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Reviews for Emily Hsu
Innovativeness and potential of The Wall storyboard
Client 1:
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This is a great twist on a climbing wall! Good teamwork and combination of physical and mental challenges.
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Client 2:
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The Wall seems like a really fun game. It basically puts players into a real-life platformer, and who hasn't wished to try that? However, there are feasibility issues. For instance, safety: what if a player is standing on a platform when another player pushes a button that retracts the platform? You could say that the platforms have some sensor that detects when someone is standing on it and doesn't retract then, but that removes much of the challenge from the game. Additionally, the walls are only 10 feet high - an average-sized adult would only have to climb up a couple of platforms to get there. Finally, you would have to build each platform such that it would reliably support the weight of even a heavy adult, without support from below.
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Reviewer 3:
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There are an ambiguous amount of eggs that were mentioned, and there was also an ambiguous end to the puzzle. What would be done with the eggs once touched/collected? They could be touch sensitive or they could act as an object that needed to be collected and reassembled somewhere else for safety, like a dragon's nest. The tapestry acts as your signifier to locate the eggs, but would there be something added to tell the guest to look where it is pointing, such as a slight glimmer at its horn, or is it ambiguous on purpose? On the same note, the interaction of the blocks being able to be pushed in and out could be a difficult task to guide into. Overall good concept and interactive. Having the wall as part of the solution of the puzzle allows for variability in the puzzle, potentially having different relationships of how the blocks interact with each other for each puzzle.
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Reviewer 4:
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Our team actually had the most difficult time brainstorming good physical gags under the constraints of 5Wits' open world concept, and this one seems like it would be extremely fun and challenging. The manner in which the participants interact with each other in this room is very clear from the drawings (also: I love the sound effects "whoosh" and "snick" - it's a simple addition which reads life into the room). The integration of a gag which seems relatively general (i.e., a changeable climbing wall) with the theme of an abandoned magical castle is also well done. One concern that I have is that the vertical height of the 5Wits open world rooms is limited, and forcing people to climb vertically could be a safety risk. I think this is pretty easily rectified by simply making the vertical gag a horizontal one where the players must cross a relatively long horizontal span without touching the floor. I also think this room can very easily manage traffic flow - after a defined failure time, all the bricks simply retract into the wall, preventing further interaction with the room's main gag until they re-enter to try again. Great job; I want to try this one!
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Innovativeness and potential of The Fountain storyboard
Client 1:
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This idea looks fun, but might be quite a mess, as tubes can direct water onto the floor of the room (or people). A non-physical medium other than water could be used, like bright lights and periscope style tubes.
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Client 2:
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Water makes for a great aesthetic, but also makes maintenance incredibly expensive. In this case, you have free water that the guests are supposed to interact with. Within the first hour of opening, the floor of this room would be soaked! And assuming people come in to play throughout the day, it would never dry. Additionally, how would you sense whether or not the basin was full? If you used any electrical sensor, you would have to be 100% certain that the water would NEVER touch it. I like that you considered how the puzzle would reset for the next group - that's important! However, this method would have to be playtested. If all of the pipes merely fell to the ground before the next group came in, the puzzle might be trivially easy for the next group to solve.
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Reviewer 3:
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The activation of the water fountain could be a subset of the puzzle as well. Adding clues and signifiers, such as puddles and drips, along with the room and underneath the positioning of the pipes would add to the idea that there was water running. The pipes are an interesting and novel way to add diversity your puzzle, potentially having some that vary in condition, some having holes, and varying in length. Is there a method to have more people interact with your puzzle? A method could be that some of the pins that hold the pipes could be worn out/not there, and the guest would have to act as an active support for those pipes. The idea with the pins acting as your reset is great although, there could be a problem with having the pipes fall in the positioning of the solution to your puzzle, to counteract this there could be multiple pins that alternate between trials, giving variety and replay value. Furthermore, for the basin that needs to be filled with water, would it be a single try to fill it or multiple tries? It might be interesting to get the basin to a certain level, but the water depletes at a certain rate, making the situation more like a race against the clock.
