the iconic castle of old Nottingham, before they're advised to head over to the Market Square.

3. The Castle Gate road which the Robin Hood statue is at the end of is basically a straight shot to the Nottingham Castle. As soon as you start the game's main adventure, you can easily see your destination and head over to Market Square. Then you get to run down the Castle Gate road as fast as you want, and the game will begin in the NEW Nottingham after showing you the OLD Nottingham.

4. The Castle Gate path is close to Market Square, and as I planned to physically photograph the place for my work, it is close enough to the Confetti College to allow me to get there easily after my classes end.

STARTING DESIGN:

MY CHOSEN FINAL IDEA:
I will make a third person perspective game where you go through sections of Nottingham featuring important cultural and historical sites like the Castle, the Caves, the Robin Hood statue, the Lace Market, etc. The player's goal is to capture geese running rampant across the city. They are rewarded with educational information about the location when they manage to capture the geese.

The base control system would be taken from my Unreal Experimentation Playground. The special mechanic would be that the player will be able to launch projectiles in the form of bread, run after escaped geese, use the geese to paraglide off of high places, and throw geese into their pens.

I plan to use a low-poly asset aesthetic for ease of 3D model construction, and I will use the Unreal Engine for the game itself. I will use a combination of Mixamo for character animations and Maya or the Unreal Engine's premade geometric shapes for models of buildings. I plan to use the Atkinson Hyperlegible font for the game, as it is a very accessible font meant to help with visually impaired people, so it will help me during my development process. I'll need to make a HUD to show the number of geese you have caught. I will use billboarding to make NPCs. I can use Procreate on my tablet to make cartoon-ish sprites, or the pixel art software Aesprite to make pixel art sprites. During the prototype, the geese would be a colored shape, or a cube with a goose texture. If I refined this goose design, I'd probably make a billboarded Goose.

PLAYER MODEL:
My player character is a 3D model of a person with a slice of bread for a head living in a pseudo-2D world. This gives a great explanation of why you have an endless supply of bread, and it can also link to some Nottingham culture, especially if we introduce Green's Windmill as a location. It may be jolting for players if they were expecting a "serious" educational game and we give them a person in a bread suit. However, with the release of The Untitled Goose Game by House House, silly games with geese are already on people's minds, which means my bread suited protagonist will most likely work in the game, as this is just an extra layer of wacky in an already wacky game. If you're in a game where you are running through Nottingham catching geese and throwing them into boxes, you're not going really going to be batting an eye at a guy in a bread outfit.

FONT:
I want to use the font I put on this page, the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font, for the project. It's a clear, readable font that is explicitly designed to help people with visual impairments and Dyslexia. Since I suffer from a visual impairment and color blindness, I am planning to use this font to help with my development process as much as possible during this project.

UI:
For simplicity, I would most likely just have a text label in the UI with the font of my choice, and it will appear in the top left, or the top middle of my player's screen. If I didn't use text, I would have an image in the location where the text would be. If the first two choices fall short, I'd have a percentage bar (cur_geese / max_geese * 100) label above the player's head that changes whenever you get another goose in your hands, and a billboarded label visible floating above the goose pen.  Otherwise, all information on the geese you are carrying and penned geese would pinned to the viewport.

COLORS: 
I will walk around Nottingham to take photos of all the places I intend to use in the game. I can make a simplified palette based on the pictures. A simplified palette will match with the low-poly model aesthetic.

EDUCATION ASPECT:
You're exploring Nottingham, and this in itself can help raise awareness of the city. Going around to different locations in the game can get the player interested in visiting these places in real life. Delivering a medley of educational facts will also help with this goal.

MAKING MECHANICS AND PROTOTYPES

FIRST: WHITEBOX THE LEVEL. The floor plan will almost DEFINITELY require me to use Google Maps in order to get the overhead perspective. Once I have the floor plan built and white-boxed, I should walk to the Castle Gate area and start taking photos of the Castle Gate Path for references, and make a few of the color draft pictures. Once I do that, I need to start making basic geometrical shapes of the buildings in Unreal, and plop my player into the enviroment for testing. If for some reason I am unable to go to Castle Gate to take pictures, I can use an overhead view provided by Google Maps in order to build the floor plan, and to get some images needed for referencing.

Basic animations like walk, run, jump, etc, will be put into Unreal using Mixamo. I'll use a 2D billboard effect for extra animations like throwing. For mechanics, I need to make a walk, sprint, throw, and an object collection system for allowing geese to be counted as caught. I also need to model the environment, draw out my color drafts, make my Goose AI, make my goose models, and create an endgoal/winstate. If I have time, I can think about creating music and sound effects for the prototype.

The prototype is essentially a tutorial location where you learn your moves and catch a few geese that are running around the area. My basic proof of concept/prototype will feature a goose and a pen you can throw it into. After you complete this tutorial in the full game, you can turn down to the path leading to other areas for the rest of the game to begin. The game is completed by catching every goose, and there is no fail state.

THE PHOTOS:
Here are some images I've taken as references.