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Reviewer 4:
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This is a fun riff on the cogs room that we saw in the 20,000 Leagues story at 5Wits. I think the best aspect of that room is that it engaged more people at once than a number of the other rooms did, and it seems like this type of room could easily keep 2-5 people occupied at the same time. I also think the fountain and basins fit very well with the overall theme and could be executed to a high degree of finish within the 2.5D constraint that 5Wits has imposed. I think that the story associated with this theme is really important since it implies a degree of fantastical escape, and it would be great to imply some type of story as to why it is important to get the water back into the basins. Perhaps these fountains provide water to some magical plants which keep balance in the world that has been created. Once the connection is restored, some apparently wilting flowers are restored to life (this might not be the best story... it's worth thinking about).
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Innovativeness and potential of The Dragon storyboard
Client 1:
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Dodging a laser can be quite fun, especially if the beam is slowly moving. Aiming the laser reflections with a moving source may be too difficult. Maybe consider rotating the first shield mirror with a motor until a user touches it.
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Client 2:
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In theory, I love that the laser coming from the dragon's mouth moves, so the players have to continuously move in order to dodge it. However, in practice, I'm not sure how this would be accomplished. In regular (stationary) laser games, there is a sensor wherever the laser is supposed to land on the wall. If the sensor fails to see the laser, that means one of the guests broke the beam, and we can tell that they lost the game. In this game, the beam is continually moving, so we wouldn't be able to just put a sensor at the end point. There may be another way to tell that the beam has been broken, but I can't think of any! It's great that you have different colored eggs that correspond to different colored fires. That way, the game doesn't have to reset before the next group comes in - a different colored egg will light up, so they will have to move the shields to point the laser towards that fire instead of the fire the last team used. It would be exciting to see a phoenix rise from the flames! How would you accomplish that effect?
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Reviewer 3:
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Interesting idea about lasers and connecting 2 different endpoints with the laser. Something to think about is the atmosphere and how to make the laser visible. Potentially a more smokey room would add to the atmosphere along with giving larger visibility to the laser. A concern is the ability to detect that a person has gotten hit with the laser, however giving the guest's chest guards such as laser tag and decorating them as knight chest plates could add to the immersion. The fire concept and having the laser reflect of the knights is a great idea as it becomes an iterative process. You could add to this by requiring the fires to be activated within a certain time limit, incorporating more people, by having dynamic movement of the knights, and therefore making the team coordinate.
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Reviewer 4:
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This room also seems like it would be a bunch of fun to play. Having a laser which can bounce off at (somewhat) unpredictable angles seems like it could introduce a great level of difficulty and make the room play a little bit differently each time the team enters. The self reset on this also seems quite straightforward since the dragon could simply begin aiming in a new direction when the next team comes in. I'm unsure how you could guarantee that the room would know when the participants had been hit by the laser since it seems difficult to have photo-sensors at every location where the laser could end up. Maybe this can be executed with some type of visual sensor in the room (like a Wii U)? I'm not sure.
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Storyboard design and website presentation and execution
Client 2:
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I *love* your website and storyboard. Everything is clear, I instantly understood what I was looking at. Big pictures + explanatory text = easy to understand! I also feel that the font you chose matches your theme well, and your website is easy to navigate.
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Reviewer 3:
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Good presentation, putting a lot of emphasis on the action items and the items are being interacted with instead of overcrowding the images. Dashes and marks additionally add a dimension of interaction and action to the images you are drawing, giving better detail to what should be happening. Its nice to have the buttons at the bottom that allows the user to select what storyboard to see next.
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Reviewer 4:
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The website is great - it's easy to navigate and compliments the theme of the rooms well. The storyboards themselves are also vivid; the color is an excellent addition and literally helps paint the picture that this storyboard is seeking to convey.
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Room theme, The Dark Castle: engaging and interesting? identifiable with target users?
Client 2:
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Definitely yes! Medieval fantasy is an incredibly popular genre for books, TV shows, and other media. Game of Thrones is huge among the 15-35 demographic, so guests will be recognize the tropes of the genre. Also, if you can find a way to make a platforming mechanic safe, guests would love that too, since people that age grew up with video game platformers like Mario.
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Reviewer 3:
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The theme seems engaging, with a lot of variety in what can be done in the rooms, as shown in the storyboards. I believe that the target users will have had experiences that allows them to identify with the theme, as it is a theme that is used often in fantasy lore, such as D&D, children's books, and other media such as Lord of the Rings.
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Reviewer 4:
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Absolutely - I also think there is a tremendous amount of extant media that the team could pull on an integrate to source more ideas for specifically how these rooms should be decorated. This overall theme is also very action-oriented, which will appeal to people in the 15-35 year old age range. I would definitely check this out.
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